Locked On Hawkeyes - Daily Podcast On Iowa Hawkeyes Football & Basketball - Ranking Iowa's top tight ends | Nate Stanley the GOAT? | Where is each former five-star recruit now?

Episode Date: December 24, 2018

We don't skimp out on content on the holidays--we've got a jampacked episode for you today first starting with us ranking the top five tight ends in the Kirk Ferentz era. We've talked about why Iowa is the new tight end u so let's talk about the guys who helped make it that place. The second segment has us exploring what happened to each and every one of the seven five-star recruits in the Kirk Ferentz era before we wrap up by discussing an interesting and sure to be debatable subject in whether or not Nate Stanley has what it takes to be the greatest QB of all time in Hawkeye history. What do you think? Let us know.Twitter: @lockedoniowaHost: @wade_andrewGmail: [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to another episode of the Locked On Hawkeyes podcast, the latest addition to the Locked On Sports Network's growing lineup of college podcasts. I am your host, Andrew Wade, editor over at dearoldgold.com, where you can find analysis pieces on all things black and yellow, and we have a fun episode for you today. I am currently in Europe right now, so if you're listening to this on December 24th, I hope you have a fantastic Christmas Eve and are enjoying your holiday season. I'm actually pre-recording this on Friday the 21st. So we're not going to be covering any late-breaking news if anything happened.

We're going to be talking about a few articles and news stories that kind of came out over the last week or so. And then I have a fun one for you on segment two. We're going to be talking about five-star recruits. So that being said, for segment one, we're going to be talking about five-star recruits. So that being said, for segment one, we're going to be touching on the 18 playoff and what that would potentially mean for the Iowa Hawkeyes. On segment two, like I said, we're going to take a look back in history at all the five-star recruits in the Kirk Ferentz tenure and see where they're at now, what happened to them. Obviously, there's been some good ones. There's been some not-so-good ones, so I want to take a look at that.

And then finally, on segment three, with the news this past week that Nate Stanley is returning for his senior season, I took a deep dive into some of the statistics and wanted to, you know, make a case or maybe not for why Nate Stanley could go down as the best quarterback in the history of the Iowa football program or, you know, really what he would need to do in order to do that. Before we jump into this great content, though, make sure you are subscribed to our podcast on iTunes, Google, Spreaker, Spotify, wherever you get your podcast at. Make sure you are subscribing to the podcast so you get the latest updates of the Locked On Hawkeyes podcast. And now that you know, you can also go to Siri, Google, or Alexa and say,

Play Podcast Locked on Hawkeyes. That will give you access to the latest episode of the Locked on Hawkeyes podcast. So, easy as that. Just tell your smartphone or smart speaker to, Play Podcast Locked on Hawkeyes. Let's jump right into it, though. I want to talk to you about the 18 playoff and what that would mean for the Hawks. And, really, this kind of came about over the past couple of weeks as the, the four team college world playoff has,

has come into focus really. And it's interesting enough, Ohio state got left out. They went 12 and one, they lost one game to a Purdue team that to be honest is pretty good. Um, I know their record was six and six, but Purdue is a solid football team, and they played well against a lot of really good teams, including Ohio State and Iowa. So they had a tough beginning of the season, so that's, you know, neither here nor there. But otherwise, I believe they very well could have been 9-3, and that would have looked like a much better loss for Ohio State. But basically, what happened with this year's playoff, if you haven't been paying attention, we have Alabama, we have Clemson, we have Oklahoma, and we have Notre Dame.

Alabama, Clemson, and Notre Dame are all undefeated. Oklahoma had one loss. Georgia, who was fifth, had two losses, both to Alabama. One in this SEC championship game where they barely lost in the last couple minutes. And then Ohio State behind them with one loss to Purdue, obviously the Big Ten champions. And then we had UCF, who weren't undefeated again. So as you're kind of looking at that, the idea of the playoff was to give

every team that reasonably had a chance a chance to win the National Football Championship. We had a lot of issues with the BCS and how that was putting teams into the National championship game. So I wanted to make it a little bit more fair for the teams that really are talented. At this point, if this was seven, eight years ago, there'd be a lot of chaos. Because who do you put in? Alabama, Clemson, or Notre Dame into the championship game? Now we have this four-team playoff, it makes it a little bit easier.

But we're running into difficulties as well because you're having teams that win a Power 5 conference and are not making it to the college football playoff. And that's where the A-team playoff comes in. And when you're looking at this, kind of just thinking about this, this would really make a big impact on the Iowa Hawkeyes because before, they would need to basically be perfect to make it into the college football playoff. They would need to go undefeated 13 games, go 12-0, and then win the Big Ten championship game just to make it to the college football playoff because they're not as highly respected as a Georgia team. I mean, look at it. Georgia

went 10-2, lost two games. Granted, it was Alabama, and we're ahead of Ohio State. So it's a little bit frustrating, but with an 18 playoff, Iowa would have been in the playoffs undoubtedly three seasons. 2015, where they lost the Big Ten Championship game in the last few seconds. 2009 and 2001. Alright, so those are opportunities where they, 2001 they would have been in regardless, but those are three seasons they would have made the college football playoff. And if you, you know, expand it a little bit out further 2003 and 2004 those teams were ranked around the 10 or 11s in the 12 or 13s so in that range the 10 to 14 range those teams could have also been in the running for the college football playoff simply because when you're that close

there's other things that kind of go into play as well who knows how the college football playoff committee would have been ranking them right those were Those were AP rankings, which, as we've seen, are not as, not always, you know, one-to-one with the college football playoff rankings. So a little bit of wiggle room there. They may have bumped up, especially with, you know, the schedule they were playing and how well they were playing at the time. And especially, you know, that the 2009 team with Ricky Stanzi being injured, the committee would definitely look at that and see that as, you know, okay, they lost two games.

Ricky Stanzi was injured. That's okay, though. They have Ricky Stanzi back. This team is a, you know, a playoff contender. So I think it'd been a huge, huge impact. And obviously that would have changed the, the perception of the Hawks. You know, if you have five college football playoff appearances in 20 years, that's impressive. All right. That's very impressive. But when you look at it as, oh, well, they made a couple of major bowl games and they lost, not nearly as impressive. So it definitely would've been interesting to see what that would look like for the Hawks. If they moved to an 18 playoff, I'm very in support of that. I think it'd be really huge for the Iowa football program. It would give them a little bit more wiggle room. They could lose one game and still

be able to make it, obviously, if they play well it's just it's just tough when you have to go undefeated to to do anything or really make an impact I mean even this year after their loss to Wisconsin they were they still technically had a chance at the college football playoff but as we've seen they wouldn't have made it with how the Big Ten was valued in the college football playoff rankings all right and that'll do it for kind of my soap box on that I really do feel like the 18th playoff would be huge. It'd be really awesome for the Hawks. But I digress a little bit too much. I want to jump into a few other things.

But before we go into segment two, where we're going to be covering the former five-star signings for Kirk Ferentz, I have a message for you, the listener. Because if you're like me, you hate to miss your favorite team play, regardless of who they are playing. And that's where Sling TV comes in. Now I never have to miss a football or a basketball game.

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He's returning for his senior year. I want to talk about some of the records he could potentially break and what the path would be for him to go down as one of the best quarterbacks in the history of the Iowa Hawkeyes. But let's jump into the five-star recruits. And as you probably know, Iowa is not that flashy recruiting school. They don't typically go after the five-star recruits. Heck, they barely get a lot of four-star recruits. This year, they had three out of their 20-person class. It was ranked 38th in the nation. So, you know, solid, not really spectacular in terms of numbers, but that's what the Iowa Hawkeyes want. They don't care about necessarily having

or how many stars are behind, you know, your name. They care about you as a person. Are you going to come in there and work? Are you going to be an Iowa Hawkeye football player? Are you going to bleed black and gold? And so I think it's kind of an experience that the Hawks have learned, you know, for good reasonks have learned, you know, for good reason over the last 20 years, starting off when Kirk was coming into the Iowa football program, he was doing a pretty solid job of bringing in, you know, really high rated classes. But if you look back in history, those haven't turned out super well. He's had seven five-star recruits in his time, according to 24-7 sports. And keep in mind, these rankings haven't been around all the time, so you can't really go back too much further than the Kirk Ferentz era.

So that's where we're going to stick to for today. But wanted to run you through the five-star recruits. I know a lot of us would love to see the flashiness on signing day and have the number one-rated recruit in the nation sign with the Hawkeyes, but it just doesn't happen. It's not going to happen. It's not the Hawkeye way. I mean, A.J. Epineza was kind of an anomaly.

The fact that he signed, he really fit the bill for what Iowa was looking for, and his dad, Epi Epineza, used to play for the Hawks. So it just made a lot of sense. It was a really good fit for him. But that's not really the case for a lot of other five-star recruits. The first one to touch on is Kyle Williams. And this was the highest rated recruit ever for the Iowa football team, but he did not last very long. If you're wondering Kyle who, that's because he was with the Hawks for just a few weeks. He was named academically ineligible,

and then he transferred, all right? He was the 22nd best prospect in the nation from Illinois, and the second best outside linebacker prospect. But once he was ruled ineligible, he decided to transfer to Purdue. He was able to play one season at Purdue and had a decent season for a freshman. It looked like there was a lot of buzz surrounding him and he was going to kind of go big places after that, but he got caught up into some off the field issues and has been in prison for a little bit. So not exactly the storybook ending I think Iowa Hawkeye fans were looking for with Kyle Williams, but it happens.

The next highest rated recruit was A.J. Epineza, and we talked about him again just a few seconds ago. I don't want to harp on this too much, but this guy has been incredible. I mean, look at what he's able to do as a sophomore. This guy was throwing people back and forth. But keep in mind, too, this guy came in and he worked his butt off, all right? He has worked hard. And you know what?

He doesn't need to be a starter. He doesn't need the fame and the glory necessarily. He's okay being behind three seniors and a junior on the defensive line and coming in when it's time. He doesn't complain like I feel like others may have or may do if they were in that position. But he's worked his butt off and next year he's going to pay dividends when he unleashes havoc on the nation when he's taking on tackles in the pass rush game. The next guy is Tony Moyeke, a five-star tight end out of Wheaton-Warrenville South. At the time, he was a 6'4", 250-pound tight end, and he was the 30th best prospect in the nation and the second best tight end.

He was also first-team All-American by Riddell. Unfortunately, most of us probably know how this story ended. You know, Mowiaki was solid. He had a productive career at Iowa. He wasn't spectacular by any means, but mostly because he dealt with injuries. He even had one injury bad enough where he was able to receive a medical hardship waiver.

It's tough when you can't get onto the field to make an impact in the game. He finished his career with 76 catches for 953 yards and 11 touchdowns. So, not bad. He was named Honorable All-American in his senior season when he helped lead the Hawks to the Orange Bowl, but overall nothing too spectacular there. He did get drafted, though. He was good enough, obviously, to get drafted in the third round,

but again, the injury bug kind of continued to bite him. He ended up playing for five teams in six seasons and never played a full 16 games. The next guy on the list, and we're going to find this to be kind of a theme with a couple linemen here, but we have Blake Larson, all right? The highest-rated, you know, high-rated offensive lineman prospect from Atlantic, Iowa. He was the top prospect in the state. Obviously, Iowa doesn't get a lot of five stars. But he dealt with injuries throughout his career and decided to walk away from the program after his junior season.

All right, so that's how bad things went. He never started a game. There's a recent article that I saw that he is actually protecting the community as a police officer. So he is in Kansas City working as a police officer and has some thoughts on what went wrong. I think in his situation, a big thing was when you're that young, getting that much hype, that much publicity, and that much notoriety, it can be tough to have a level head. And he thinks that kind of hurt him in his transition to college. And that makes sense.

I could see that absolutely happening. The next five-star recruit is Matt Roth. All right. This guy was insane in Iowa. And he had a huge career. Arguably one of the best defensive ends or outside linebackers,ers whichever one you want to classify him as in the Iowa football program he ended up being good enough to get drafted in the second round of the 2005 draft he spent five seasons with the Dolphins and then spent a few more with the Cleveland Browns and Jacksonville Jaguars

he didn't really have a ton of success at the NFL level I mean sorry let me phrase that he didn't have like an all pro caliber caliber uh career but he did have a solid stat line. He had 23.5 sacks over 96 games. And the one thing with Roth, when doing some research on him, this guy is absolutely insane. The stories and the legend around him are crazy. I recommend you just type in Matt Roth and crazy, and you'll get some nutty stuff up there.

But this guy was second-team All-American when he was a senior at Iowa. He earned all Big Ten honors twice. His senior season, he had 49 tackles, 15 tackles for loss, eight sacks, and three forced fumbles. So pretty impressive. Again, one of the best defensive linemen in the history of the program. All right, Dan Doering, another five-star recruit, came with the 2005 class from Barrington, Illinois.

He was the 33rd best prospect in the nation, and he registered his first year with the Hawks, but he dealt with position battles throughout his time and never really saw the field. He only ended up starting six games. I don't want to speak to what he brought on the field or why he wasn't starting, but it happens for whatever reason. I do love the fact that Kirk plays the best players and the hardest working players,

regardless of who they are. But I will say this. Doering did get a shot at the NFL. He had a tryout with the Seattle Seahawks after going unselected in the 2010 NFL draft. I think, obviously, the five-star status really opened the door for him there. Currently, Doering is working as a landscape designer for his own landscaping company in Chicago. So if you need some awesome landscaping,

reach out to a fellow Hawkeye in Chicago. Get that started. And finally, the last five-star recruit in the Kirk Ferris tenure. Another five-star recruit in the class of 2005. He is also a teammate of Tony Moyockaki's. This guy, Dace Richardson, beloved by all Hawkeye fans everywhere. This guy just couldn't get off

the injury book. Similar to Tony Moyaki. I don't know what it was in that Wheaton-Warrenville Southwaters, but Richardson just struggled throughout his career to stay on the field. But when he's on the field, he was fantastic. He played very well, was All-Big Ten his senior year, also named Team Comeback Player of the Year as well. He was able to also start in the Orange Bowl victory over Georgia Tech, clearing the way for the running backs there. He was actually invited to the NFL Combine, so that's how highly the NFL thought of him.

They thought he could be a solid prospect for the NFL. But he infamously is noted for having one of the worst 40-yard dash times in the history of the Combine. He ran a 5.79 40-yard dash. I truly think I could walk that in about the same time. So pretty sad. But his career, the NFL draft, when he came and went, he didn't get drafted. He did have a tryout with the Giants, but wasn't able to latch on and ultimately played with the Iowa Barstormers

and the Arena Football League for a little bit. You can now find him in Des Moines as a day trader. So switching from hitting people to hitting those stocks. And that'll do it for our five-star recruits. Wanted to kind of give you a time-lapse back in history, show you what other five-star recruits are up to at this point, and you can find an article on this as well on darylgold.com. We have great content with a little bit more details about that coming out there,

so make sure you check out that as well. Before we jump into, before we finish this off, I just want to remind you that on segment three, we're going to be talking about Nate Stanley and why we think he could go down as one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time. All right, we are back. And like I said, we're going to be talking about Nate Stanley. So if you didn't hear, he's coming back for his senior season.

And some people might not, you know, I know there's been, people have been frustrated with Nate Stanley's performance, myself included. I've been very critical, I will openly admit. But I think it's less about being critical about how bad he's playing and more about my expectations for him and him not meeting those. So I personally think my expectations are very high. You can see he has the talent. The guy's 6'4", 240 pounds and has a rocket arm, okay? This guy can play has the talent. This guy is 6'4", 240 pounds, and has a rocket arm.

This guy can play in the NFL. He just needs to pull it all together, and it's frustrating to not see all that growth from year one to year two, or even from his freshman year to his starter year one is what I'm saying. But it happens. But with that being said, another year in Brian Ferenc's offense, I did see a lot of great things from Stanley. He had some incredible games this year against Indiana. This guy couldn't go down. You know, defensive ends were falling off him. He was still running around making plays and delivering well-timed and, you know, accurate throws. So I think there's a lot of hope for him. And I think when he was looking at declaring for the NFL draft, he also looked at the fact that he has a lot of room for growth.

And ultimately, if you're a quarterback and you grow into that spot and you become one of those top tier prospects, it doesn't matter how many quarterbacks are coming out. You're still going to get drafted very high. So I think it was a good decision for him to come back. But with that being said, he's kind of in line to maybe set himself up to be one of the top one or two or even three quarterbacks in Iowa football history. Obviously, the GOAT at this point, the greatest of all time, is Chuck Long. This guy's a Heisman runner up. He holds nearly every single passing record for the Hawkeyes, the greatest of all time, is Chuck Long. This guy's a Heisman runner-up. He holds nearly every single passing record for the Hawkeyes,

including touchdowns, interceptions, and yards. This is the guy that everyone strives to be when it comes to being an Iowa Hawkeye quarterback. And behind him in the record books really sits Drew Tate and Ricky Stanzi, which makes sense. We all saw how good they were at the Iowa football program. Drew Tate had a lot of hype, wasn't able to necessarily live up to it as much, but still had a great career in Iowa. And Ricky Stanzi was fantastic throughout his time at the Hawks. But what could Stanley do, though, to really bring himself into this conversation for top quarterbacks of all time in Iowa history?

I think personally, the first thing is he needs to lead the Hawkeyes to a Big Ten championship victory and a victory in the college football playoffs. This would be huge. So Chuck Long never won a Rose Bowl. His best bowl game came when he was a freshman when the Hawks beat Tennessee in the Peach Bowl. But even back then, the Peach Bowl was not the same Peach Bowl that it is today where it's a very highly touted bowl. It's still solid, but the Hawks were 8-4 at the time.

So not as nice of a bull as we would expect so I think first Stanley needs to win the Big Ten Championship game he needs to carry Iowa to that game and and really be a leader in that that drive there second I think and this kind of comes with the third thing I'll be talking about as well but he would need to be a Heisman finalist I mean Chuck Chuck Long was a a runner-up. Obviously, you've got to talk about Brad Banks as well. He had that one great season. It's tough to say Brad Banks is one of the top quarterbacks of all time simply because he was only in Iowa City for a season. Sorry, he only started in Iowa City for a season.

But when you look at the body of work, Stanley's had a decently impressive body of work. And I think adding on Heisman finalists to that would be immensely beneficial to his candidacy for greatest of all time. It'd be tough, though. It's tough for an Iowa Hawkeye quarterback. We're not seeing them chuck the ball for 300-400 yards every single game. With that being said, though, we did see them chuck it a couple times, and he had a couple 300-yard games this season. I think if you can do that on a more consistent, regular basis,

they rely more on that passing attack. They have the options. They have Amir Smith-Marset, the speedster. They have Brandon Smith, the big play, go up and get it type guy. You know, those type of guys, if TJ Hawkinson comes back, I mean, that's three guys that should not be able to be covered consistently. So there's an opportunity there for some big games. And that kind of leads us into the third and final piece of what I think is really important for Stanley to stake a legitimate claim towards being the greatest of all time. He needs to reach some of Long's career records. So Long has 9,671 yards. Stanley would need to average around 325 yards per game over his next 14 games to be able to make that mark. Granted, Long played a few more games. I'll give him that.

Long also threw 70 touchdowns. This one, Stanley should be able to easily surpass. He just needs 22 touchdowns, which he's topped in the last two years as well. And Long's 46 interceptions will not be touched, and that's good. Stanley only has 15. He's 31 away. Obviously, that would be a horrendous season if he threw 31 interceptions, and I would hope Kirk would pinch him by that point.

The only one he probably won't touch is the completion percentage, and that's really been the knock on Stanley, is his completion percentage throughout his career, which is around the 57% to 58% range. Lastly, though, I think if he can kind of tie those things together, right, if he can lead the Hawks to an undefeated season in the regular season, if he can be a Heisman finalist and average around three to 320 yards a game, and obviously these are big ass, right?

This isn't an easy task. This isn't gonna be a cakewalk or a walk in the park, but it is possible. He has the talent to do it. If he does it, he can go down as the greatest of all time. And let me know what your thoughts are on that. I would love to hear what your top quarterbacks are. Do you think Chuck Long's number one?

If you don't, please let me know who. Who do you think is actually number one? Does Brad Banks deserve some clout in that conversation for his one great season in Iowa City? Where do you put Ricky Stanzi or Drew Tate? What do you think about C.J. Bethard? Obviously, I don't think people are going to think super high about him, but what are your thoughts on all that? Feel free to let us know at LockedOnIowa.

You can also tweet at me at Wade underscore Andrew. And that'll do it for our Christmas Eve episode. I hope you all have a fantastic holiday season. Drive safely out there. Enjoy giving and getting presents. And really focus on what really matters about the holiday season, and that's spending time with family. Like I said, we will not be coming on for tomorrow for Christmas.

We will have another episode, though, coming your way on Wednesday the 26th, so you can be excited and prepared for that. That being said, I am your host, Andrew Wade. You can find me on Twitter at Wade underscore Andrew, and you can follow all of the exciting happenings of the Locked On Hawkeyes podcast on Twitter at Locked On Iowa. Make sure you're also subscribing to our podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast at. And please leave us a review. Let us know what you think of the show. And lastly, remember, all those smart devices you have, you can just tell them to play podcast Locked on Hawkeyes, and it'll pull up the most recent edition of our great podcast.

Thank you for joining us on the Locked on Hawkeyes podcast. Have a fantastic day, Hawkeye Nation, and we'll be back in two days.