Bill Bleil

mkadl

Well-Known Member
Mar 17, 2006
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OLINE has been consistently bad. KO even made many mental errors when here was here. He didn't have a replacement and was too good to pull out of a game and just cuss him out. I refuse to believe that Tulsa had better athletes in their program than ISU. When the offensive linemen on a team, watch his own running back get tackled you are getting your arse kicked. That happened all night last night
 
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Bleil should be the first one out the door.

No, first Mess, then Bleil. Then the rest of the offensive staff. I'm not sure if anyone on defense needs to go? I like Wally and Shane, and I think Troy Douglas was an amazing hire.
 
Agree with most of sentiment in this thread. BB has not put a consistently good unit on the field since he has been here, despite having a few guys with NFL talent. We need change now on the O-line in order to really evaluate Mess.
 
I don't care who is first to go as long as they both are gone before next season. Neither Bleil or Messingham should be cashing Iowa State checks anymore.
 
I don't care who is first to go as long as they both are gone before next season. Neither Bleil or Messingham should be cashing Iowa State checks anymore.

i wonder how cpr will be about fires/hires. isu has never seemed as cut throat as big time programs (part of the reason we're not big time). seemed like danny mac would hang on to people because he liked them as people. wonder if cpr will be the same or if he'll pull the trigger. also wonder if it is coaching or talent. most of the recruits playing on the oline weren't heavily recruitied. plus burris was out, and dika was supposedly going to be starting before injury. tough to replace 2 starters, but that is why depth is important.
 
Well the defense was on the field way more than the offense was there is your answer. The offense scored ten ******* points yesterday ******* ten!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
OLINE has been consistently bad. . . . I refuse to believe that Tulsa had better athletes in their program than ISU. . . .

How many of us are in position to adequately evaluate whether a problem is coaching or kids? Barney Cotton was successful at Nebraska in his two tours there. In between he was highly criticized here for lackluster lines. Bill Bleil has been successful elsewhere. So, is it coaching or kids? If the bottom line for success in college football is recruiting, is it coaching or kids?

I don't know the answer to this question, but, to me anyway, it's important to ask it: What percentage of Tulsa's roster is from Oklahoma and Texas?

And, why is it so difficult to believe, in this day of limited scholarship numbers (85 at any one time) and greater parity in college football, that a lackluster Big 12 football program in the process of building toward better things, should not lose to Tulsa? Because of the name? Bosh.

Our OLine hasn't been good. IMHO, we need better athletes there. Doesn't do any good to scapegoat Bleil.
 
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How many of us are in position to adequately evaluate whether a problem is coaching or kids? Barney Cotton was successful at Nebraska in his two tours there. In between he was highly criticized here for lackluster lines. Bill Bleil has been successful elsewhere. So, is it coaching or kids? If the bottom line for success in college football is recruiting, is it coaching or kids?

I don't know the answer to this question, but, to me anyway, it's important to ask it: What percentage of Tulsa's roster is from Oklahoma and Texas?

And, why is it so difficult to believe, in this day of limited scholarship numbers (85 at any one time) and greater parity in college football, that a lackluster Big 12 football program in the process of building toward better things, should not lose to Tulsa? Because of the name? Bosh.

Our OLine hasn't been good. IMHO, we need better athletes there. Doesn't do any good to scapegoat Bleil.

The bottom line is he has been at ISU 4 years, inherited a pro O-lineman and another guy that got a shot at the NFL, yet even with them the team was very average at running the ball. I realize that it take time to build an OL, but so far I am pretty far from impressed. Tulsa kick ISU's butt last night, and although they are a good team, they are not a good defensive. They averaged giving up 30 points for the season and ISU got 10. I am sure that ISU rushed for way fewer yards than they gave up for the season too. Not a huge fan of Mess either, but with the kind of OL play that we saw all year it is amazing that the Clones won 6 games, no matter what offense was run.
 
I am in agreement with CyValley. Talk to anyone that has coached at the college level, and they will tell you that the two most difficult areas to recruited are the offensive and defensive lines. These are two positions that generally need a lot of development (both physically and technique-wise). Some guys never pan out. Others do. If recruiting line guys were easier, we (and most everyone else) wouldn't be recruiting so many of them. I personally have not seen anything that causes me to question that our OL guys are not been taught good technique. What I do see is a "bare cupboard" when it comes to available guards.
 
How many of us are in position to adequately evaluate whether a problem is coaching or kids? Barney Cotton was successful at Nebraska in his two tours there. In between he was highly criticized here for lackluster lines. Bill Bleil has been successful elsewhere. So, is it coaching or kids? If the bottom line for success in college football is recruiting, is it coaching or kids?

I don't know the answer to this question, but, to me anyway, it's important to ask it: What percentage of Tulsa's roster is from Oklahoma and Texas?

And, why is it so difficult to believe, in this day of limited scholarship numbers (85 at any one time) and greater parity in college football, that a lackluster Big 12 football program in the process of building toward better things, should not lose to Tulsa? Because of the name? Bosh.

Our OLine hasn't been good. IMHO, we need better athletes there. Doesn't do any good to scapegoat Bleil.

I don't know the in's and out's of ISU's offense but last I knew it was a zone blocking scheme up front. I started for 4 years in a zone blocking scheme at the D2 level. I know not same level of competition but the basics of zone blocking are the same. The main thing to me that sticks out about coaching vs. players is how often our guys are out of position from the point of contact. Whether it be some lined up heads up, going into your zone to the second level, picking up a slant or a stunt, or picking up an outside rush vs a blitz. What this tells me is that coaching is not preparing them for all the scenario's that will be thrown at them during a game. It appears to me that ISU's oline is having too think to much instead of reacting immediately to what comes in their zone, that falls back on lack of preparation and coaching. When you are out of position from the beginning it is very hard to allow slow developing plays like ISU's to be effective.

As stated earlier I don't know the in's and out's of ISU's offense but I would find it hard to believe that the oline graded out any higher than 60% as a unit yesterday and that falls back on coaching and preparation.
 
The bottom line is he has been at ISU 4 years, inherited a pro O-lineman and another guy that got a shot at the NFL. . . .

Need five guys without any one, two, or three playing at the "weak link" level. Maybe Bleil is an awful coach and should go, I don't know. But, Iowa State's problem has always been a shortage of top drawer athletes, players.

If someone has good teaching ability (which, I think, CPR said is his first priority in hiring), that, combined with experience, will result in fine coaching. It's football, not nuclear medicine. I don't think the problem is coaching, I think it's athletes, of which we've never had enough of previously. Nose to the grindstone. Keep on keeping on.
 
We need to go a different direction.

Bleil's OL's have not been even average in his 4 years at ISU.

The themes are pretty consistent from year to year:
  • The line seems to perform worse as the year goes on.
  • The players don't seem to get improve dramatically from fresh/soph years to junior/senior year
  • We can't pass block. Our QB's get the crap beaten out of them. Richardson might have been sick, but IMO the cumulative impact of all the hits wore him down.
  • We look confused any time a team blitzes.

Yesterdays game showed we have a long way to go in the trenches. IMO the OL &DL build off each other because they practice against each other. Rhoads needs to make the difficult decision and replace a friend.
 
I don't know the in's and out's of ISU's offense but last I knew it was a zone blocking scheme up front. I started for 4 years in a zone blocking scheme at the D2 level. . . . The main thing to me that sticks out about coaching vs. players is how often our guys are out of position from the point of contact. . . . What this tells me is that coaching is not preparing them for all the scenario's that will be thrown at them during a game. . . .

The voice of knowledge. I'm glad you "spoke" up. Your brief analysis gives me pause; maybe we do, then, have a coaching problem.

During the season CPR did say that some of our guards are better suited to tackle and will move there in this coming spring. Could it be the staff is covering up weaknesses now as best it can? Someone else in this thread (I think) mentioned guard play as a problem.
 
If your unit is still poor after 4 years, then there is something wrong in the coaching. We have the same discussions about the offense and the offensive line year after year.


I'm not a professional OL coach, but I don't have to be to know that what we do isn't working.
 
Well the defense was on the field way more than the offense was there is your answer. The offense scored ten ******* points yesterday ******* ten!!!!!!!!!!!!

And that came in the first quarter.

A larger question: Why did the offense look fairly competent on early drives in many games, then sputtered the rest of the way?
 

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