Can we lay off Hunter Dekkers.

[TopCy]

Our offense was bad this year. It might be Dekkers' fault, or it might be a combination of a lot of things. But I think it's hard to blame our failures on not making drives in the last 5 minutes of the game when we couldn't complete drives in the first 55 minutes.
When Brock Purdy was leading game-winning drives, it was to score the fourth touchdown of the game, not the first. That seems like a whole different thing to me.

 

[Aduhbolu15]

He still tossed 14 INTs

Andrew luck threw a lot of ints his whole nfl career because he had a bad oline most of the time. He was considered a generational talent at qb. Not all ints are created equal. Bad oline isn’t good for qbs. He got a good line once he was banged up and it was too late. Why he retired.

 

[ISUTex]

I am not against Dekkers. But I judge a QB by his ability to lead the team to victory in the 4th Q of a close game. Don't hold me to accuracy, but other than Baylor, OU and TCU, I believe ISU had the ball with a chance to win or tie in the 4th Q in five different games, and we lost them all under Dekkers (KU, KSU, UT, OSU, TTU). All of them. That is horrible. Not a single comeback win.

And Brock holds a ton of records, but in my memory, he was also terrible under late game pressure.

Dekkers can improve from experience, but I am frankly tired of ISU QB's choking under pressure. I am fine if someone can beat him out.

To be fair, against KU, KSU, UT, and OSU our WR's dropped TD passes or 4th down passes with very little time left that could've won the games for us. #8 had 3 of them. And we missed big FG's against all of those teams didn't we? It was a team effort.

 

[swiacy]

Dekkers has the talent but I wonder about his FB IQ under pressure. No doubt for a young first time starter he was dealt a pretty bad hand. But after a full season the rookie mistakes excuse isn't quite as valid. It seemed like he takes too long on his progressions and should throw the ball out of bounds instead of taking the sack or trying to be a hero and throwing in to tight coverage for the interception. He was doing this at the end of end of the season just as much as he did in the start of the season. If he can clean that up, I think he has the ability.

 

[PSYclone22]

Dekkers was plenty clutch.

End of game scenarios where Dekkers made winning plays:

KU - Hutchinson drop and Hutchinson not falling forward for a first down.

KSU - Dekkers lays the ball in Hutchinson's lap to set up game winning field goal, drop

UT - Dekkers lays the ball in Hutchinson's hands, drop

OSU - Dekkers couldn't have thrown a better ball to Noel to win that game at the end. Drop.


Those were not superhuman catches. They were easy ones to make. Quite frankly, by the end of the season I don't blame Dekkers if he had a bad attitude, that is 4 more wins this team should have had.

Just to be absolutely clear though, he showed some good clutch play in situations that we were often in because he had done so little effectively in the game before that.

KU - could not find the end zone, got sacked 5 times (we can have discussions about the line's impact on sacks but it is very much on the QB)

KSU - we had 9 points

UT - he played great

OSU - 3 INTs

 

[CoKane]

Andrew luck threw a lot of ints his whole nfl career because he had a bad oline most of the time. He was considered a generational talent at qb. Not all ints are created equal. Bad oline isn’t good for qbs. He got a good line once he was banged up and it was too late. Why he retired.

The difference was that Luck threw TD passes too. Multiple seasons of 30s or 40s. Dekkers went 19-14. Not good enough if you're gonna throw that many

 

[intrepid27]

This is a question for employment lawyers. I don't think we can lay off Dekkers unless he is a formal employee. If we did, he'd be eligible for unemployment insurance.

Heard a Mike leach quote a few weeks ago. His take was that if college players want to get paid they should be able to be traded or cut like NFL players. Sadly, this makes a little sense to me.

 

[BCClone]

Just to be absolutely clear though, he showed some good clutch play in situations that we were often in because he had done so little effectively in the game before that.

KU - could not find the end zone, got sacked 5 times (we can have discussions about the line's impact on sacks but it is very much on the QB)

KSU - we had 9 points

UT - he played great

OSU - 3 INTs

I heard the Texas game on the radio so I never saw the game. That one I throw out since we kept driving and then a fumble by someone when we were in FG range to at least send it into OT turned the ball over.

 

[cmjh10]

He is a lefty, that’s his problem

 

[heitclone]

Dekkers has talent but his struggles are like the rest of the offense, its the little things that come from player development. He doesn't seem to have a lot of natural QB instincts (putting touch/heat on the ball, throwing the ball away from the defender), he is still an athlete playing QB. The offensive staff changes should center around his development and putting him in better situations to be successful.

 

[PSYclone22]

He needs to spend a lot of time this offseason working on pocket presence and footwork. Hea shown he can throw a ball and run, but when the pressure is on he doesn't read the rush well. He doesn't do well to find lanes to throw from and ultimately this leads to a high volume of errant throws from him.

If he can clean up his pocket presence and footwork then the sacks, completion percentage, and INT rate will all improve.

 

[Aduhbolu15]

The difference was that Luck threw TD passes too. Multiple seasons of 30s or 40s. Dekkers went 19-14. Not good enough if you're gonna throw that many

That’s the difference between generational and a qb who has the talent and can put up those td numbers if he puts it all together.

 

[Iluvteak]

I am not against Dekkers. But I judge a QB by his ability to lead the team to victory in the 4th Q of a close game. Don't hold me to accuracy, but other than Baylor, OU and TCU, I believe ISU had the ball with a chance to win or tie in the 4th Q in five different games, and we lost them all under Dekkers (KU, KSU, UT, OSU, TTU). All of them. That is horrible. Not a single comeback win.

And Brock holds a ton of records, but in my memory, he was also terrible under late game pressure.

Dekkers can improve from experience, but I am frankly tired of ISU QB's choking under pressure. I am fine if someone can beat him out.

Remember passes were dropped in the final drive in at least 2 games. Game deciders ! X Hutch had one and I think Shaw ?

 

[Clonefan94]

I am not against Dekkers. But I judge a QB by his ability to lead the team to victory in the 4th Q of a close game. Don't hold me to accuracy, but other than Baylor, OU and TCU, I believe ISU had the ball with a chance to win or tie in the 4th Q in five different games, and we lost them all under Dekkers (KU, KSU, UT, OSU, TTU). All of them. That is horrible. Not a single comeback win.

And Brock holds a ton of records, but in my memory, he was also terrible under late game pressure.

Dekkers can improve from experience, but I am frankly tired of ISU QB's choking under pressure. I am fine if someone can beat him out.

This coaching staff is so bad at clock management, I’m not sure I would pin the issue on any of our QBs. How many times did we have to call a timeout after a time out because we weren’t ready? We wasted clock, then called a timeout to then punt, hoping to get the ball back. You can’t pin that on the QB.

 

[Iluvteak]

Both of these things can be true.

1. Dekkers stats were mostly good and tell the story of a player who should have had much more success than he actually had. (The same could be said for the offense and team as a whole)
2. Dekkers failed the eyeball test consistently. He lacks intangibles and QB instincts, and I am not sure that coaching can fix that.

I disagree ! In the right system and with a bit of Oline / WR help he’s a stud. With his gun he can excel. The coaches basically stopped letting him throw deep balls. So the opposing D was rarely playing loose. That’s really hurts a QB.

I think he needs to bulk up again too. He’s too thin to fight off those beast on the DL.

 

[PSYclone22]

We really need to have a blanket assumption when discussing Dekkers' play that every single Cyclone fan knows receivers dropped passes in late game situations a few times this year.

 

[ClonerJams]

The All Big 12 team is a joke at quarterback. Dekkers and Martinez get an Honorable Mention. Will Howard gets nothing but silence.

Will Howard was one of the worst D1 QB's I had ever seen Iowa State play against. His turnaround this year was incredible.

 

[mitchforcy]

Brock Purdy was EXCELLENT at leading late game scoring drives.

I always had confidence that we were going to win if Purdy had the ball and needed to score to tie or take the lead. Dekkers not so much.

 

[mitchforcy]

Our offense was bad this year. It might be Dekkers' fault, or it might be a combination of a lot of things. But I think it's hard to blame our failures on not making drives in the last 5 minutes of the game when we couldn't complete drives in the first 55 minutes.
When Brock Purdy was leading game-winning drives, it was to score the fourth touchdown of the game, not the first. That seems like a whole different thing to me.

The offense as a whole failed. It wouldn't be fair to put all of the blame on one single person or position group.

 

[BMWallace]

The difference was that Luck threw TD passes too. Multiple seasons of 30s or 40s. Dekkers went 19-14. Not good enough if you're gonna throw that many

Dekkers scored 19 touchdowns passing while our offense had 10 total rushing touchdowns, two of those were Hunter himself. The rushing attack posed little threat to opposing teams. That meant that as we got into the red zone, opposing defenses could use the short field for tighter coverage in the passing game, and not worry about the run. We also didn't have that consistent guy to go win a jump ball in the endzone like Charlie was for the last 3 years.