Locked On Hawkeyes - Daily Podcast On Iowa Hawkeyes Football & Basketball - Reactions to Iowa's blowout win over USC | Will they stay or will they go? A look at Wirfs, Epenesa, and Stone's draft decisions
Episode Date: December 30, 2019The Hawks took care of business Friday night to secure their 10th win of the season with a win over USC in the Holiday Bowl. We break down the game and give our reactions before diving into the hot to...pic of which underclassmen will stay and which will depart for the NFL Draft. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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I thank God I was born on the good arms of the Midwest, and not on the battlefields of
the U.S.
It's a time of panic, and it's intercepted!
It's picked off right away!
Intercepted by Marty Hooker!
Pick six!
Eight seconds into the game!
Buffen sets up deep in the pocket, goes down the field for Smith!
Oh!
He's got it!
Smith!
Touchdown.
85 yards.
High on.
Touchdown, 10.
Taking a shot in the end zone.
It is caught.
No offense.
Touchdown.
That's either one or you have it.
Go ahead and three.
Yes.
Two-point lead for the Hawkeyes podcast,
your daily podcast covering your Iowa Hawkeyes on the Locked On Sports Network.
As always, I'm your host, Andrew Wade.
I'm excited to be back after a two-week hiatus.
My apologies again.
Went and visited my family, forgot my microphone, and then got the flu. So that was pretty much how my last two weeks
have been spent. But excited to be back for you. Excited to be bringing you some more content.
Hopefully going to get four episodes out this week. And we have a ton of stuff to cover, most notably starting with Iowa's 49-24 victory over USC in the
Holiday Bowl.
What a fantastic game that was to watch.
Got a little scary for a little bit, especially in the start of the second half, but Iowa
turned it around.
Obviously, you know, Slovis being injured was a big blow to USC. But we're going to basically be covering that all on the show today.
And that's all we're going to be covering on the show today.
So talking about that, talk a little bit about some of the other bowl games.
We'll get into some more of the analysis of next season and kind of what all these things mean over the course of this week.
And you're not going to find any analysis on the Iowa versus Kennesaw State game.
Basically, I'm choosing to record this before that game so I can watch the Denver Broncos
final game of the regular season.
I hope you can respect that.
It should be a pretty easy win for the men's basketball team that is now ranked 25th in
the nation.
I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season. And if you are, you know, tuning in for the very first time today, make sure to like,
review and subscribe wherever you downloaded this podcast at.
And make sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
Try to post some, you know, witty, some good content on there as much as possible.
So make sure to follow us there.
And you'll also get some of the updates as to when episodes will be dropping and kind
of what's happening with our production schedule.
So, appreciate you all tuning in.
Let's jump right into the show today, though.
The big thing, like I said, the Iowa Bowl game victory over the USC in the Holiday Bowl was absolutely amazing.
Gives Iowa their 10th win of the season.
A big milestone.
Obviously, from the Iowa Hawkeye perspective,
we would love to have seen them win the Big Ten West. This team definitely had the talent to do
so. We would love to see them go further, right? But I'll take 10 wins any season. It was a tough
schedule. There were a few tough games. Obviously, going on the road to Michigan is not an easy
time.
Minnesota coming out of nowhere was not really expected.
Going to Wisconsin, again, not an easy game.
And getting Penn State any time is going to be difficult.
So lots of strong and tough games this season.
And Iowa, to win 10 games, is still pretty impressive.
And the fact that in all three of their losses,
they really had a great opportunity to win each of those three games. Just speaks to how good this team really was. Lots of fantastic players on there and a lot
of stuff I want to cover on, you know, kind of what happened during that game. First of all,
let's just start with the big thing. Brian Ferentz called, I would say, maybe the best game of his
life. That was just impressive all around.
Kind of shows you what he can do given a little bit of time
and the ability to analyze what USC does.
He even noted that there was a few things he saw on tape,
especially the fact that they're not very good at covering the edge.
That's why we saw a few of the jet sweeps, the reverse pass, that kind of stuff.
Those are things, I mean, even that reverse pass,
I can't remember the last time I saw a reverse pass from an Iowa football team.
Those are some things that I think fans have been kind of clamoring for
for the last few years.
And even this year, we didn't see nearly as many kind of the trickery
and misdirection type plays as we would have liked to see
and what we basically see throughout all of college football except for at Iowa.
But loved to see it. Loved getting
Amir Smith-Marset involved. When you have a guy like that who is just so darn quick and so fast,
you need to get him involved. And also, what the hell was that on his arm? What a cannon. I thought
that throw was beautiful. I think Brandon Smith should have came down with it, but nevertheless,
an impressive day by Amir Smith-Marset.
Fantastic play calling by Brian Ferencz.
Again, to put 49 points, I mean, USC's defense isn't exactly a stiff defense, but it's still a Pac-12 defense.
It's still a Power 5 defense, and Iowa to put 49 points on them is impressive nonetheless.
And that 21-point second quarter was just absolutely to die for scoring in
multiple different ways obviously Tyrone Tracy Jr. getting a 23-yard touchdown run Amir Smith-Marset
getting a 60-yard touchdown run then having the 98-yard kickoff return and then getting a 12-yard
pass from Nate Stanley impressive ways to score in that first half and Amir Smith-Marset did wrap up
the offensive player of the game as we kind of expected after scoring three touchdowns in three different ways.
So again, awesome stuff from the offensive side of the ball.
A few other things I want to cover on the offensive side of the ball
is the quarterback sneak.
Kind of going back to Brian Ferentz's play calling,
it just felt like he had USC's number the entire day.
He knew exactly what he wanted to do do and everything he was calling was working. You just never got the
sense of, oh man, we're in a bad game plan today. Even when they would run a couple times, you knew
he was setting something up. And even with the quarterback sneak, part of me was thinking, man,
Brian Ferentz is, he's basically saying a big screw you to USC. I'm going to keep
doing this quarterback sneak because you can't stop my six foot five, 240 pound quarterback
running behind, you know, Tyler Linderbaum doing it three times in a row for 11 yards. They weren't
even at that point, there weren't even, you know, in inches to go. It was, we have nine yards to go
and we're going to do a quarterback sneak
because Nate Stanley continues to get it. Honestly, I think Nate Stanley got the touchdown on that,
on that second, um, that second down run. And I was really, really hoping that Brian Farron said,
screw you again and went forward again. Um, cause that would have just been one of the most
humiliating, uh, defensive possessions to just have a quarterback
sneak ran down your throat from 11 yards out for a touchdown. However, it looked like Brian was
kind of setting some stuff up, ultimately went with, you know, the Tyler Goodson one yard touchdown
run to close that out. But man, what, what a sequence there. I was at the sports column in
Denver and everyone was just yelling, do it again. I was freaking out.
To be honest, I know some people don't have the greatest impression of Nate Stanley.
And if you really do think Nate Stanley wasn't a good quarterback, I can't help you.
Was he perfect? No.
But his legacy is going to live on.
He had a fantastic career as an Iowa Hawkeye.
Second in passing yards.
Second all-time in wins tied with Ricky Stanzi.
Going to go down as one of the best quarterbacks of all time in Iowa history.
And that quarterback sneak stuff is something we're not going to see either.
I mean, I can't imagine the way he gets his pad level so low
and kind of just pushes through.
I mean, that's something you just don't really see very often.
And even though maybe next year with Spencer Petras being a big quarterback as well,
maybe we might see that maybe with Deuce Hogan having that size.
But regardless, it's just not going to happen.
It's just not going to be like Nate Stanley doing that.
Every single time he ran that play, you knew you were getting a first down,
which is something you can't really always say about a quarterback sneak, especially when the defense knows it's freaking coming.
But I digress a little bit.
I have a few more things I want to cover, including some of the adjustments that Phil
Parker made, also talking about some of the officiating and some of the final plays of
that second half of the game.
So that'll be coming up here after a few messages from our sponsors.
All right. So as I said, you know, we talked a lot about offense on that first segment of the show. And again, the offense did really fantastic. Want to quickly break down a few stats.
Nate Stanley, 18 of 27 for 213 yards, averaging nearly eight
yards per attempt, two touchdowns, a quarterback rating of 84. Just again, fantastic performance
for his final performance on the day. Tyler Goodson had 18 carries, only 48 yards. Couldn't
get a lot going on the ground game, but fortunately some of the wide receiver end
rounds did a good job of opening that up. I thought Torin Young ran really hard and got physical, had 18 yards on four carries.
And Makai Sargent did a good job in pass protection when they were doing some of those
dual running back looks in the shotgun.
Overall, the Hawks ran for 115 yards, got enough going on the ground to keep the USC
defense honest.
Through the air, Sam Laporta had the team leading six receptions for 44 yards.
This kid is going to be absolutely fire over the next couple years. I've seen references to TJ
Hawkinson. I've seen references to the fact that the way Iowa handled TJ Hawkinson and redshirting
him his freshman year kind of allowed them to understand maybe we should actually just play
Sam Laporta. And I think that really sets them up very nicely for the coming years.
And we're going to talk a little bit about, you know, how the tight end position kind
of regressed this season, how it's going to be good next season, how that also correlates
to some of the NFL draft decisions as well coming up in just a few moments.
But again, let's talk about the defense, though.
I thought coming into this game, obviously the big storyline from the defensive perspective was being able to see how Iowa's defensive backs could handle USC's you know good
receivers and their high-powered air raid attack and obviously the announcers thought that was the
biggest thing in the world because they couldn't stop freaking mentioning it but it wasn't until
you know Kedon Slavis went down with that injury that the passing attack kind of died. But until that point, we really couldn't figure out a way to handle it.
Phil Parker started off with his defensive backs pressing.
I thought that was actually a pretty nice move considering Iowa doesn't typically do that.
And the idea there is really to get these receivers off of their timing routes.
So again, it throws off the timing.
And if the pressure can get there quickly, we should be able to hold in pass coverage.
But what we saw was them taking advantage of some of the guys out of the slot.
Armand Ross, St. Brown, had a fantastic game, 9 receptions, 163 yards for 18.1 average,
and a long of 55.
You saw him operating out of the slot quite a bit.
They did a lot of damage from there.
But when we were pressing there, basically just chucking it over our heads.
And Slava's doing a great job of placing that ball right where only USC could get it.
Then Iowa decided to back off a little bit.
They were tinkering a little bit with the base formation.
We saw Colbert get burnt a few times in coverage.
Having him being lined up with a receiver is not exactly the best way to cover those guys.
And we saw him getting burnt quite a bit.
I believe two specific plays.
One was a touchdown pass to the USC running back
that I can't pronounce his name, Malapayo,
I believe is how you say his name,
but who knows on that.
Then they put in Nick Neiman.
I thought Nick Neiman did a fantastic job,
did a much better job in coverage, which kind of sets him up, you know, for next season as well.
Had a really interesting season coming off of starting as a sophomore, not really starting
and then, you know, in the initial stages of this season and then coming on late and then having
obviously a redemption moment in the Holiday Bowl on Friday night and then getting that
interception at the end. you knew, you know,
the smart play there was probably to go down, run out the clock, call game.
But you knew he wanted that.
He just started bulldozing running.
He was not going down for anything.
To get that final touchdown was just kind of the explanation point
on a fantastic night for the Iowa Hawkeyes and that defense.
Again, made some good adjustments.
Held USC to just 24 points.
I think it would have been a different story if Slavis would have stayed in the game,
but I'm not complaining here.
The pressure was really good.
A.J. Pinesa did a great job in what probably is his last game as an Iowa Hawkeye.
Finished with four tackles, two and a half sacks, one and a half tackles for loss.
Christian Welch also
had a great game at the middle linebacker position, a guy who I think we're going to really
miss next season. You saw it in some of the games towards the later end of the season. Not having
there was kind of detrimental to the success of the defense. He finished with seven tackles and
a tackle and a half for a loss. And then obviously we get Chonson Golsan back.
He had a good game as well.
Three tackles, half a sack, and a tackle for a loss, and a pass defended.
So again, I thought the defense did well, all things considered,
but it definitely helped that Slavis was out and get a big win, 49-24.
The other big thing to note, Keith Duncan did fall short of the NCAA record. Didn't get much
opportunity to kick field goals in this game because the offense was really roaring. Would
have loved to see Duncan get that. I understand, obviously, you're not going to take up the
opportunity to get a field goal when you can get a touchdown. So unfortunate for him, but had a
great season at the kicker position. Consensus American, his name and his picture is going to go up on the wall in Iowa city,
which is going to be a really cool and neat moment for the former walk-on
who was on the bench for two years,
started first freshman season,
spent another three years kind of waiting or two years waiting before he
finally got the opportunity again.
And we get him back next year as well.
And that's really kind of a theme as well.
Outside of the guys who are going to be leaving, obviously, you have Nate Stanley gone.
You likely have Tristan Wirfs, AJ Epineza gone, potentially Geno Stone.
Oja Moody is gone, Christian Welch, some of the guys along the interior of the defensive
line.
But a lot of these skill players are going to be back.
And the players where losing spots. I
was in a fantastic job of, and I've been using the word fantastic, but it's just, you know, really a
great weekend. An awesome weekend in Iowa Hawkeye football, you know, fandom to be able to see kind
of what happened. So really excited and electric about, you know, that game. But we have a lot of
skill players returning and this team does have a lot of opportunity for next year and the coming years.
A lot of freshmen and sophomores stepping up and making some big-time plays in big-time moments,
and I'm really excited about the future of this program.
One other thing to note, though, I want to cover a couple other of the games.
I thought Penn State did a good job with Memphis in the Cotton Bowl.
Nice to see the Big Ten represent well there.
Iowa State really crapped the bed against Notre Dame. Nice to see the Big Ten represent well there. Iowa State
really crapped the bet against Notre Dame. Honestly, Notre Dame was just a better team. I didn't think
Notre Dame was that good, and I thought they played really well. Iowa State didn't play their best
either. I thought Brock Purdy missed a couple throws. Didn't do as well finding receivers
open as he could have. There's a couple times where he decided to throw it when he should have ran it
and ran it when he should have thrown it, but you know, I can, it's easy to play couch coach
here, but I didn't think there was the best performance by Iowa State in that game. Michigan
State took care of Wake Forest 27 to 21 in the new era pinstripe bowl. And the other bowl that I
thought was kind of garbage was the Clemson versus Ohio State game in the PlayStation Fiesta Bowl.
Ohio State started off hot, probably should have got some touchdowns
as opposed to field goals early in that game,
but they really got screwed bad on two momentum-changing plays.
Having the targeting call and taking out one of their top corners was huge.
It depends on how you look at it, right?
For me, I think the targeting penalty in general is just kind of garbage.
How do you assess that?
He wasn't aiming for the kid's head.
It was a football play, and he happened to make contact.
I think you've got to let that kid stay, especially in a big game like that.
You can't make that big of a decision right there.
And then how the hell was that a freaking catch?
Sorry, how was that not a catch?
Excuse me.
When he caught the ball, four steps, Jeffrey Okuda caused the fumble,
and they ruled it an incomplete pass.
That could have been a touchdown for Ohio State.
That, again, was another momentum-changing play.
Bummer to not see Ohio
State win that game. I thought Ohio State could have been and maybe still is the best team in the
country, but we're not going to be able to see them in the playoff finals, which is unfortunate.
It would have been nice to see the Big Ten represented there as well. I digress a little
bit. Coming up on the final segment of the show, we're going to be talking about some of the Iowa
Hawkeyes who could be going to the NFL or who could not be going to the NFL. So that'll be coming up on
segment number three after a few messages from our sponsors. All right, during that break,
I did realize I didn't cover the officiating in the Iowa game, which I also thought was
not very good.
They missed quite a few calls.
I thought they let USC kind of play through the whistle a little bit more
than they should have, specifically on Amir Smith-Marset,
getting a little chippy and grabby with him
and kind of honestly kicking him when he's on the ground.
I thought the Brady-Ross call where he blocked below the knees
was, again, just a weird interpretation of the rules.
How do you block anymore in college football?
And then finally, that Nico Regani being covered up thing.
I don't know what the hell they were seeing there.
It was nice, though, that Iowa was able to play through that.
Some of the questionable officiating.
I don't even know if USC actually had a penalty all day.
Let me quickly check the box score to see.
I honestly don't remember them getting called for any single penalties.
Okay, they had three, so that must have been later in the game.
But still, that game was just kind of a weirdly officiated game.
And college football in general has struggled with officiating.
I haven't been very impressed.
And I haven't been very impressed in the last couple of games Iowa's played in.
It's seemingly been going against Iowa.
So we'd love to see that get cleaned up as well.
Let's focus on some of the guys who could be leaving.
I'm seeing a lot of opinions being thrown out there on Twitter,
a lot of interesting opinions on where folks are rated.
I follow a lot of draft websites, right?
So I try to be as well-rounded as possible, do my own analysis,
but I also follow a lot of the experts.
And when I say experts, I don't mean Todd McShay or Mel Kuyper. Those guys don't do their own
scouting. A little bit difficult to really follow anything they're doing. They don't seem to be in
the know at this point. Now at this point, they're just personalities. So I try to follow some of the
guys who are more boots on the ground, more of the grinders now that you're going to typically
want to follow and worse and
epineza are often considered top 20 prospects i thought it was interesting that the announcers
on the game said epineza might slip into the back end of the first round i think that's not true i
think he's probably going top 15 i think worse also could go top 15 to kind of depending on
how we test and how the tackle position kind of falls, right?
Because if they start having to run on tackles early,
Werfs is going to be in that mix.
If teams hold off for some of the top wide receiver talent,
then we could see Werfs slip back a little bit.
And then Epineza is really going to be a fit.
Where does he fit at?
Most likely his best fit is a 3-4 defensive end.
He could play 4-3 defensive end as well.
He has the size to kind of mix and match,
but he is still, I think, 21, 22,
and weighs 280 pounds,
so it is going to be interesting to see
kind of where he fits at at that size and weight.
Has a lot of great power.
If he can test well and show some good speed,
I think that'll really help continue his rise
from his draft stock perspective.
And the other guy is Geno Stone. W'm wondering kind of where he could be going. Honestly, I see him being a fifth or
sixth rounder at this point. I think he does have great tape. He shows great instincts. It's going
to really come down to testing and defensive backs. Testing is one of the biggest things
and one of the most important things. And this is where I want to talk about a comparison that keeps coming up
when you cover Epinesa and Werfs.
People keep coming in my mentions saying,
well, Desmond Keene came back and he dropped to the fifth round.
Let's hold off there a little bit.
First off, corners and tackles and defensive ends do not play the same position.
They are graded very differently.
And I saw a couple guys say, well, you know, Epinesa's stats were down.
No, they really weren't.
He had a little bit slower of a start, but he's also getting double, triple-teamed.
He was getting chipped.
For defensive ends, a lot of it is going to be measurables
and what they've seen on tape.
If he is getting double and triple-teamed, that's going to be something they note.
But he also has 12 sacks in the year. That is not a number to scoff at by any means. And if he were
to come back, the drop that Desmond King experienced is not a drop that AJ Epinesa would experience.
And here's why. King would have dropped whether or not he went out as a junior or a senior.
All right, let's just get that very clear. He didn't just drop because his stats went down a senior year.
He dropped because he's a little bit slow.
He's a little bit undersized.
And while that has shown that it's not a big deal in the NFL because he's playing absolutely
fantastic, he is a little bit slow and a little bit undersized.
And the NFL evaluators do care about that.
And whether or not he would have came out his junior year or senior year,
he would have still been slow and undersized.
So, guys, I respect everyone's opinion.
I love interacting with you all on Twitter, but the Desmond King situation cannot be used to compare to what Epineza and Wirfs could do.
If they were to come back, I just don't see a big drop unless, you know, wow, their play just really falls off. That being said, how do you not go to the NFL? We saw what you did Hawkinson last year.
I don't think he wanted to go. I think if he had to go with his heart, he would have stayed
at Iowa, but you can't turn down top 15 money. Noah Fant got over 7 million guaranteed last year
at the pick number 20. Worfs and Epineza are in line to go a little bit higher than that
and get a little bit more guaranteed money.
So how do you turn that down?
The only thing I could see is that they take an insurance policy out
for an injury or something like that.
It does seem like Epineza loves Iowa.
He's a quiet guy.
Is that going to fit well with the NFL right now?
Is he ready from that perspective?
Who knows? Wirfs does seem like he wants to stay. And I guess if I had to pick out of those
three guys who would surprise me or who would surprise me the least, if they stayed, it might
be worse. Um, he got emotional talking about senior day, um, got emotional talking about just
being there for another year. So I think we could maybe see him stay, but man, those, especially
worse Neponeza, um, when you can make that kind of. But man, especially Werf's Nephinezza,
when you can make that kind of money, man,
you got to go.
But hopefully we'll find out soon
kind of what their plan is.
I know they're getting feedback from the NFL.
They're going to talk to Kirk.
Kirk's probably going to tell them the same thing.
It just kind of depends on what they feel.
But at the end of the day,
you got to take that guaranteed money.
I feel like Geno Stone wants to go.
He wants to go make money in the NFL, you've got to take that guaranteed money. I feel like Geno Stone wants to go.
He wants to go make money in the NFL.
He's close to Monty Hooker.
He saw Monty Hooker do it. But I do think it would help Stone to have another year at Iowa to elevate his draft
stock with a Big Ten defensive back-of-the-year type of performance.
The one thing people keep mentioning is they're very similar players.
I don't disagree.
The one thing people keep mentioning is they're very similar players.
I don't disagree.
From the impact perspective, Hooker played a lot more up in the slot role and playing that dime backer role.
Geno Stone is more of that traditional safety,
but does a great job of attacking the ball and coming downfield
to get running backs and whatnot.
But I do think he would benefit from another year at Iowa
to maybe elevate his draft stock from a fifth or
sixth rounder to maybe a third or fourth rounder continue working with Chris Doyle getting that
speed I'm getting that explosiveness that will help him in testing because as we saw with Desmond
King again you need to have you need to have those know those those measurables to be able to get
selected a little bit higher and as a safety especially safety just aren't they're just they
don't typically go as high in the NFL draft.
So you naturally just get pushed down just because of the position you are playing.
I do think one thing I want to cover before we wrap up the show is the fact that
whereas last year we saw Fant and Hawkinson go as tight ends in the first round,
Iowa probably wasn't expecting both to go at the beginning of the season.
We saw the tight end position be a little bit weaker this year.
I do think they expected both Epineza and Wirfs to be gone,
and they have been building through recruiting in both of those areas.
Last year, they brought a few defensive linemen in.
This year, for this recruiting class, they have a lot of defensive linemen coming in.
They've rotated a few guys over there as well,
and they brought in two top tackles in last year's class. They have a lot of defensive linemen coming in. They've rotated a few guys over there as well.
And they brought in two top tackles in last year's class.
Have a few good players coming into this year's class as well.
So I think they're trying to prepare as much as possible.
You can never truly replace a Tristan Wirfs or an A.J. Epinesa,
but more so than how they were able to with Hawkinson and Fant this year,
I think they at least have some relatively decent backup plans in place for the coming season.
We have a lot more to cover.
Like I said, I've been out for two weeks.
I want to talk about recruiting.
I know it's already kind of come and passed, but I want to talk about that.
That'll come up later in this week.
We're going to talk a little bit about the basketball team and kind of what they are doing.
And we're going to talk a little bit about just some of the other kind of end of year
type of wrap up stuff. doing. And we're going to talk a little bit about just some of the other kind of end of year type
of wrap up stuff. So that'll all be coming on the Lockdown Hawkeyes podcast on this week of episodes.
Again, appreciate you all being patient with me. Appreciate you all kind of waiting as I got back
on the mic and then, you know, a little bit longer of an episode, but again, had a lot to cover on
today's show. So thank you all Hawkeye Nation for tuning in. I hope you had a fantastic holidays.
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Have a fantastic Monday, Hawkeye Nation.
Go Hawks!