Locked On Hawkeyes - Daily Podcast On Iowa Hawkeyes Football & Basketball - Reactions to Iowa's win over Purdue | Has Iowa corrected it's offensive issues? | What was going on in the secondary?

Episode Date: October 21, 2019

Iowa won but did they do enough to calm Hawkeye nations worries? Is the offensive line still a problem or did Brian Ferentz do a better job of scheming around it and what was going on with the secondary? All of our thoughts and reactions from Saturday's game right here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 am one of your hosts, Andrew Wade, and I'm joined here today by my co-host, Zach Cohen. Zach, we haven't been on the mic together in a little bit, so it's nice to have you back. Nice to be on the same show together and nice to be talking after an Iowa win, man. It's been a rough couple weeks. How you doing, buddy? I'm doing good. I'm doing good. We kind of did our own little flying solo act for a little, so it's nice to be, you know, being able to do this with another actual human person, but it's been good. Like you said, wild week in the big 10 but uh at least iowa was able to pull a win out but uh yeah happy to be here absolutely man i think people don't realize sometimes it can be kind of tough just talking to yourself for 25 minutes um yeah

oh yeah a little a little bit easier to to bounce off of each other um we're gonna talk like you said we're gonna talk about the big 10 i think let's cover that maybe first um then we're gonna cover the iowa football game um for the last part of the show and talk kind of our thoughts about it what you know what went right what went wrong that kind of stuff on today's episode of the locked on hawkeyes podcast before we do that though make sure to follow us on twitter instagram and facebook and also make sure to like review and subscribe wherever you downloaded this podcast at whether that is google podcast Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or the brand-new Himalaya Podcast app.

All right, man. We talked about this before the show. We're just going to talk about the Iowa game, but you did mention the Big Ten, and it got me thinking. I did want to cover a few of those things. So if you're cool with it, man, let's talk first about the Wisconsin-Illinois game. Yeah.

What the hell happened? Honestly, we had three TVs up up we were not watching that game we did not realize it was going to be a close game until we looked at the score like oh my gosh illinois just picked the ball off and they're about to kick a field goal um this is huge yeah that game was uh crazy um obviously for an iowa fan or anyone of the big 10 west uh wisconsin has been there at the top right now. And kind of hoping to get any type of luck we can, because obviously they're playing Ohio State and then they play us. So kind of hoping, or kind of was not assuming,

but the Ohio State was going to beat them in that, obviously for Iowa to control their destiny, they have to beat Wisconsin. So that kind of being the two, each team having two losses and us having to head to head tire breaker but this kind of throws a wrench in everything if there could be a possibly a way that Wisconsin loses three games this year it can make it easier on us so that's just something that's also going to help Iowa not that I feel like Iowa should lean on like a crutch or anything because

it was Wisconsin they're a very good team So that Ohio State game could be very interesting. But this does help us, give us a little tiny cushion, if any. Yeah, man, it definitely gives us a little bit more margin for error. But I think regardless, the road to the Big Ten championship game kind of went through Madison and Iowa still has to go to Madison to win because if Iowa has three losses, two losses, and they lose to Wisconsin, no matter what, they're still having the three losses. I think this does make it really interesting for Minnesota though. You know, they just, they're coming off a big win over Rutgers. Rutgers sucks, but you know,

it happens. But their schedule is pretty freaking easy. They got Maryland and they got Northwestern, but they also have Penn state, Iowa and Wisconsin. So it'll be interesting to see how it all plays out around the, you know, around the rest of the two they had nothing too crazy at least from where I saw anything that you wanted to bring up um no nothing too out of the ordinary I mean I guess the biggest game I'll talk about the Iowa game and uh if people obviously are listening they came to the right spot so um I'm ready for it to kind of dive into that game. You can see each other's takes.

Obviously, we won 26 to 20. Kind of a late stand. They kind of had a little charge in the end to kind of make it interesting. But ultimately, they kicked an outside kick, and they were able to not recover it. Iowa recovered it and re-ran the clock down. So my question to you is, we won the game. Obviously, I know that. They're on there were no worse defense though against the freaking you know nation yeah iowa couldn't do much no couldn't do much with that thank god we have keith duncan he can make a freaking field

but holy hell man what are your thoughts um they looked like a dumpster fire i mean i'm very hard on iowa um i i mean it's kind of tell like it is to the average fan who looks at the game score. They see that we won, you know. But, I mean, watching the game, you shouldn't give up 20 points ever to Purdue. I mean, our defense looked like shit, especially the cornerbacks. The fact that David Bell had almost 200 yards receiving on 13 catches and a touchdown is embarrassing. I don't care if we win.

I don't care if we win by 100. I don't care what the situation is. That is embarrassing. I don't care if we win. I don't care if we win by 100. I don't care what the situation is. That is terrible. You can't be in a situation where you're there. He's the one guy the whole game they've been targeting in David Bell. And you still cannot make the simple adjustments to get him. You can't double cover him. You can't put him in a zone. You can't do anything. And he was tearing us apart. It was embarrassing. I'm happy. Luckily, we're on ESPN too, because probably no one is watching the game, but that game looked terrible. Nate Stanley didn't look terrible, but he also had an interception,

didn't have any touchdown. So just like he's always been, he's a game manager, Stanley. He doesn't do enough to F it up, but he also doesn't do enough to have a spectacular performance. So in the offensive line, actually like perfect against Purdue. So I don't want to, there's no Stanley guys out there. Not perfect, but it looked good enough. In the game, he wasn't making good plays. I saw him scramble, but I just think that, I mean, like I said,

Purdue, this game and the next week at Northwestern is kind of our practice, get everything right game for Wisconsin and Camp Randall. And based off this game, we're going to get blown out by Wisconsin. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I think there's a definitely an opportunity for Iowa to turn it around. I want to touch on two things. I, you know, the, the interception by Nate Stanley wasn't his fault. I mean, he threw it behind Tyler Goodson, but Goodson does need to come down with that catch. And we've seen it now back to back weeks, you know, we're I'm a big fan of Goodson. You're a big fan of Goodson, but those, you know, those routes over the middle, he hasn't been able

to haul them in. He hasn't been as good of a pass catcher on those routes over the middle as I would like to see. And that, I mean, that interception, you can't really put it all on Stanley. I thought, you know, the offensive line played okay. But I think a lot of it, you know, people want to give, you know, a lot of cuts, you know, get mad at Brian Ferencz. And I do agree that there's still some issues with what he's doing. But a lot of his play calling was designed to minimize the impact of produce defensive line against iowa's offensive line and think of it kind of like when you know on the reverse of that when teams play aj epinesa they try to get the ball out quick they try to do stuff like that to you know run away from him

that kind of thing and they were really doing that i felt like throughout the game is um really trying to hide their their weakness in the interior offensive line at least that that's how i portrayed it i mean you're right we didn't the offensive line. At least that's how I portrayed it. I mean, you're right. The offensive line didn't play poorly. But again, Purdue's defensive line isn't exactly good. They're also missing Lorenzo Neal, who's one of their star defensive players on that line. So not exactly the best look for Iowa. I completely agree.

I want to dive into that a little bit more, maybe touch on the defense too. You know, you talked about the corners and how ridiculous it was that David Bell had has such a good game i want to touch on that after a few messages from our sponsors all right man um before we you know got away from the break we were talking a little bit about the defense talking about the offense and just in general i think both of you and i did not really like watching that game um it kind of pissed me off throughout. Let's talk about the secondary, though, because you mentioned that David Bell had 197 yards, 13 receptions, and a touchdown. And I think what pisses me off the most about this is not that it was David Bell. David Bell's a great player.

He's a four-star recruit. Iowa wanted him. He ended up going to Purdue, an Indiana kid. But every year, man, there's one freaking guy every year. I don't know what Purdue is doing and how they're game planning so effectively that Phil Parker can't, you know, figure something out. But this happened last year to a Terry, right? He had 160 yards and three touchdown. Terry, right.

It was a fourth, you know, number four wide receiver for Purdue. At least David Bell's pretty good, but that just really pissed me off, man. I mean, like it's, it's just, it's pretty good but uh that just really pissed me off man i mean like it's it's just it's not good it's not reassuring for iowa the fact that it's like think about when you're like playing in like an nba or any type of basketball situation you know when there's a guy going off and he's made you know three three pointers right he's like he's on a 10-0 run by himself you scheme around maybe doubling him or kind of contesting him a little more. Or bracketing him over the top.

Yeah, getting the ball out of his hands. And the fact that Iowa has seen the whole game him going to Bell, Bell, Bell. If you look at the game, it wasn't even like that Jack Plummer was making a ton of reads even. It was kind of like a two, maybe three-read system, including the running back or something like a check down. even it was kind of like a two maybe three read system including the running back or something like a check down but bell was mostly the receiver and the fact that they weren't reading him they weren't kind of scheming schematically towards him like you said

putting a safety over the top of him bracketing him or something like that where at least if he catches the ball you know he's only getting seven or eight yards you're not letting him get the big ball or deep ball or anything or not having an explosive play if they own 30 plus yards plays. But yeah, dude, it's just, I mean, I know that our biggest game is going to be Wisconsin, right? And they don't necessarily have a big receiver. They're more of a running base team, but guess what? Who we play that no one's talking about.

It's going to be a tough game that everyone's sleeping on just because they left to is the Minnesota game. Minnesota is a solid team. They're undefeated. And guess what? They have very good receivers. And I could see this happening all over again to Iowa and shit. I could see 200-yard receivers because they have Ty Johnson and they also have Bateman who are very good receivers.

And if this is any indication on how our corners are going to play against some big-time receivers, I'm not very happy at all. And I just think that we are going to play a team big time receivers. I'm not very happy at all. And I just think that, you know, we are going to play a team that throws the ball out like in Minnesota. So we need to figure this out. Yeah. I mean, so as far as the secondary piece, I do agree that it was really disappointing to watch David Bell go off. I mean, I'm looking at the very first drive of the second half. It was a run, a pass, the running back, a pass, David Bell, a pass the running back a pass david bell a pass david bell a pass david bell um a pass to another guy passing their guy then another pass david bell um that's that why

can't we do something on that but the biggest thing though i will say um purdue for some reason has iowa's number and they understand how to scheme around phil's phil parker's defense whereas you know we just saw i Iowa have a fantastic defensive showing against Michigan and Penn State. I would argue that Penn State's offense is one of the best in the Big Ten. I would argue that Michigan's wide receiver group is the best in the Big Ten, maybe next to Minnesota's. So I will say I don't feel as worried about Iowa playing Minnesota

or Iowa playing anything that wants to throw the ball. For some reason, it just seems like Purdue has Iowa's number. It's just kind of year in and year out. Jeff Brom understands how to scheme people open. What I was mostly disappointed by was the fact that Phil Parker is unable to make adjustments quickly against that because it is a reoccurring theme. And it took until the second half to finally say,

screw this, we're taking Matt Hankins out or putting Riley Moss in. And Riley Moss at least made a couple plays. He still allowed David Bell to have a pretty good game as well, but at least he made a couple plays. Yeah, he could add two picks. I know the last one was kind of tough, but... He's got to come down with that, man.

Yeah, he could add two picks, but at the end of the day, what does two picks matter when the guy almost has 200 yards on you? I'd rather you have no interceptions and limit the guy under a hundred yards. Like that doesn't mean much to me. Yeah. I mean, I'm looking at it right now though. And let's say, so after the, okay, so after the first half, Iowa had, yeah, I mean, they did a pretty good job of stopping David Bell in the second half.

They had the 54 yard pass late-yard pass late in the game. That was a big play, obviously. But outside of that, they did a pretty good job of limiting David Bell in the game. Yeah, I mean, they only allowed five catches, six catches. I mean, that's still a lot. But five or six catches for a decent amount of yardage in the second half. I thought Riley Moss did a little bit better against him than matt hankins did but it worries me coming into the you know this next game what are we gonna do at corner is hankins gone now

is moss playing also the 425 made a comeback that was great to see um but we didn't see dj johnson at the the nickel corner spot we saw dane belton um yeah but what in the hell is going on with this iowa secondary man i don't know what's going on I don't know if they're kind of mixing pieces together to see what's up or but um I mean our our rushing defense obviously we only held them to 33 yards rushing but it's the same story uh we can't score our rush defense is top five in the country but then the quarterback goes over 300 yards and two touchdowns you know so it's like I wish we were kind of more evened out among all of these uh teams and everything like that whether it's the run defense pass defense and things like that because i feel like right now our rush defense is great which i'm

really happy about considering we are gonna have to play minnesota who does run the ball a lot and wisconsin who runs the ball a ton obviously so um i don't know i mean this this still is i'm not sitting too happy about it with this one, with the future, you know? Yeah. Um, I do have some thoughts on the rush defense, but I want to cover that. Um, I, you know, segment number three, before we jump to that though, erectile dysfunction used to be tough to tackle, but now there's Roman complete an online visit today to connect with a doctor and take care of it. Just go to get roman.com slash locked to get a free online visit and free

two day shipping. All right, man. Yeah. You, you were talking before we cut out for a quick break. You're talking and said, basically, you know, this wasn't a game that made you very happy. And I do agree, dude, I'm a little bit upset. It kind of felt like a sour taste in my mouth, right? Like cool. We got the win, but we could have done so much more. Purdue's really banged up. They're without their star player, Rondell Moore.

They're without their starting quarterback. They're just missing a lot of guys on this team. And Iowa could only beat them 26-20. And honestly, I thought Iowa was going to blow it. I thought there was an opportunity there for Iowa to really screw things up late in the game. Unfortunately, they recovered the onside kick and close out the game. But I thought there there's a lot of opportunity there for Purdue to actually

come back even late in that game. One thing I do want to make sure that I am mentioning, I think it's important that, you know, we got to win. Let's be happy. Iowa fans, we got to win. There are a lot of issues that need to be corrected. We still are not seeing those issues get corrected, but let's also not have, you know, let's, let's, let's remember the fact the last two weeks, Iowa played two of the tougher teams in the big 10 Penn state's offense was fantastic. And I would did a good job of stopping

that. Michigan's offense has the potential and I would do a good job of stopping that. And like you said, coming up, we have some good offenses. We're going to be playing against Wisconsin. I'd be interested to watch, you know to go back and watch the game of Wisconsin and Illinois and see what happened. They did a pretty good job of kind of limiting the effectiveness of Jonathan Taylor. He had – I think he averaged like four and a half yards per carry. He had 138 yards.

Jack Cohn had to throw the ball a lot, though. Seemed like he did well, but I'd like to go back and look at the tape to see if there's a blueprint there for beating Wisconsin in the future when Iowa plays him in a couple weeks. Yeah, I mean, I was actually mentioned this to my buddy. It's actually perfect though, because if you want to see how to beat Wisconsin, it's just happened, which is nice. Cause kind of going into a game undefeated leaves you not a whole lot of tape

to be looking at, to see how effectively to stop them. I mean, your best case is what the team that limits them to closest and still loses, which isn't great, but it can help. But having a loss to Illinois, who stinks, flat out stinks. I think that they can be pretty decent. Obviously, their schedule is tough, but I think that, you know, there's no way you should be going into Champaign and losing like that. So I think that if I'm Iowa, I am studying this tape for two weeks.

Screw Northwestern. I'm looking at this tape for two weeks. Screw Northwestern. I'm looking at this tape for probably two weeks straight to figure out what they did, what they schemed up, how they played Cohen. Because obviously the pick at the end of the game, perfect positioning. Shout out to the coordinator for Illinois because obviously Jonathan Taylor, you're not gonna be able to stop him completely, but he held him under 150 yards, which is solid for any team. I don't think a lot of teams have been able to do that so like i said i think this is the perfect uh kind of test prep for iowa you know i agree i i do want to caution against looking ahead to wisconsin though because we got northwestern up and northwestern just like purdue has typically

had iowa's number i know i know northwestern has looked like crap the whole season their offense is absolutely terrible. But that's exactly the kind of game Iowa loses, man. Like, you know, going to Northwestern or going to Evanston and playing Northwestern, that is not going to be an easy game for Iowa. And, you know, Northwestern usually out Iowa's Iowa. So, I mean, it's going to be a really interesting matchup. Yeah, I agree. But, you know, I'm looking at it as if we're going to – gonna i can almost guarantee we're gonna beat them i know that um you are right

they're like purdue where they can just kind of scheme on us but um i mean this year man they just look terrible even purdue obviously not having ron delmore and cindylar like to be completely honest with you i think if purdue has cindylar and ron delmore i think they beat us and if they have neil doubt and the defensive line and that really worries me because we beat a team by six who's two and five without three of their best players that's embarrassing I think that is embarrassing like I know it's a win but I'm a hard I'm a hard I'm gonna be a hard-ass Iowa fan and um kind of speak to what it is I'm happy we won but man you have to realize there's a lot more tougher guys coming up so we need a lot of things to alter and fix but um i think that this northwestern game i think this game is going to dictate the wisconsin game because if we can go out against northwestern if we can limit them to

under 17 points or whatever that might be or whatever our 13 points and we can score more than three touchdowns i need stanley to have two or three touchdowns i need two touchdowns on the running game we have too many good running backs not to be getting the end zone more and our defense needs to hanker down on the defensive side because northwestern doesn't really have any receivers this year i mean they have some decent intermediate route guys but there's no one going deep and obviously they kind of strive

themselves on the read option and running the ball and things like that. So that's perfect against Iowa's defense. So dude, I'm telling you right now, we need to blow out Northwestern or at least beat them by. Obviously I think we need to beat them by at least like 17 points or something like that, because I guarantee you Wisconsin is going to be pissed off and angry and

we need to be going into camp Randall feeling good. Yeah, I don't disagree. I will say this. I think the rushing attack is not it's not on our running backs our interior offensive line is just absolute garbage man i mean there's not much we can do when they're not getting a push and it's same thing last year i mean our running backs we had the same running backs outside of tyler goodson last year and still

could run the ball and that's because our interior offensive line again sucked um hopefully we can get kyler shot back uh get some improvement over there and get there, and hopefully maybe just the fact they've been playing together for a couple weeks now. They've been a lot of switching on that offensive line. Hopefully that can help them get more in congruence with each other. Yeah, just to interrupt quick, a stat I heard during the game is that I think Iowa's used four different right guards or something. So just to kind of build off your point,

I don't think we've ever had the same offensive line for like, like two weeks straight. Yeah. I mean, it's been, it's been a whirlwind. And I think that's one thing people need to realize is that this offensive line has been changing quite a lot. And, and thankfully we've been able to, you know, survive for the most part outside of the two games. But there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of issues that come with that.

And the biggest one is the fact that this offensive line hasn't played together. And we also have no, our second and third string guys in there. So if you're an Iowa fan, you're pissed off about the offensive line, especially because I was supposed to be a team that has a great offensive line, but at the same time, hopefully we can continue to make improvements. And I think we saw it this week with Brian Ference's play calling that he was at least scheming away from the weakness of our offense, which is that interior offensive line.

I mean, quickly, let's just mention before we get out of here, the fact that Brandon Smith had a great game. I think it kind of shows that if Iowa can grow some stones, at least Brian Ferentz can air it out more. I mean, Brandon Smith's a pretty big guy. I think majority of the time you go deep to him or Marseille, you're either going to get a big play or probably you're going to get interference or some type of holding call or something, probably around like what,

60 to 65% of the time, I'd say. I think that they need to be using these guys more down the field. Iowa wanted to be more of a passing oriented team this year. It's looking like, obviously, I know this week they ran it more, but it looked like the beginning of the year, they may airing it out more. And if you're airing it out more, you need to stop doing these seven yard slants, these five yard hitches. They don't have time though, man. You know what I mean? But, but, but, you know, but, so what I'm saying is that once we have time based on the line,

which we've just talked about, we have more opportunities to go deep and you cannot beat a team without taking shots deep and at least forcing them to make a play. I guarantee you. That's why we lose so many close games. And that's part of a product of the offensive line. But you watch any team in college football, watch any team Penn State waxed Michigan in the first half. You know why? Because they went deep. All the touchdowns were deep balls and they forced their wide receiver and cornerback to make a play. It was mano a mano. And that's what kind of things we need to be able to do.

But in order to do that, we need more time. And also Brandon Smith looks incredible. We need to throw more at Brandon Smith, man, because he looks like a human mismatch. Yeah. Brandon Smith is fantastic.

I will say that. I mean, they tried that against Michigan and Nate Stanley through multiple interceptions. Yeah. It's I mean, it's, I agree with what you're saying.

We need to take some more shots deep, but there's a lot. I guess it's on Stanley and the line, right? I guess then it kind of boils down to, which is the important part. Yeah, I mean, he needs more time, and he also needs to understand kind of the coverages that are going to be blanketing that. There's going to be a safety over top.

You probably need to not throw it over top right into the safety. So, I don't know. There's a lot of things, and I think we have a lot more to talk about. We'll cover a lot of that on the shows later this week. Oh, yeah. For our Monday morning episode of the Locked on Hawkeyes podcast. Hawkeye Nation, make sure to follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and like, review, and subscribe wherever you've downloaded this podcast at.

We hope you have a fantastic day. We did get the W, and that's all that actually matters at the end of the day. We'll be talking more about this game and more about the upcoming game against Northwestern here on the show this week. Have a fantastic day, Haw'll be talking more about this game and more about the upcoming game against Northwestern here on the show this week. Have a fantastic day, Hawkeye Nation, and go Hawks. Go Hawks.