Locked On Hawkeyes - Daily Podcast On Iowa Hawkeyes Football & Basketball - Kyler Schott is back, Spencer Petras gets vote of confidence and more from Kirk Ferentz's press conference

Episode Date: September 15, 2021

Kirk Ferentz spoke to the media today, and starting offensive lineman Kyler Schott is expected to play Saturday versus Kent State plus Kirk gives a vote of confidence to Iowa Hawkeyes quarterback Spencer Petras. We wrap up the episode breaking down the latest commit to the Iowa basketball team, Josh Dix and what his arrival means for Fran McCaffery's squad. Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!SweatBlockGet it today for 20% off at SweatBlock.com with promo code LockedOn, or at Amazon and CVS.Built BarBuilt Bar is a protein bar that tastes like a candy bar. Go to builtbar.com and use promo code “LOCKED15,” and you’ll get 15% off your next order.BetOnline AGThere is only 1 place that has you covered and 1 place we trust. Betonline.ag! Sign up today for a free account at betonline.ag and use that promocode: LOCKEDON for your 50% welcome bonus.Rock AutoAmazing selection. Reliably low prices. All the parts your car will ever need. Visit RockAuto.com and tell them Locked On sent you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You are Locked On Hawkeyes, your daily podcast on the Iowa Hawkeyes. Part of the Locked On Podcast Network, your team every day. Welcome back Hawkeye Nation to a Wednesday morning episode of the Lockdown Hawkeyes podcast, your daily podcast covering your Iowa Hawkeyes on the Lockdown Sports Network. As always, I am your host, Andrew Wade, excited to be back for another show today, and I appreciate you all tuning in the last couple weeks. It has been an awesome month for the Lockdown Hawkeyes podcast. I hope you all are enjoying everything that we are doing.

Just a reminder that on Mondays, we have LaShawn Daniels joining. Every single Monday, breaking down the game. On Tuesdays, we do our analytics. On Wednesdays, we do our Kirk Ferentz interviews. And then on Thursday, we break down the opposing team. And Friday, we give you our predictions. And on today's show, we are breaking down Kirk Ferentz's press conference. We're also going to be talking about Iowa basketball recruiting.

They signed or didn't sign, but they got a commitment from big-time NCAA player Josh Dix. We're going to talk about what he brings the team and where this recruiting class is after we talk through all of what Kirk Ferentz had to say, which includes who's injured. Is Kyler shot playing or not? What can he expect in this Kent State offense? And why is he not overly concerned about this Iowa offense? Some really great quotes about that. We're covering it all on the show today.

And after you get done listening to the Lockdown Hawkeyes podcast, there's simply no better place than to get all the news in the Big Ten Conference than with Nate Dickinson in the Locked On Big Ten podcast. Follow the Locked On Big Ten podcast on the Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcast at. And let's get into it. We have a lot of stuff to cover with Kirk Ferens. He said a lot of things.

Some people thought it was kind of a boring interview. I actually felt like he did a really good job of kind of highlighting some things that we have talked about on the show and really reinforcing some of our thoughts there. He always, for all of his interviews, he comes out, gives a kind of a long quote, and then is opening up for questions. During his quote, he said, I thought our special teams were really big in our success, certainly. Starting with our specialist, Torrey did a great job. Happy to see him recognized by the Big Ten. He just did a great job affecting field position all day long for us. And as you might know by now, Torrey Taylor was named Special Teams Co-Big Ten Player of the Week.

He's been phenomenal. I mean, what a way to build off of a freshman season, a freshman season where you've never played football before until that very first game against Purdue. Ten games in, Torrey looks like he will be an NFL punter. I have no doubt about it at this point. What he's doing is incredible. Yes, there are things to improve, but his ability to boot the ball is simply changing the dynamics of the game.

It literally flipped the script against Iowa State. If you factor that in, it's almost 150 yards difference in Torrey's punting versus the Iowa State punters' punting, and that is a huge difference in terms of the gameplay. Landing so many inside the 20. This year, Torrey is 7th in the nation in punt average at 50.4 yards, 44.1 in net punting average, which is 9th out of all the guys who have double-digit punts, which I think is also important.

You can be pretty good one punt, but can you be good for a lot of them? Torrey Taylor is doing it. And they got asked the question, was he expecting this from Torrey? They said, no. I was hoping he was good, but like, wow. The best part, he has no idea what he's doing half the time in terms of football. He does as a player. The rest of the stuff, it's an adventure ride for him.

He's enjoying life. He has such a good approach. Just really underwhelmed by all of it,, it's an adventure ride for him. He's enjoying life. He has such a good approach. Just really underwhelmed by all of it, what he's doing. He just goes out and plays. Now, if you've been listening to the show for a while, you know we interviewed Torrey Taylor about a month and a half ago, and I couldn't agree more.

His outlook on everything was just, this is great. I'm having fun. Let's kick some footballs. This is a good time. And you can tell it just doesn't stress him out at all. He's very excited about what he gets to do. It doesn't make him nervous in any way, shape, or form. And he was really excited though, to be able to go out and actually understand kind of things that are happening on the field. I love this. You couldn't have this happen to a better

kid. Tori Taylor, awesome guy, kid. I mean, he's a young adult. I think he's 23 or 24. He is going to have a big-time career in the NFL after he gets done punting for the Iowa Hawkeyes because this guy is amazing. Now, on the show yesterday, we talked a lot about the drive. The drive at the end of the second quarter, everyone was very upset that Iowa, they thought, were in pre-event defense. They weren't.

They were playing their legitimate defense. Also, I would argue that Iowa wasn't playing the best of defense in that drive in the fourth quarter where Hunter Deckers drove Iowa State down the field. It felt like communication was lacking. It felt like they were kind of rotating some guys in and out. And Kirk Ferentz basically said as much. He said, there was a lapse before the half, gave up a big play, which was really costly, didn't finish the game out really well either in the fourth quarter. This was about the defense. So, yes, the defense overall, the box score, played awesome.

A great defense, though, doesn't let that drive in the second quarter or that drive in the fourth quarter happen. Regardless of the outcome of the game, you can't let that kind of stuff happen. You cannot let a lapse in you know mental awareness happen like that that impacts the game in such a negative direction allowing a touchdown taking away literally all the momentum the Iowa just came they sucked the life out of Jack Tri Stadium and then allowed Iowa State to drive down the field in a minute now again we talked about that whole drive on yesterday's show so if you want to go back listen to that or if you want to listen

to it you don't want to listen to the whole show, let me know. I can cut that out and give you a clip of that as well. They were playing the regular defense. There were just some miscommunications. I thought Iowa was in their normal defense doing a pretty good job. Now, he also got asked some questions about the offense, which was to be expected. About the concerns, he says, concern is not the right word, but certainly interest. As I mentioned, I think the biggest thing right now is consistency. We've done some good things at times, other times not so good. I can't tell you it's unpredicted or unexpected. What I would be concerned about is if we don't see continual growth. That's kind of what we're banking on

here as we move forward. That's for our whole football team, but especially up on both lines because that's where it shows a little bit more than in other places. Let's start with the offense piece. Yes, they have had really beautiful drives. That drive to close out the second half or the first half for Iowa with the beautiful throw to Charlie Jones, phenomenal drive. The drive up to the Matt Hankins interception. Phenomenal. I mean, these were good drives. The second quarter, Iowa's offense looked really good.

The first quarter, I'm going to chalk that up to Spencer Petras. I talk about Spencer a lot on this show. The good, the bad. I try to be as unbiased as possible. That first quarter, that's on Spencer. He's rocketing balls into the running backs. 100 miles an hour, they're three feet away. He's hitting them not in stride. He's hitting them where they're not expecting the ball. He's getting anxious. Some balls are sailing on him. The second quarter, he was locked in and ready to roll. We saw this against Wisconsin that second half.

He came out. Illinois, second half, came out awesome. Both teams, awesome second halves. We need to see Spencer get it going for the entire game. He has not put an entire game together yet. And he also taught, Kirk said a little bit more about Spencer. He said, protecting the ball is really important. I didn't see the game last night, but I was told two turnovers last night

in the losing team. That's a formula that doesn't change. I know it's not very popular. You don't get a lot of points from that. There's a lot to be said for that if you're smart with the football. I talked about this. Yes, Spencer needs better pocket awareness on third down. I think Chad Lysko actually did a really nice analysis of those third down sacks, and it wasn't as much Spencer's fault as we probably attributed to, and I talked about it on the show yesterday.

The offensive line has not been giving him as good of protection as you would expect, and that's to be expected because his offensive line is very young. And when I say not to be expected, it's because you always expect Iowa's offensive line collectively to be a good pass blocking unit. But when you look at each individual part of Iowa's offensive line, it's a young team that's having some growing pains. This is not all on Spencer. Those third down sacks, yes, he needs to get out of the pocket. He needs to throw it away if he can. He needs to realize pressure quicker.

He needs to get off his first read quicker or at all. But the offensive line is also part of that problem. I expect it to get better. This game against Kent State is going to be a really great opportunity for Iowa's offensive line to continue to gel. Getting Kyler's shot back in the mix is going to be absolutely huge. And getting the wide receivers going against a not top 15 secondary. I mean, Iowa State and Indiana have phenomenal secondaries.

That's tough for this Iowa wide receiver group to get going. I'm really excited to see how Iowa gets these wide receivers involved. We haven't seen this offense open up as much as we have seen in the past. Again, the big thing to note there, though, they were really happy with Spencer just controlling the football. If you throw interceptions, that hurts the team. He said, we're all talking that way about the offense. We all know each other well enough to understand the way the game was going

Saturday. What you don't want to do is blow an opportunity and start getting reckless, whatever for statistics, whatever things could have fallen through. We saw that happen last year against Purdue and Northwestern. They know better. They learned from that, which I like to see. They were not going to take that risk. And you saw Spencer being even more cautious with the football.

Only one turnover worthy throw the entire day. I don't remember those being in the third or fourth. I think that was actually in the first or second quarter. Awesome. He did what he needed to do to get us the W. Now again, as Kirk said, I expect growth. I want this offense to grow and I expect them to get better as we go against weaker defenses. We have three weeks in a row of relatively weak defenses. Relatively. They're not Indiana and they're not Iowa State. Kent State has some good numbers, but they're not an Indiana or Iowa State.

So I'm really excited to see what the offense can do. Coming up on segment two, we're going to continue our breakdown of what Kirk said and highlight kind of the points that he is making and why it's impactful for the rest of the season. I do want to tell you about betonline.ag, though. Betonline.ag is back and better than ever. All eyes are on the gridiron as teams are back on the field to start another football season. As always, BetOnline is your number one spot for all the pro and college football action this season. With a new updated site and interface, even more odds, props, and contests,

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BetOnline, the fastest and the easiest way to bet on all of your favorite sports. BetOnline.ag, your online sportsbook experts. All right, y'all, we are back for segment two. This is a reminder that you can get this podcast for free wherever you get podcasts at. You can also watch us for free on YouTube. That includes our Monday morning recap with Sean Daniels, so make sure to tune into that.

If you haven't done this already, please do subscribe wherever you are finding us at. And if you haven't done this, please give us a five-star review. Let other Iowa fans know how awesome this podcast is. Let them know why you listen to us on a daily basis. And I appreciate all of you for listening in this time. So we talked about the offense. We talked about Kyler Schott and the fact that he is returning. He's probably going to be on a pitch count. What I expect is that we're not going to get Kyler Schott full-blown until Maryland. You don't need to. You have Kent State. You have Colorado State. Iowa's offensive line has had tougher tests to this point. Kyler Schott is going to get integrated into that mix, and I bet by Maryland, he is now playing the predominant amount of snaps.

So when Kyler Schott joins the team, what is going to happen to this offensive line? I want to break it down a little bit. This is really going to be an interesting situation because some guys are excelling in certain places. The top run blockers, Justin Britt, a 90.2 grade and 48 snaps. Connor Colby, true freshman, 79.9 and 22 snaps. Tyler Linderbaum, 71.2 and 64 snaps. Connor Colby, true freshman, 79.9 and 22 snaps. Tyler Linderbaum, 71.2 and 64 snaps. Cody Ince, 69.6 and 60 snaps. Mason Richmond, 66 and 62 snaps. Nick DeJong, 61.2 and 53 snaps. And Jack Plum, 48 and 15 snaps. Y'all know my thought. If you've listened to any episode before,

you know my thoughts on Jack Plum. I just don't think he has what it takes to cut it. Let's look at pass blockers, though, because this gets a bit more interesting. Connor Colby, 74.8 in 16 snaps. Again, smaller sample size, but doing well when he's out there. Cody has 67.5 in 60 snaps. Nick DeJong, 62.3 in 56. Linderbaum, 57.5 in 60 snaps. Justin Britt, 33.8 in 45 snaps. Nick DeJong, 62.3 and 56. Linderbaum, 57.5 and 60 snaps. Justin Britt, 33.8 and 45 snaps.

Mason Richmond, 32.1 and 45 snaps. And Jack Plum has a zero. That's right, a zero PFF grade and six snaps. Again, snap size does matter. Bigger sample sizes means a better opportunity to predict what could happen going forward. Now, here's what I think would be an ideal offensive line long term. Mason Richmond at the left tackle.

I could see Mason and Nick kind of rotating if they wanted to. Connor Colby at the left guard. I think Connor Colby actually at the right guard. Kyler Schott at the left guard. Kyler Linderbaum, either way, the guard spots. Tyler Linderbaum at the center position and Cody Ince at the tackle position on the right side. You might say, Andrew, Cody plays guard. This is the one player on this entire team who can play all five positions. Iowa just didn't have him working

at that tackle spot as much because he was dealing with some things in camp and they didn't want to overwhelm him. But if you want to get your five best linemen on the field at any given time and develop youth, you've got to go Mason Richmond, Connor Colby, Tyler Linderbaum, Kyler Schott, and Cody Ince. I think it's fair enough to say if you want to put in Cody Ince at the guard spot and leave Nick DeJong, I'm okay with that as well. But Connor Colby being a true freshman and how well he has been playing,

now I would love to see Justin Britt. They're probably going to continue to rotate him in a little bit. I mean, what he's doing from a rushing perspective, a rush blocking perspective has been phenomenal. Pass blocking, not so good. And that's really where we need a lot of emphasis at because pass blocking has been a big struggle point for the Iowa offensive line. And he actually mentioned, Kirk talked a little bit about this offensive line because

if we were to start Connor Colby, Mason Richman, those are two very young guys, a retro freshman and a true freshman. And I've been making this comparison for a while. I've been comparing these guys to the time where we had a Larrick Jackson and Tristan Wurst. And a reporter asked, what do you make of this young offensive line? When was the last time you had this young of an offensive line? He said, that's a good question. Probably when Jackson and Wurst were playing tackle for us.

Walking out to the field behind Boone Myers, Ike Bucker, Adon Ami. Here's two fifth-year guys that aren't playing. A first-year and a second-year tandem we just talked about. They were starting for us. Those guys were really good players, NFL players today, but they weren't there. They were young guys learning how to play. You pay some dues along the way. We paid for it then too, but it paid off for us down the road.

Yeah, that's part of the territory sometimes. So when I look at that comment, I see a team that is willing to grow with some of the difficulties, right? Mason Rickman's going to get beat at times. Connor Colby's going to get beat at times. But having those two guys there is a stabilizing force for this offensive line for years to come. Two, three, four years down the road. That's how important it is to have those guys in the lineup. And that's why I think that's why they're going to have Connor Colby at least getting half the snaps. And ideally I would like to see him at

guard with Cody ends playing that tackle spot while we get Connor Colby up to speed. Obviously there's a lot of other guys who can play that tackle spot as well. Tyler Ellsbury, although he's been working at the guard spot, David David cough is a guy who has been kind of working there. Michael Maslinski can play the center spot, a recruit out of the 2021 class, and he has been playing well and is very, very limited snap. So very exciting stuff nonetheless. He also talked a little bit about the Iowa State game and why offensively, again, that they were not really going for, right? He said, our defense is playing pretty well.

We're doing a good job of special teams. The clock was really our friend, and ball possession was our friend. We would like to run the ball better in the second half. We didn't do that. At some point, we're going to have to get better at those kinds of situations. The biggest thing that could have screwed up Saturday, though, is, again, turning over the ball. There's no need to be reckless at all.

That could blow up in your face. And he mentioned reckless twice. And then he said, sometimes you go with the feel of the game. There's some games where you feel like the momentum is going a certain way and you play to that circumstance. I feel like they thought, let's not give Iowa State an opportunity to get back in it because they have one chance. And if they do, Iowa State has the ability to put on points very, very quickly.

The last thing I want to mention is that he said, people asked him about 2-0 and being ranked, he said, it doesn't matter. We could go 2-10. And I want to quickly call it out because Celia Palermo of WQAD, she does a great job of reporting on all the in-state athletics and also Illinois as well. She actually thought Kent State could be a really big,

opportunities is the wrong word, but chance of Iowa messing something up. A look ahead game. They just took off two very emotionally charged, high energy games and they get what they consider a cupcake. If Iowa's not ready for that, Kent State could come out swinging. They are going to. This is a good program now. This is not the Kent State the last decade and a half. This is a better program and they are ready to play against Iowa. So that'll be really interesting to me to see how Iowa takes it on. I hope Iowa comes out slugging, say let's get a big lead in the first half,

and let's ride it in the second half and get some of these younger guys in the game so they have an opportunity to gain some experience. Coming up on segment three, that does do it for our Kirk Behrens press conference. On segment three, we're going to talk about Josh Dix and what this means from a basketball team perspective. On tomorrow's show, we're going to be breaking down everything you need to know about Kent State.

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That is going to be a backcourt that could be lethal for years to come. And what Josh Dix brings is different than what we've seen. Tony Perkins is a slasher. He's a guy who can get to the basket. He's a guy who can get up and put up points by being close into the basket and plays phenomenal defense. Josh Dix is an all-around offensive player. He can shoot, he can drive, but he's primarily going to be able to get the ball and make and create his own shot. But he's not going to be the guy who's a slash into the rim every single play. That is going to feed well off of DeSante Bowen, a guy who can get

to the rim, a guy who likes to distribute it out to a guy like Josh Diggs on the perimeter being able to shoot the ball. What this means, getting a 6'5", three-star guard, we have our backcourt of the future. But what Iowa needs now is a forward, possibly two. There's a couple guys they're looking at. And real quick, I want to finish up on Josh Diggs. I got a little bit ahead of myself.

But, again, a very offensive-minded guy. Had 10 offers, including Wisconsin. This is a guy who was coveted from several teams and chose Iowa. That's huge. Moving on, Iowa has a couple guys they are highly targeting. Tyler Nichol, Jackson Kohler, and Aiden Schaaf. Tyler Nichol is committing today. So as you're listening to this, he is committing today, this afternoon.

More than likely going to Virginia Tech. If he goes to Iowa, big shocker, ring the doorbells. It is awesome. Iowa landed him, but I'm pretty sure he's going to Virginia Tech. Jackson Kohler, he's a four-star forward as well out of California. He's been heavily targeted by the Spartans. Right now, probably leaning the Spartans. Iowa's not going to give up on him, though. And the other guy to look out for is Aiden Shaw, who's committing on 9-17, which is Friday, if my mental math is right. He's a four-star top 100 guy. No crystal ball for Aiden Shaw. It was thought that he might be pretty interested in Kansas. Iowa came on a bit late, but he actually used an official visit to go to Iowa.

Iowa's very much in the running here. There's not been a word coming out yet about where he's potentially going as far as I'm aware of. And if he goes to Iowa, that would be arguably one of the best recruiting classes Fran McCaffrey has had in years. After these guys, though, it's getting a bit interesting. Basketball recruiting is kind of drying up a little bit, similar to what we saw from a football perspective. There could be guys that continue to develop

and Iowa offers late in the game. Look what happened. They got Keegan and Chris Murray, guys who are three-star recruits. Well, turned into three-star recruits. Those are guys who were unranked prior to giving them scholarship offers. And also, I apologize.

You hear my dogs. They are being absolutely ridiculous, but I can't really do much when I'm on YouTube and they're barking and I'm the one watching them. But I will – he got Chris Murray late in the process. I trust Fran McCaffrey and his coaching staff to be able to find and develop these guys, but it would be great to get one of these four-star forwards.

If not, it's kind of interesting to see where they go because a lot of their targets have committed. Even Reed Bailey, a guy who was very close to DeSante Bowen, a guy who wasn't getting recruited heavily, committed to Davidson. Can Iowa switch him? Maybe. That'll be really interesting to see though. So from a basketball perspective, some really big time news potentially coming up in the next couple of days that I'll be watching heavily. If they are able to land one of these three guys, that is a huge recruiting class for the Iowa basketball team. Huge, especially considering how many young, talented players they already have on it, matching these guys, the current players. This is a basketball team

that will be very good for years to come. This could be a down year. I don't think it will be, but this recruiting class coming in and the talent we already have, Frank McCaffrey is not building a one-year wonder. He is building a program. And I know it's been nine, 10 years at this point, but I really think the guys he's getting in truly fit his system. They can play defensive basketball as well as they can also get to the basket

and they have some shooting abilities. This class right now that he's working on building up embodies many of those principles that Frank McCaffrey holds very near and dear to his heart. That does do it for our show today, though. Coming up on tomorrow's show, we're going to be breaking down Kent State, going through a whole preview of what Kent State brings to the table and how Iowa can stop them.

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wherever you get your podcast app. And that does do it for our show today. Just a reminder, if you haven't already, subscribe to our YouTube channel, subscribe wherever you download this podcast app. Hawkeye Nation, I appreciate your love, your listenership, and your support. Have a fantastic Wednesday, and let's go Hawks.