So close to being a solid team.

For whatever its worth, Ben Bruns on the post-game show said something about this was the hardest he has ever seen players work on the field ... ever. I give Rhoads much of the credit for that. Bruns takes it so seriously. Sometimes, he could hardly even talk in the postgame.
 
Well he's selling life insurance now, so if you wanna give him a job, I bet he would strongly consider it. Oh wait sarcasm. And I just always felt like posting that. Carry on. . .



Let's bring back Wane Morgan.He had success. We are Iowa State. We can't expect to go to the NCAA three consecutive years, so Morgan has to be given a pass for not bring able to do that.
 
For whatever its worth, Ben Bruns on the post-game show said something about this was the hardest he has ever seen players work on the field ... ever. I give Rhoads much of the credit for that. Bruns takes it so seriously. Sometimes, he could hardly even talk in the postgame.


This is so dumb.

So they weren't trying their hardest in our other games?
 
http://espn.go.com/college-football/team/_/id/251/texas-longhorns

3 wins over us,kansas and north texas. They lost to BYU 41-7. Not sure anything meaningful can be deduced from losing to them.


Really? They lost to UCLA by 3, should have beaten OU and played well with Baylor. Texas has a great D and our offense just shredded it. 3 of tx 4 losses are vs top 20 teams.....sound familiar?

as well as Brackens played he really blew that coverage badly on that last tx drive. Why in the world we weren't in a prevent for once is beyond me. Normally we just give a 10 yd cushion on normal plays now with game on line we are within 5yds of Los pressing.
 
Just finished watching a replay of the game. This is just a tough spot. Man, I want Rhoads to be the guy leading this program into the future. He's passionate, his players by all appearances love playing for him, and he wants to be in Ames for the long haul. And I'm seeing things on the field that suggest improvement. The team that took the field last night was unquestionably a better team than we saw stumble out of the blocks against NDSU.

But coaches are ultimately judged on wins, and those are just too few and far between right now. I think they're close to turning the corner, but you can only preach patience for so long. Bowl eligibility is pretty much out the window now barring a miraculous late season run, but as long as they keep getting better and playing hard for Rhoads I'm in the camp that thinks he gets one more year, with 2015 being the **** or get off the pot season.
 
Just finished watching a replay of the game. This is just a tough spot. Man, I want Rhoads to be the guy leading this program into the future. He's passionate, his players by all appearances love playing for him, and he wants to be in Ames for the long haul. And I'm seeing things on the field that suggest improvement. The team that took the field last night was unquestionably a better team than we saw stumble out of the blocks against NDSU.

But coaches are ultimately judged on wins, and those are just too few and far between right now. I think they're close to turning the corner, but you can only preach patience for so long. Bowl eligibility is pretty much out the window now barring a miraculous late season run, but as long as they keep getting better and playing hard for Rhoads I'm in the camp that thinks he gets one more year, with 2015 being the **** or get off the pot season.


He's back next year regardless of whether as they get better and play hard or not.
 
He's back next year regardless of whether as they get better and play hard or not.

Nothing's guaranteed. If the bottom totally falls out on this season and they don't win another game and the players start to tune out the staff, then it's time for a change. But I don't think either of those things are going to happen.
 
Last year we wouldn't have even been in this game. If you want to actually discuss the game, by all means please do. If you want to just point out that we lost and our record is poor, most of us have figured that out already.

What are you talking about? Texas was as good or better last year and we should have beaten them then too.
 
Just finished watching a replay of the game. This is just a tough spot. Man, I want Rhoads to be the guy leading this program into the future. He's passionate, his players by all appearances love playing for him, and he wants to be in Ames for the long haul. And I'm seeing things on the field that suggest improvement. The team that took the field last night was unquestionably a better team than we saw stumble out of the blocks against NDSU.

But coaches are ultimately judged on wins, and those are just too few and far between right now. I think they're close to turning the corner, but you can only preach patience for so long. Bowl eligibility is pretty much out the window now barring a miraculous late season run, but as long as they keep getting better and playing hard for Rhoads I'm in the camp that thinks he gets one more year, with 2015 being the **** or get off the pot season.

One objection. At a school like ISU, coaches are judged by fan interest not necessarily wins and losses. Jamie knows that our budget is still very tenuous. As long as people still turn out every week CPR will be here. If fan interest falls, Jamie will 'be forced to make a change.

While last night was ultimately a loss, it showed enough promise to keep people from giving up. If we finish strong I expect that ticket sales will once again be strong.
 
Moral victories are for losers.

No ****? Did you think that one up all by yourself?

Look Sherlock, nobody wins them at all, not even Alabama. All you can hope for is that your kids play to the best of their ability and don't make mental mistakes. That's how you grade their performance.
Did this team perform well last night? I thought so.
Did they make mistakes? Yep, but far less than they did earlier in the season.
Are they getting better each week? Unequivocally, yes.

Please take your anal retentiveness and shove it up your ***.
 
Just finished watching a replay of the game. This is just a tough spot. Man, I want Rhoads to be the guy leading this program into the future. He's passionate, his players by all appearances love playing for him, and he wants to be in Ames for the long haul. And I'm seeing things on the field that suggest improvement. The team that took the field last night was unquestionably a better team than we saw stumble out of the blocks against NDSU.

But coaches are ultimately judged on wins, and those are just too few and far between right now. I think they're close to turning the corner, but you can only preach patience for so long. Bowl eligibility is pretty much out the window now barring a miraculous late season run, but as long as they keep getting better and playing hard for Rhoads I'm in the camp that thinks he gets one more year, with 2015 being the **** or get off the pot season.

Another missed opportunity in conference, just like K State. Those are soul crushers. I don't question the effort, but something is missing that allows the guys to finish. That's one place where the Head Coach earns his money. Five more opportunities for CPR to prove the program is headed in the right direction.
 
A Hawkeye fan who hoped to sabotage our program...would be saying precisely the kinds of things the Rhoad's haters on here are saying.

A Hawkeye fan would ignore the obvious signs of progress we're seeing in this team, ignore the historical difficulty of winning at ISU as well as the extreme tougness of our schedule, and they would disregard the fact that Rhoad's has taken us to bowls in more than half his seasons (a big deal given where we were at when Chizik left). In doing so, he'd hope to untrack a program that is struggling mightily to make very incremental steps towards improvement in the face of strong institutional and historical headwinds...and he would proclaim that signs of improvement that occur during a loss is nothing more than "loser's mentality" and "acceptance of mediocrity".

The truth is, underneath the facade of our record, improvement IS occurring in talent, coaching and toughness. Its going to have ups and downs but the trendline is still positive. After next year, things may look different, but for now being negative does nothing but hurt the overall program.
 
Sorry, don't see how this team is close to being a "solid team". A solid team is one that wins at bare minimum 7 games but more in the 8-9 win range. We are close to being a mediocre team, one that wins 5-7 games - but we're not even there yet.

The offense has made some dramatic improvements the last several weeks, but this has coincided with a defense that has regressed over the last several weeks.

If we go 4-1 over the last 5 and make a bowl game, I'll come off my position that this is not a solid team (as we will have won 2 of 3 against OU, WV, and TCU which will be impressive). But unless that happens, sorry, this is not a solid team.
 
Sorry, don't see how this team is close to being a "solid team". A solid team is one that wins at bare minimum 7 games but more in the 8-9 win range. We are close to being a mediocre team, one that wins 5-7 games - but we're not even there yet.

The offense has made some dramatic improvements the last several weeks, but this has coincided with a defense that has regressed over the last several weeks.

If we go 4-1 over the last 5 and make a bowl game, I'll come off my position that this is not a solid team (as we will have won 2 of 3 against OU, WV, and TCU which will be impressive). But unless that happens, sorry, this is not a solid team.

Then Iowa State has never been a solid team and I certainly wonder what joy being an Iowa State fan brings you.
 
Then Iowa State has never been a solid team and I certainly wonder what joy being an Iowa State fan brings you.

I don't see what lying to yourself about the state of the football program has anything to do with what kind of joy Iowa State brings me.

If you want to lie to yourself, by all means. But at the same time I'm going to call a spade a spade. This is not close to a solid team.
 
I don't see what lying to yourself about the state of the football program has anything to do with what kind of joy Iowa State brings me.

If you want to lie to yourself, by all means. But at the same time I'm going to call a spade a spade. This is not close to a solid team.

He's not lying to himself, he simply understands the history of our program and the difficulty of the challenge we face. The honesty lies in understanding where we've come from and where we are, not setting an absurd bar for normalcy that no coach could ever attain here....at least, not yet. Building a foundation can look messy, and in our program its going to involve steps forward and backward, we have to have the fortitude to whether the tough years...again, that's not to say we sit back and accept 3-4 win seasons...but we have to understand that will happen on the road to where we want to be. Even 5 and 6 years into the building progress. We have to be smarter than most fans, because we have to be able to see deeper than just a win-loss chart...its about progress in terms of absolute quality of play on the field. And in absolute sense, that play on the field is improving...because our talent and coaching (which sets the parameters of our foundation) are getting better, albeit very slowly.

The lie that's being told here when someone claims the team isn't showing strong signs of improvement, because they can't see it reflected in the win column. That's a shallow understanding of the game of football. Ultimately, yes, any coach has to win games to show he's achieving something, and Rhoad's will be measured by the bar at the end of 2015 or 2016. Along the way, its necessary to look at ALL the measures of progress...not JUST that final tally of wins.
 
He's not lying to himself, he simply understands the history of our program and the difficulty of the challenge we face. The honesty lies in understanding where we've come from and where we are, not setting an absurd bar for normalcy that no coach could ever attain here....at least, not yet. Building a foundation can look messy, and in our program its going to involve steps forward and backward, we have to have the fortitude to whether the tough years...again, that's not to say we sit back and accept 3-4 win seasons...but we have to understand that will happen on the road to where we want to be. Even 5 and 6 years into the building progress. We have to be smarter than most fans, because we have to be able to see deeper than just a win-loss chart...its about progress in terms of absolute quality of play on the field. And in absolute sense, that play on the field is improving...because our talent and coaching (which sets the parameters of our foundation) are getting better, albeit very slowly.

The lie that's being told here when someone claims the team isn't showing strong signs of improvement, because they can't see it reflected in the win column. That's a shallow understanding of the game of football. Ultimately, yes, any coach has to win games to show he's achieving something, and Rhoad's will be measured by the bar at the end of 2015 or 2016. Along the way, its necessary to look at ALL the measures of progress...not JUST that final tally of wins.

Thanks you explained it well. I think people equate finding some positives with being OK with 2 and 3 win seasons and I'm not. I just can see nuance and more than the obvious.

Last night sucked in a lot of ways, but boy was I impressed (for the first time this year in a big way) with the offense. That was great.

The defense was not. But holy hell, the defense has over performed most of the year and it sucks they picked last night to be bad. I also know that the defense has kept the offense in the game more often than not over the last 6 years.
 

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