Locked On Hawkeyes - Daily Podcast On Iowa Hawkeyes Football & Basketball - Tyrone Tracy ready for a big year, Tory Taylor wants to average how many yards, and Charlie Jones still learning punt returns

Episode Date: April 14, 2021

Four Iowa football players spoke to the media yesterday. We break down what they said and what we learned on today's episode from Tyrone Tracy Jr, Tory Taylor, Max Cooper, and Charlie Jones.Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!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 Locked On Hawkeyes Podcast, your daily podcast covering your Iowa Hawkeyes on the Locked On Sports Network. As always, I am your host, Andrew Wade, excited to be back for another show today. And we actually have quite a busy week compared to what we were probably anticipating. We are getting a lot of press time with Iowa football players. We also get some press time with Fran McCaffrey.

We have three assistant coaches that we're going to be listening to and hearing from on tomorrow's show. We also have Fran McCaffrey we're going to be hearing from on tomorrow's show as well. On today's show, we had an opportunity to hear from Tori Taylor, Charlie Jones, Max Cooper, and Tyrone Tracy Jr., so we're going to be breaking down what we heard from them. If we have any time, we'll finally wrap up our spring positional preview, but I have a feeling we will not. We also got a new mock draft from Dane Brugler of the

athletic and definitely some interesting things there as well so we'll try to get to that too before we're getting any of that I know we haven't talked about any of the other programs in the Iowa Hawkeye athletic community you know baseball softball tennis etc we will be doing that going forward just haven't had an opportunity to focus on that as much, but I want to make sure we're giving you full, well-rounded coverage of every athletic team in the Iowa Hawkeye community, so we're going to be doing that as well. And just a reminder that the Elevate program, hosted by Frank Garza, and you can sign up to our at sportshood.net.

That is coming up very, very quickly. For $125, you get three one and a half hour sessions with frank going through elevate level one when you get through that you can go on to elevate level two which is the following week and that's coming up very very soon i believe next week and go to sportshood.net to check that out i want to tell you all about this because it is so near and dear to my heart i had the opportunity to sit through Elevate Level 1 with Frank, and it was huge for my growth professionally and personally. I'm not going to be an NBA basketball player like Luka Garza,

but what I can do professionally and personally, the Elevate program really helped elevate, for lack of a better term, my performance in both those areas and the mental side of things. And you can utilize it in any way, shape, or form you see fit. A lot of it is figuring out how to see what you're not seeing and how to open your mind to things you're not currently opening your mind to and how to basically create the change you want to see, right? You need to be that change.

How can you mentally get to a point where you can do that? You can go to Elevate and figure that out with level one and then get onto level two. I believe there's seven levels total, so lots of learning opportunities there. And I highly recommend that right now. Again, $125 for the three one and a half hour sessions for level one at Elevate.

Go to sportshood.net. Now, that being said, sorry, I want to get into the show. We heard from Tori Taylor, Charlie Jones, Max Cooper, and Tyrone Tracy Jr. Honestly, Tyrone Tracy is just a phenomenal listen to. Did a really great job of being incredibly open. I thought all the guys did as well. But let's get into what Tori Taylor said first. What I thought was really interesting, as well. But let's get into what Torrey Taylor said first. What I thought was really interesting, my big takeaway from Torrey is, and we've heard about this a lot, is the fact that he really doesn't know American football very well.

He is still so young and still, from a football perspective, learning so much. One of the things he said that I thought was really interesting, though, was that he was very happy with being all Big Ten, but he didn't reach any of his statistical goals. That took me by surprise a bit because he had some of the best punting statistics we've seen in quite a long time in Iowa Hawkeye history. And good enough statistics to make him a Ray Guy Award nominee. So to me, I would love to see him reach his statistical goals. He mentioned being able to average 45 yards.

Now, averaging 45 yards is not everything, right? You've got to worry about your hang time. You've got to be able to worry about directional punting. But still, 45 yards is very solid. And what we saw from Torrey this past year is that he's able to control that hang time a bit. But one of the things he's been working on quite a bit, they asked him about this, going into this offseason, what are you trying to improve on? And he said his spiral punting.

Now, for those of you who are not super familiar with punting, spiral punting is really a traditional way of punting that we've seen a lot of American punters use post-college NFL type of punting and the reason why you want to do that is the ball travels faster and farther he was only able to hit one last season but it can be a bit different because that's not necessarily how he learned but being able to add that to his arsenal can make it even more difficult for punt returners to be able to field his ball if they're not sure how the ball is going to be coming to him where it's going to be hit from that kind of thing so that was really interesting to me again the fact that he has such high goals for himself and

he hasn't hit those he also mentioned that he learned that the ball doesn't travel as far in colder weather definitely a good learning experience That was one of the reasons why Michael Sleep Dalton wanted to come to Iowa. He wanted to punt in bad weather. He wanted to show NFL scouts that he could do that because in Arizona State, you don't get that opportunity nearly as much. He got a question about whether or not he was comfortable throwing the ball. or not he was comfortable throwing the ball. And he basically said, I don't want to give too much away. But he feels more comfortable throwing the ball than what he used to. So that'll be interesting to see how they could utilize Torrey in fake punt situations.

This past season, you know, his freshman year, a lot of his punting opportunities, it's very clear he was going to punt the ball. There was really no ifs, ands, or buts. You can't really, with a guy who's never played American football, do a lot of his punting opportunities, it was very clear he was going to punt the ball. There was really no ifs, ands, or buts. You can't really, with a guy who's never played American football, do a lot of fake things when you just really want him to kick the ball as far as he possibly can and just ride with it. So being in year two, what kind of new things, what kind of new wrinkles can they install in the game? Now that being said, what I think is interesting about that is

when you typically use fake punts, it is to flip momentum. It's to flip the script. It's to get that first down and keep the offense on the field. I would argue that Torrey Taylor does a pretty good job of changing momentum just with his punts. We saw several times Palmer Turner's not being able to field his ball and creating fumble opportunities for our special teams unit to collect those fumbles and actually give us even better field position so to me that's really interesting to see what they ultimately decide to do in that front because of how good of a job he does with changing momentum just by punting the ball which is something you don't typically see from punters

he also said he's really excited to see the fans he's not not really nervous but also told the reporter to ask him on that day but he's really excited to be punting he's not not really nervous but also told the reporter to ask him on that day but he's really excited to be punting in front of fans he noted that you know a lot of fans don't like seeing the punter come on the field but what I don't think he realizes is that Iowa fans are a bit unique and a bit different and we love our good special teams and we love even more big time special teams plays so that will be a lot of fun he also mentioned he talked a little bit about the two situations where he really kind of screwed up a bit because he didn't know American football running on the field to celebrate and that Wisconsin game you know trying to kick

the ball off the ground he meant he basically said I never try to put the team in a bad situation he said with the Charlie touchdown he was just so excited Charlie's one of his best friends and his housemates and he was just so excited for him scoring that touchdown he just couldn't contain himself um until he got you know yelled out to come back so uh overall just a funny funny guy to listen to you just um it's refreshing to hear a guy who just is playing the game and enjoying every moment that comes at him and you know doesn't doesn't exactly realize all that he's doing and how impressive it is. I think that makes it even more impressive that he's able to do that

without really completely understanding all the things that he is doing and what his impact is on the game. But Torrey Taylor, fun to talk to. I don't know if it's something down in the water, down under, but love to hear from him. Love talking to Michael Sleep Dalton. We've had Michael Sleep Dalton on the program a couple times, and he's always a fantastic talk to.

Always very open and very willing to share with us, so always loved that. Hopefully we can get Torrey on the call someday as well, talking to him about punting and his journey to here, to America as well, to kick at Iowa. So all that being said, coming up on segment number two, we'll get into Charlie Jones and Max Cooper and then wrap it up with Tyrone Tracy Jr.

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Now, we also heard from three wide receivers, Charlie Jones, Max Cooper, and Tyrone Tracy Jr. Charlie Jones and Max Cooper didn't give a ton of information. I thought they were very PC in their answers, didn't really divulge too many details. Charlie got a lot of questions, though, about other people, which I thought was really interesting. Did get asked about the difference between catching punts from Torrey Taylor and other punters. And he said it is great practice getting Torrey Taylor punts. Nobody is punting as high or as far as him, so it's really quality reps. And they asked about, you know,

is there a lot of difference between the directional punting? And Charlie basically said wherever he wants to put it, he's putting it. So basically putting to rest any questions about how well Torrey can directionally punt. One of the things that actually I thought was the most interesting was when Charlie said last year was the first time he had really done any punt returns so each week he was just building confident and going into the season needing to consistently build upon that confidence and that he's now also been working as a kick returner for a guy who hadn't been returning punts before

what he did last year was pretty darn impressive and he had some pretty big balls for having not returned punts he was catching some punts and guys were right on top of him so he even mentioned that being able to field those punts with confidence I thought he did a great job so if that was him not playing as confident as he thinks he can be I'm interested to see what Charlie Jones as a confident punt returner could be like considering he was all Big Ten last year. They also asked a couple questions about the difference between the MAAC and the Big Ten. Really the only thing he said that was different was the fact that week to week you're going up against a good school and a good team so there's really no letdown at any point which I

thought was you know makes sense but nothing too revolutionary there in his his talk there. The last thing is he did mention the fact that Keegan and Arlen specifically have been doing a great job in practice. He did mention the second and third year guys are also doing well, but to call out Keegan and Arlen by name means they truly are performing well in practice. And you'll hear Max and Tyrone also said very complimentary things about Keegan and Arlen. Again, the Charlie thing, the biggest takeaway here is that he's getting some great reps from Torrey, being a housemate, being a good friend. And he wasn't very confident in punt returning because he hadn't really done it until this year.

So I'm really excited to see what he can do. Sounds like he's also going to have a pretty big role in the Iowa offensive attack, not just the special teams attack. So I'm excited to see what Charlie Jones can do as a slot receiver. Again, I made this quote, or I basically made this take on the wide receiver spring positional preview, but I think Charlie Jones could catch 50 balls this season if Spencer Petras' accuracy is as good as Tyrone Tracy says it is. Now moving on to Max Cooper.

Max is an interesting guy. Returns for a sixth year because he had that ability to do so with the new rules in place this past year with COVID. He's had quite a few injuries. He even mentioned it. An ACL tear, another meniscus tear, and a pulled hamstring in quarantine last year that never really healed. He's been dealing with a lot. Now when you look at that wide receiver room, I talked a little bit about Max Cooper and the fact that he got playing time early. They've seen him on the field, and Iowa does like to rotate four, five, six guys on the field at that wide receiver position. We've also

had injuries in the past. Brandon Smith didn't play a full season two years ago. Amir Smith-Marset wouldn't have played a full season this past year had Iowa had their last two games. He also got suspended for a game. So I'm not expecting anyone to necessarily get suspended, but injuries happen. You're going to see a lot of guys get playing time. And Iowa does like guys who have that experience, who have that wherewithal within that offense and understand the offense perfectly. Max Cooper, a guy who got playing time as a freshman, has him battling injuries. He would be a fantastic story to see him get some playing time this year

and come away with a few more catches than he has had in the past. He said as far as why he came back, though, he said with all the injuries that he's had in the past, it's a bit easier to come back. And he brings a lot of experience to the room. He's the most experienced wide receiver in the room. Outside of him is Tyrone Tracy and Nico Reganey. I mean, those guys have been in the program for a bit now,

but Max Cooper has been there for quite some time and is able to be really a mentor and a leader for a lot of guys. And he did mention two guys who have a great chance of being contributing members of the offense is Arlen and Keegan. And the fact that they're learning the offense quicker than him. And Max was able to get on the field as a freshman so as we all know you could be the most athletic explosive player on the Iowa team but if you don't know the offense if you don't know the defense if you don't know the playbook if you're not doing some of the right things especially as a wide receiver like blocking you're not going to get on the field and so the

fact that he feels like they're learning the offense very quickly and he has that relative knowledge of how quickly he learned it and he was able to get on the field. Now granted the wide receiver depth at those times is definitely different, but that's really exciting to see, really exciting to see some of those younger guys step up. Arlen and Keegan, as we've kind of talked about before on the show, they have a good opportunity to get some playing time this year. But really what I'm excited about is how they fit

into this offense in two to three years. They could be very explosive athletes. And the more they can push those guys, the better this wide receiver group is going to be for Iowa. We also got a couple of questions about the weight room sessions um and the difference between you know coach brainwave and uh you know doyle he just mentioned that you know the basically the main thing is you're still trying to get better every single day and he thought he thought ray has really stepped it up and done a phenomenal job um he said he has a really good relationship with everyone on the team and that when he gets on you it's just constructive criticism and that he's very well respected amongst the team now this question has been asked to several players now that they've had a full offseason under ray

as opposed to doyle and everyone kind of does a pretty good job of answering it in a very PC way but one of the things i've noticed the most that keeps coming out of everyone's mouth is how ray is a people person i would say a players coach is what you'd probably want to call that. He is relatable to players. He can talk to the players. He understands the players. And he doesn't just immediately get mad at them or immediately yell at them or get on them.

He understands how to work with them to get the right results. So a little bit different of an approach, it sounds like. And we're going to hear that from Tyrone Tracy as well. So coming up on segment number three, we're going to get into what Tyrone Tracy talked about and what we learned from that conversation. You know I have some more things I got to tell you about, especially BetOnline.ag because BetOnline.ag is the fastest and the easiest way to bet on all of your sports action. Football might be over and so is college basketball, but the NBA and the NHL are in full swing.

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Odyssey is your audio home for all the sports, podcasts, music, and news that matter to you. That's A-U-D-A-C-Y. Now, the last person we heard from yesterday was Tyrone Tracy Jr., and Tyrone's expected to have a big time role in this offense. I actually mentioned him as a guy who I'm really excited to watch because what we saw from Tyrone when Brandon Smith went down was truly exciting. Now, his performance dipped quite a bit this past year, but I would argue that has nothing to do with Tyrone

and everything to do with the quarterback position. And he actually even talked about that a little bit. Again, what I mentioned coming into the show, Tyrone very open about what he kind of goes through, what his thoughts are, and I loved his willingness to discuss that. As a redshirt freshman in 2019, he caught 36 balls for 589 yards,

averaged 16.4 yards per catch, and had three touchdowns, six rushing attempts for 39 yards. Now, in a shorter season, he had 14 catches for 154 yards and 11 yard per catch average. Even if you double that, right? So he played 14 games. He still only caught 28 catches, 28 balls for 300 yards. A significant reduction in his production.

And when he talked a bit about that he mentioned about how difficult it was initially for him to be able to handle that he said last year to do a lot of self-talk after coming off that semi-good season but his year didn't go the way he wanted to what he realized that at the end of the day you just have to think about what you're doing to make the team better and that if you're blocking 100 times a game and that's what you've got to do to make the team better, then you have to do it. And he said that Coach Cope basically told him that he needs to lead the group

and that everything else will come to him when he does that. And I think that would be tough. For a guy who essentially had a breakout season as a redshirt freshman, you expect to improve your role in that offense going into your sophomore year as we all kind of did and unfortunately due to lackluster quarterback play and an inconsistent offense he wasn't able to do that we saw everyone's production slip last year while playing with Spencer Petras now the good thing about that is he did mention the growth of Spencer he said Spencer wasn't super accurate last year now he is putting balls on the money.

He has more respect and is acting like he knows what he is doing. He is leading the whole offense, not just the quarterbacks and the wide receivers. So that's exciting. That's exciting for the offense. That's exciting for Tyrone. We've heard that consistently from every player coming out of spring camp. Now, whether or not we see that correspond to his on-field play, I think will be very interesting. We did not get a chance to see Spencer play in the spring last year. So we didn't, we don't have anything to compare it to, right? We don't have anyone saying, yeah, Spencer's struggling, but he's working on it, right? We just have nothing to compare it to at this point. But the hype coming into last season was pretty significant. I thought people

were pretty excited about Spencer coming out of the Iowa football program. They were very excited about Spencer. But to me, what we saw in the fall seems like that's what people had been seeing for quite a while with Spencer was the lack of accuracy based on the fact that they're willing to talk about it like it is just the norm. Now, Nate Stanley had problems with accuracy as well, but what we saw fromencer was significantly worse um this past season a lot of receivers getting very frustrated it sounds like tyrone was frustrated sounds like you know we saw a mirror specifically be very frustrated as well so that to me is very interesting that tyrone is very openly able to share that and talk about that but again the fact that spencer is doing better was huge in his opinion and he's excited to see what he can do this upcoming year he also mentioned you know he's

he doesn't really care about the personal stats or the personal awards again he said the first main thing is being a great leader on the team and on the offense but you know his goal is to do better than 13 catches in 100 yards and he said hopefully he can get that in one game and I have no doubt in my mind with Tyrone Tracy's yak ability, he can definitely get over 100 yards in the game. Whether or not there's enough balls to be spread around to get him 13 catches will definitely be interesting, but he has some amazing yak ability. That's evident by the fact that he averaged 16.4 yards per catch as a redshirt freshman.

He is going to be the leader of this offense, and that's one of the reasons why I'm not as concerned about the fact that we lose Amir Smith-Marset and a Brandon Smith those are two big-time losses but what you're doing to replace them is you're bringing a guy like Tyrone Tracy Jr. with the ball in his hands can be just absolutely dynamic maybe not as pure of straight line speed as Amir Smith-Marset but truly a great ball in his hands type of guy with great yak ability he also mentioned that he still needs to get better at blocking and contested catches. We don't have a guy like that currently on the offense as far as we are aware for contested catches and having him be able to go up and grab some balls will be really good for helping Spencer's confidence and also improving that

relationship between the two. He also got asked the question a lot about what has been the difference between the coaching styles of Ray and Chris Doyle. And he said, Raymond is more calm. He doesn't yell a lot. He understands that he doesn't have to yell to get his point across. He lets the leaders on the team take action. He has the team hold each other accountable and help each other. And each one teach one or each one reach one is really the main phrase that he mentioned. And that nothing really has changed in the weight room, but he is taking it definitely a different approach. And I think, again, that goes back to, and I don't want to keep getting into the Doyle thing, but these questions keep coming up and I think it is important to talk about

the differences between the two. It seems like Doyle was more of a yeller, a yell first, ask questions never. And Ray is more of a ask questions first, second, third, figure out what's going on and make sure you understand what is going on. So I actually equate it to, do you ever have those two parents, one is a yeller, one is a, you know, I'm a disappointed in you kind of guy?

The one you want to piss off the least is the one who is disappointed in you, right? At a certain point, if you yell all the time, it loses your effectiveness when yelling. But a guy who was disappointed in you or a mom or dad who was disappointed in you, that actually hurts more, in my opinion. That has always hurt more. And so that to me is very interesting. It seems like that's really what they're kind of getting at. Doyle seemed like a guy who was going to yell at you if you did anything wrong, not trying to understand your point of view. Whereas Raymond

is going to listen to you, but also give you that stern talking to have like, here's what I don't like. And then also rely on, rely on the development program that Iowa has in place. Iowa has some phenomenal leaders. They have a great leadership culture built in place with their team. And these guys come in there, they, they've recruited them for a specific reason. They recruited them because they know they can play that position. And because they know they can become leaders in there. They've recruited them for a specific reason. They've recruited them because they know they can play that position and because they know they can become leaders in Iowa. You have to trust those guys to be able to make the other guys do a better job when the coaches aren't looking. And I think that has been really evident by what the players have said so far about Coach Ray. So that does it. We're able to, again, listen to four players. We got three coaches coming up tomorrow

and Fran McCaffrey. So really excited about listening to them and giving you the thoughts on that. We have that mock draft from Dane that I want to touch on as well. We need to wrap up our spring positional preview. So that's all coming up on a couple episodes of the show this week. Again, thank you all for tuning in. Apologies for getting this out a bit later again. But as always, if you love the content, if you love the show,

if you love listening to me talk about Iowa Hawkeye athletics please make sure to follow us wherever you get this podcast app and follow us on Facebook Twitter and Instagram thank you so much for tuning in have a fantastic Wednesday and let's go Hawks