Locked On Hawkeyes - Daily Podcast On Iowa Hawkeyes Football & Basketball - Which Hawks got cut from their NFL teams this weekend | Choosing a team to root for with no B1G football | The best week 1 game in the Kirk Ferentz era

Episode Date: September 8, 2020

The NFL required teams to get their rosters down to 53 men and 16 PS members this weekend leaving a few former Hawkeyes without a job. Which guys were impacted and what does the future hold for the guys currently out of work? We break it down here before diving into which teams from the Big 12, ACC, SEC, and the Group of 5 conferences Iowa Hawkeye fans should adopt this season without any Iowa football. We wrap up with a new weekly segment where we create the perfect Iowa football season in the Kirk Ferentz era starting with week 1.Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors! Rock AutoAmazing selection. Reliably low prices. All the parts your car will ever need. Visit RockAuto.com and tell them Locked On sent you.ManscapedGo to Manscaped.com and use code LOCKED to get 20% Off and Free Shipping. Manscaped is #1 in men’s below the belt grooming and offers precision-engineered tools for your family jewels.Built BarBuilt Bar is a protein bar that tastes like a candy bar. Go to builtbar.com and use promo code “LOCKEDON,” and you’ll get $10 off your first order. 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 Hawkeye Nation, to another 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 Tuesday morning episode of the Lockdown Hawkeyes podcast. I hope you had a fantastic Labor Day weekend, and we're going to kick it off. We've been doing a lot of interviews lately, but today's going to be more content-focused, a little bit less on the interviews for today and for the rest of this week. On today's show, though, we're going to be doing a couple different segments. We're going to first break down some of the roster cuts that took place this weekend and how that impacted some of the Iowa Hawkeyes.

We're also going to be talking about the teams that you might want to root for. College football is back. The Big Ten isn't, but college football is, and that means there are teams playing. And although the Iowa Hawkeyes are not playing, there is a chance that there could be a team you might want to root for. So we're going to break down the teams that I think make the most sense to root for in the SEC, ACC, and the Big 12, and the Group of Five conferences. So stay tuned for that. And then finally, we're going to be doing kind of a segment going forward, you know, until potentially there is football in this fall. We're going to be going through what the best season in Iowa history would look like based off of all the games played under Kirk Ferentz. So we're going to be doing this week one, week two, week three, week four, all the way up to week 12, kind of putting together

what that perfect season would have looked like. And you'll get a little bit better picture of it, obviously on segment number 3. But I think the big thing is we're going to be basically revisiting some of those great games, some of those cool memories. For example, we're going to be talking about the time Iowa played Miami of Ohio, who ended up going 11-1 under Ben Roethlisberger and intercepted him four times.

We're going to talk about those two games that Iowa almost lost to Northern Iowa and to Northern Illinois, and the time they did lose to Northern Illinois. So we're going to be talking all about that on segment number three of the show as well. If you like the show, if you have listened to the show and you like it, please make sure to like, review, and subscribe. Give us that five-star review. Tell your friends about us. And make sure to make sure to like, review, and subscribe. Give us that five-star review. Tell us, tell your friends about us and make sure to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. But that being said, let's hop into it because roster cuts happened

on September 5th. That was the day the rosters had to get down to their 53-man roster. This year's a little bit different. Teams are allowed to have 16 players on the practice squad. So we're likely going to see a few of these players come back to the practice squad. But for now, this is what's happening. We know, at least for right now, who has made an active roster. And I will say, not a lot of surprises at this point about who made it and who didn't make it. But let me just run through who got cut and where people have signed after they did get cut. Rookies this year, Nate Stanley. Nate Stanley got cut. If you listened to our crossover episode

with the Lockdown Vikings, you knew that that was probably happening. They view him very much as a project, a guy who needs to get his accuracy in a better spot. And then Christian Welch, that's another guy if you listen to our Lockdown Ravens crossover, he also got cut but signed back with the practice squad as well. Both of those guys expected to get cut, or we expected them to get cut, and we also expected them to likely be brought back as well. So good things for both of those guys. The practice squad is a place to develop, and especially this year with everything going on, there's a great chance that you will get elevated from the practice squad to the active roster at some point during the season as injuries happen, as coronavirus happens, that kind of thing.

Other guys who were cut, Greg Maben, Jake Gervais, he was cut a little bit a couple weeks ago. Nate Weeding, Ross Reynolds was cut. We talked with Brian Peacock on the Lockdown 49ers podcast about Ross Reynolds and the fact that he felt like Ross was in a position to potentially start at the beginning of the season due to some other injuries. But because he got injured, it put the 49ers in a pretty tough spot. They did cut him. I expect them to sign him, re-sign him and put him on the injured reserve list since

he's not getting claimed. Cedric Lattimore got cut. Nick Easley got cut a little bit ago, a couple weeks ago, and right now has not made that practice squad yet for the Buffalo Bills. But from everything I'm hearing, the Bills do still really care about Nick Easley and do like Nick Easley. So we could see him maybe re-sign there in the future. We saw last season, he got cut, didn't get signed to the practice squad immediately. And then over the course of the season, did get brought back on. Parker Hesse also got cut. That was a few weeks ago.

And then Andrew Donnell got released with an injury settlement from the Indianapolis Colts. All the other players in the NFL that I did not list did make the roster. A couple interesting tidbits, though. Riley Reif, a guy who was kind of rumored to potentially be cut. We also talked to Luke Braun on the Locked On Vikings podcast about Riley, and he felt like Riley was in a position to start. I think once they made that trade for Yannick Ngagwe, they kind of needed to figure out what their cap situation looks like, and Riley Reif does have a high cap hit.

So they decided to restructure that, but there was a chance he was going to be cut there. He would have definitely been, his services would have been highly sought out. cut there. He would have definitely been, his services would have been highly sought out. CJ Beathard, he also made the roster, which is, I mean, I think on any other roster, CJ Beathard wouldn't have made the active roster, but the 49ers do typically carry three quarterbacks. Kyle Shanahan really liked CJ Beathard, but most teams in the NFL are carrying two quarterbacks, and CJ is definitely that third quarterback in that locker room. Casey Creeder is going to go in as the long snapper for the New York Giants, to be expected, but you just never know with long snappers kind of what's happening there. Geno Stone made the roster. We expected that. That was huge,

though, to see him actually officially make that. I think he has a really bright future, especially with the Ravens, a team that does a great job of developing safeties. I think that'll be really awesome to see him play there and hopefully get some playing time early. Josh Jackson made the Green Bay roster. That was no surprise, but he has struggled since joining the NFL. And we've seen other second round picks such as Sidney Jones get released. So there is kind of a merit for second-round corners not really sticking very long at this point if people aren't very happy with them. And I know Josh Jackson does have some room to grow in that Green Bay Packers locker room.

The biggest surprise, though, I would say is actually Matt Nelson. Matt Nelson made the roster for the Lions. Congratulations to him. A guy who played defensive tackle for the Iowa Hawkeyes, converted over to offensive tackle for the Detroit Lions, was on the practice squad last year. But to be able to make the active roster in your second season of really playing offensive tackle, that is a testament to his work ethic. That is a testament to his athleticism and obviously what they see mentally from him as well. He's clearly making those

jumps and we're going to try to get the host of Locked on Lions on the podcast as well to talk a little bit more about what that move means and why they decided to make that. Really interesting stuff there. Really excited that Matt Nelson was able to find a home and as these situations change, I'll make sure to cover that here on the show as well.

I do expect Jake Gervais to probably come back to the Rams soon. I expect Ross Reynolds to go back to the 49ers. I do expect Nick Easley to get assigned to a practice squad as well. Parker Hesse, not sure. I know Andrew Donald and Cedric Lattimore, technically they're considered veterans. And then the new rule with the practice squad is you can actually have some veterans on that practice squad. So that's, you know, nice for some of those guys. They might have a chance to maybe sign on to a practice squad for a team as well. But we'll obviously stay tuned. Right now there's, you know, the waivers happened.

Now they, you know, teams are looking at the free agency list and seeing what are some players that we might want to sign and trying to fill out that active roster and that practice squad. So lots of movement still expected to happen over the next couple days as we enter the first game of the NFL season on Thursday night. But that'll do it, though, for segment number one of our show. Before we jump into segment number two, where we're going to be talking about the teams that you should be rooting for since Iowa is not playing,

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your daily podcast covering your Iowa Hawkeyes. And one of the things that I've been kind of wondering and sitting on is, Iowa's not playing, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to watch college football. I'm going to be watching a ton of college football, and I'm going to be talking about it too. If you actually want to check out the Locked on College Football podcast, I'll be hosting that show with Josh Ward, host of the Locked On Volunteers every single Wednesday. I'll also be joining Ben Stevens on the Locked On Big Ten

Podcast every Wednesday as well. So you can find me there. But one of the things that kind of got me thinking was what are some teams that I should root for in the other conferences? Typically, I'm a Big Ten guy through and through, but this year I'll be watching all the conferences as much as I possibly can just to get some live sports, but this year I'll be watching all the conferences as much as I possibly can just to get some live sports, just to get some college football. Heck, I was watching SMU and Texas State this weekend, and I loved it. Just watching football was fantastic. Definitely a sloppy game, but it was fun to watch.

So I want to talk to you, though, about the teams that you could possibly root for in these other conferences because you look at these other conferences, and there's definitely teams that have some Iowa ties. There's teams that kind of fit that Iowa culture, and there's teams that definitely don't. Yeah, it's easy. You could easily go over and be like, I'm going to be an Alabama fan this year, or I'm going to be a Clemson fan this year. But that's not really the Iowa way to go find the very best team and root for them. That's easy. Let's find one of those teams that are a little bit under the radar that you might want to watch and follow this year since Iowa's not playing as of right now unless you listen to Sir Yacht, who is garbage at best

in terms of his takes. That being said, let's hop into the SEC. I think the big one here is obviously no Alabama and no Mississippi State. No one should root for Mississippi State, especially after how they were so disrespectful to Iowa during that bowl prep. Texas A&M is an interesting one. I like the Aggies offense. It's a pro-style offense. It would make a little more sense for Iowa fans to watch a pro-style offense since that's what we're used to seeing. And they

should be a top 15 team this year. But I just personally think Jimbo Fisher is kind of sketchy and kind of a sleazeball, to be completely honest. And then Missouri was another team that I also thought about as well. The fact that geographically, they're pretty close to us. They have similar colors. That could be a team that we'd be interested in rooting for. But I also find Missouri an interesting candidate to be a rival in the future or someone who

could have a really cool crossover game into the SEC with playing an inter-conference type game in the early parts of the season. I think Mizzou would be a great candidate for that given how geographically close they are to Iowa. So for that reason, I'm not choosing Mizzou. The team I chose though is University of South Carolina. And this is going to be a little bit odd here, but Iowa has only played South Carolina. And this is going to be a little bit, a little bit odd here, but Iowa has only played South Carolina once and they smoked them in the 2008 Outback Bowl 31 to 10. So you don't have that problem there. Typically University of South Carolina, they are not going to be your top five program. They are not also going to be a bottom dweller program typically. And Lou Holtz,

you know, he is often revered as, you know, of that team, similar to how Hayden Fry and Kirk Ferens are for Iowa. Lou Holtz was a former assistant at Iowa back in 1960, I believe, so a long, long time ago for one year. But for that reason, I'm going to be rooting for University of South Carolina this year in the SEC. Let me know your thoughts on that. I know I saw one person post they are going to be rooting for the Georgia Bulldogs. If you have a different team that you're going to be rooting for, let me know. But I'll be rooting for the University of South Carolina. In the ACC, this one got a little bit, I would say, easier to find teams that are qualified

for, in my opinion, qualify to be a team that Iowa fans should root for. The three teams I really thought kind of made sense was North Carolina State, Pitt, and Virginia Tech. And let's start with Virginia Tech. First of all, for years, they had a very similar vibe to Iowa under Frank Beamer. I thought he was a fantastic head coach at the Virginia Tech University. Just did a really great job. But overall, that program kind of lives and dies with defense. They have a very strong

culture there in Blacksburg. And I think it kind of reminds me a lot of the University of Iowa. Pitt itself, I thought this one was interesting. They're not typically a good team. But the city itself, I traveled to Pittsburgh for work quite a bit over the last year prior to coronavirus. And that city is very much, it reminded me so much of Iowa with a little bit more Hills, um, and a little bit more water kind of in, you know, obviously within the city, since it is, you know, they have a couple of rivers connecting there, but I thought pit the vibe of pit, the city itself made a lot of sense for Iowa fans to potentially like, and they're an enemy of Penn state. The enemy of our enemy is our friend. So that leaves pit, but NC state was the one that I really thought made a lot of sense,

and there's a lot of connections there. Dave Doran is the head coach at NC State. He went to Drake. He played at Drake, and he worked under former Hayden Frye assistants at the University of Wisconsin. Their record is relatively consistent with Iowa's. They're right in that 7-9 win range more often than not. They aren't top of the pack, but they typically will put together a good season here and there.

So I thought NC State made a ton of sense. So for now in the ACC, I'm rooting for the Wolf Pack. And then finally, we'll get to the group of five, but in the Big 12 out of the major conferences, the Big 12 was really interesting. There's people that are going to say, I hate Iowa State. And there's some people that are going to say, I'm in the state of Iowa, so I root for all things Iowa. If you do hate Iowa State, totally fine. Listen to the rest of this.

We'll give you some options. Texas Christian University, TCU, Max Dugan is a former Iowa prep player. He is the quarterback at TCU, so you could root for TCU. Solid program all around. I have nothing bad to say about TCU. And then Oklahoma, you could also make an argument for Oklahoma considering they have ties to the Bob Stoops era. Or sorry, excuse

me, Iowa has ties to the Bob Stoops era with Bob Stoops being an assistant under Hayden Fry. And he built that program up at Oklahoma. Also Bruce Kittle, I think coached there a little bit as well. So there's some options there, but the team I'm picking is going to be Kansas State. And there's a lot of reasons for this. Similar to that tie at Oklahoma that you have with Bob Stoops, at Kansas State you have that Iowa tie with Bill Snyder. And that's a team that's going to be battling in the middle of the pack against the TCUs and Baylors of the world and the Iowa States.

Last year they were 8-5. Again, not the top, not the bottom. They're expected to finish in that 7-9, I would say 7-8 win range this year. Excuse me, I know that the schedules are a little bit different, so probably more like that six to seven win range this year. And their head coach, this is the part that I really thought was interesting. Chris Kleeman, he played at Northern Iowa. He's from Waterloo, Iowa. He's coached at Loras and Northern Iowa. So those Iowa connections are really strong in Kansas State. And there's several players in Iowa that are committed to K-State, most notably Jake Ruby at Valley High School,

who did transfer in from Colorado. But nevertheless, there are still Iowa players you could watch that are going to be committing to K-State, a team that we don't typically play either. So it takes a little bit of the edge off of that. And then out of the group of five, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at this. And I really thought the Buffalo Bulls made the most sense for a couple of reasons. Buffalo is the new Iowa. If you follow the NFL,

you know, the Buffalo Bills love Iowa Hawkeye players. Now the city of Buffalo, we can root for their college team as well in the group of five and their quarter, they're sorry, their head coach, Lance Leopold, was a quarterback at Wisconsin Whitewater. He's got that Midwest kind of vibe going for him. So if you're looking for some teams, I would recommend University of South Carolina in the SEC, NC State in the ACC, Kansas State in the Big 12, and the Buffalo Bulls in the group of five. But that'll do it for segment number two of the Lockdown Hawkeyes podcast. Coming up on segment number three, we're going to be breaking down that brand new segment,

the best season in Iowa history, starting with week one and kind of the games that have happened in week one. So stay tuned for that after a few messages from our sponsors. Welcome back to the third and final segment of the Lockdown Hawkeyes podcast. As I said earlier, we're going to be talking about the greatest season in Iowa history. And basically, it's going to be a little bit fictional, but also based in reality. So, over the last 21 seasons, we're going to basically take the first game, the second game, the third game,

or the third week, I should say, and pick the best ones out of all 21 seasons as Kirk Ferentz has been the head coach of the Iowa football team. We're going to take that and build the perfect season for the Iowa football team. And as we do that, we're going to do a bit of a recap of some of those different weeks that have happened. Obviously, there's some different trends that you'll see kind of pop up over the course of that. For example, we're going to be talking about week one. And in week one, in Kirk Ferentz's history as the Iowa football head coach, he is currently out of 21 games, 18 and three. And in the last 19 games, he is 18 and one. So he started off his tenure by playing Nebraska, number five, Nebraska back in 1999. And believe me, as you probably know, Nebraska fans

like to remind you of the 90s and how great they were, and they did kick our butt when Iowa was pretty down. They beat us 42-7. The following year, Iowa took on Kansas State, lost 27-7 at Kansas State. Since then, though, they basically went on a nice little winning streak, putting together 18 wins in their next 19 games, with their only loss, unfortunately, coming to Northern Illinois in 2013 when they lost 30-27. But basically, as I said, we're going to talk about some of the big games here and some of the trends that we're seeing. Out of those 21 games, Iowa typically does schedule a relatively cupcake opponent.

Obviously, the two games they scheduled in the very beginning of their tenure, of Kirk Ferentz's tenure, those were both power five schools. Since then, though, Iowa has mainly played or only played lower group of five schools or even FCS opponents such as Tennessee Tech, Eastern Illinois, Maine, Montana. So they've played a lot of teams that you know aren't really going to give you much of a battle per se they've also played out of all those teams they have played miami of ohio the most or sorry the second most with three games they played northern illinois four times northern iowa twice and akron twice

and both those times against akron were in the Joshua Cribb days, which I thought was pretty interesting to kind of go back and relive that past. Out of these games, though, when I'm looking at what the best game is, I'm looking for, you know, when I'm looking for it to start off the season, you want to play a team that is going to have high expectations. And honestly, it's a little bit tough to find that, given the fact that there aren't a lot of good teams in this kind of in this 21 game span that Iowa has beat the three that I've looked at the most were the win over Wyoming in 2017 that Wyoming team I believe went eight and five the win over Northern Illinois in 2018 when they went

133 to seven that Northern Illinois team actually was pretty solid as well. But the win I'm going to actually focus on today, I think this one is the easiest one to really pick here. But that was the win over Miami of Ohio back when Ben Roethlisberger was playing for Miami of Ohio. And in that time, actually, the Miami of Ohio Redhawks had a pretty darn good team. You wouldn't know it by how Iowa kicked the crap out of them that year and route to a 10 and three record and winning the Outback Bowl. But Iowa did do some work against Miami of Ohio. So coming into that game again, Iowa was not ranked going into that game. Not a, you know, not a ton of expectations necessarily, but they played Miami of Ohio, a Mac opponent, before taking on Buffalo the following week. But in that game specifically, Iowa went off defensively,

intercepting Ben Roethlisberger four times in that game. He threw 42 passes, only completed 27, which is actually decent for a 64.3 completion percentage. But again, four interceptions really kind of did that team in and in that season he only threw 10 interceptions so he only you know he threw literally 40 percent of his interceptions against Iowa in that game but that that Miami of Ohio team went on to have a very good year that season as I said they were led by Ben Roethlisberger the only loss was to Iowa they finished 10th in the final AP poll 13 13-1, obviously won the MAAC, and they won the GMAC Bowl over Louisville. So in my opinion, that is easily the best win Iowa had

in week one of their history under Kirk Ferens. So I wanted to make sure we talked about that a little bit. As I said, we're going to talk through week two, week three, week four, as we go on, giving you some random tidbits. But in that game, I want to quickly touch on the fact that Fred Russell had a ball that day, 22 attempts, 167 yards, a 7.6 average and one touchdown. This is back in the Nathan Chandler era, which wasn't exactly the most memorable era in that game. He only threw 19 passes for 129 yards and two touchdowns. So again, not really lighting up the scoreboard. Seven of those 12 completions, though, went to Maurice Brown for 78 yards. The other three players to get a catch that day, Aaron Mickens, Raymond Ochoa, and Eric Jensen. So not exactly big names that you're typically familiar with from an Iowa Hawkeye football perspective.

On defense, as I said, they did a pretty good job of shutting down Ben Roethlisberger, specifically Javon Johnson. He actually came on the show. If you haven't listened to that episode, check it out. It was a couple months back, but it was really great talking to him in that game. He had two interceptions and had 20 yards returning.

Sean Considine had one and Chris Smith had one as well. And actually Javon talked about, you know, intercepting Ben Roethlisberger and then actually going to play with Ben Roethlisberger in Pittsburgh. He thought it was funny. And actually, Jovan talked about intercepting Ben Roethlisberger and then actually going to play with Ben Roethlisberger in Pittsburgh. He thought it was funny. Ben really didn't remember him, but Jovan obviously remembered Ben pretty well

given the fact that they did intercept two passes. So, in my opinion, beating Miami of Ohio, a team that finished the year ranked 10th in the nation, beating them 21-3, that is easily the best win in week one for Iowa football history under the Kirk Ferens tenure. Next week, we'll be going through week two and obviously going through

week three, week four, week five, and we'll do a recap at the end of the season, unless the Big Ten switches courses and gives us an actual season to watch this fall. But until then, we're going to be doing a blast in the past and recapping and kind of talking through the best weeks and building that perfect season from an Iowa football perspective. So stay tuned for future episodes of that. And that will actually bring us to the conclusion of the show today.

I appreciate you all tuning in. Always appreciate, you know, the love and the support. If you did like this show, please make sure to like, review, and subscribe. Give us that five-star review. Let the people know what you love about the show. Tell a friend about it as well. And just a reminder that we are on every single day. So if you're looking for Iowa content, we got it daily.

We'll be here every single day of the week. Obviously, we missed yesterday because it was a holiday. But for the most part, we're here every single day. And again, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram as well. We like to post some content there. We post some of our video interviews there as well. So if you like seeing that, you can do that as well. We like to post some content there. We post some of our video interviews there as well. So if you like seeing that, you can do that as well and watch those on our Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter accounts.

Again, thank you all for tuning in. I hope you all had a fantastic and safe weekend. Have a great Tuesday, Hawkeye Nation. Go Hawks! We'll see you next time.