Game Thoughts: UNI

Agreed. So telling ourselves we kept it vanilla is goofy. I liked the game, very happy. But I don’t buy that yearly mantra

Go back and watch the historical play calling between games 1 and 2, it's quite obvious we open it up quite a bit in week 2.

I'll guarantee next week you will see Higgins and Noel targeted ALOT more.
 
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Rocco is easily QB1. JJ looked scared to throw the ball, game was moving too fast for him right now and that's totally fine.
Hopefully we can keep on getting him reps, but Rocco is so poised in the pocket. Showed great lateral movement and knew when to run versus throw.

Our DBs are starting to finally turn into ball hawks :') happy years. I hope we pick off McNamara lol.

Also, Big Citrus is going to make the Iowa O-line lives h3ll
 
Rocco is easily QB1. JJ looked scared to throw the ball, game was moving too fast for him right now and that's totally fine.
Hopefully we can keep on getting him reps, but Rocco is so poised in the pocket. Showed great lateral movement and knew when to run versus throw.

Our DBs are starting to finally turn into ball hawks :') happy years. I hope we pick off McNamara lol.

Also, Big Citrus is going to make the Iowa O-line lives h3ll
Yep, Orange is going to make a lot of money playing football. Glad CMC is recruiting KC. Hope he starts getting more players out of the area. Kstate has made a killing recruiting Kansas City over the years.
 
To my uneducated eye the offense didn't look any different under NS then under TM. To those that have more knowledge did the play calling, play structure seem any different?
Also an uneducated eye here on offense, but the one thing I saw was when we had the QB sneak for the TD, we lined up under center instead of the shotgun like last year.... WIN WIN
 
I’ll never understand this. Plenty of great teams score 40, 50, 70 or 80 points in week 1 each year. And go on to have great seasons. I’m not sure I buy the “keeping it vanilla” story we tell ourselves
The “keep it vanilla to hide the playbook” is a myth.

We were conservative because
a.) we have a freshman QB making his first start (his dad said the number one priority today was to not turn it over during the in-game interview)
b.) the only way UNI was going to get back into the game after the first half was if we turned the ball over. So they removed that threat as a possibility with the play calling.

They called the game in order to beat UNI. Not to hide anything from Iowa
 
Got back and watch the historical play calling between games 1 and 2, it's quite obvious we open it up quite a bit in week 2.

I'll guarantee next week you will see Higgins and Noel targeted ALOT more.
Not sure if you’re being sarcastic or not. Our second game is almost always against Iowa. And we’re usually pretty conservative in that game. We’ve averaged 14.9 points/game against Iowa the last 10 years, and that includes a 41 point outlier in 2017.
 
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Not sure if you’re being sarcastic or not. Our second game is almost always against Iowa. And we’re usually pretty conservative in that game. We’ve averaged 14.9 points/game against Iowa the last 10 years, and that includes a 41 point outlier in 2017.

Just because we haven't scored a lot of points against Iowa doesn't mean we didn't open up the playbook.

Their d is way better than our week 1 opponents so opening the playbook doesn't necessarily related to more points.

I'll guarantee we see a lot more Higgins against Iowa.
 
We played really well for all the youth on this roster. Many expected us to struggle. We were pretty dominant actually. Having the lead and a great defense allowed the offense to be conservative. I expect that to change some as Rocco gets experience. The game really couldn’t have gone any better considering our off season.
 
It's always hard to take much away from this game, but it was nice to blow UNI out for once while still maintaining the classic conservative 1st week UNI gameplan. Moved the ball while prior to (understandably) taking the air out of the ball in the 3rd.

OL and offense still a work in progress, but they have a good foundation despite the gambling losses. We'll have a better glimpse of NS's situational playcalling next week.

Could not be more pleased with how much better ST looked. Thanks to our punter and good return coverage we won the field position battle handily in the first half, and built a nice cushion because of that. And when was the last time you saw an ISU PK hit a 56 yarder?
 
One thing I noticed on Noels big punt return was guys just ran in front (almost like a box out) of the gunners and put their hands in the air. That's great coaching. That's all you need Noel is fast enough to run past them and you don't need a pancake block. Just get in their way and don't pick up a penalty. Hands in the air makes it even easier. Really loved the ST stuff we saw. Looked like they were actually coached rather than told just don't **** up
 
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Very good
D looked like it hasn’t lost a step. In fact, the secondary looked elite. I can’t recall any receptions where the receiver was wide open, and only a couple where there was even a window. Pretty much every pass was contested, and most receptions were just great catches or lucky catches (i.e the deflection to a non-targeted UNI receiver who had already given up on the play and had it fall into his hand on the sideline).

Special Teams: you could tell there’s been dedicated coaching there all camp.
- Actual strategy on punts and punt coverage (Perkins and Porter were quite the duo out there).
- Noel looked way more comfortable receiving punts. He consistently made the right call on returning/fair catching/letting it drop inside our own 10
- Actual blocking scheme on punts. On Noel’s big return they set up with a wall and allowed him to use his speed to get to the outside

Tight Ends looked like they’ll be productive safety valves all season. Brahmer is big and has good hands (albeit that’s based on a sample size of one catch)

Bad:

The offensive line. I think some are sugarcoating them because we won handily, but they were pretty poor in all aspects.
- Pass protection: we didn’t give up any sacks only because we only passed 18 times and our QBs had some nice scrambles. UNI consistently got push, and even on Brahmer’s TD pass, #66 completely whiffed on his block and Becht was dead to rights. Luckily Brahmer ran a great route and Becht got the ball to him before he got hit.
- There were very few holes for the RBs to run through. If you take away our QB scrambles, RBs had 22 carries for 103 yards (4.68 YPC). Not awful, but I felt like the RBs had to make a lot of guys miss to get those 4 yards.
- Penalties: Both Hufford and Simmons had holding calls. Simmons’ happened on a would-be first down.

The Big 12: It’s just the first week, but the league struggled. TCU’s loss wasn’t awful. But Texas Tech and Baylor’s losses were really bad. And Oklahoma State looked less than impressive against Central Oklahoma. On the flip side, maybe that means there are more winnable games for us this year.

With our defense, I get the feeling we've got a real shot to beat teams like Baylor, Oky State and TCU. It's way too early to draw any conclusions, but we could be bowling at the end of this season!
 
Defense looked fantastic! I think Rocco should obviously be QB1 and play the whole game against Iowa and moving forward. I think Campbell would be insane to run a QB by committee after today. Kohl just is not even close to ready and that's okay.

I’m sure JJs dad saw that too. I’m not sure how much was promised during recruiting to the family. But anyone could see he just needs more time to develop. The staff did a wonderful job with Purdy bringing him along so when it was time it was an unleashing.

They also did this with Breece. Every one of the other running backs had their chance, similar to Zeb Noland. There couldn’t have been any animosity once the result showed up on the field
 
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This is kind of a futile exercise, but I can't help but wonder how this game would have turned out if Dekkers had started.

I'm not saying Dekkers would have done worse, but Becht was 10/13 with 2 TD passes, 1 TD rushing, 0 interceptions, and an overall QB rating above 200. Pretty hard to beat that.

Dekkers was a mental midget. I doubt the game plan last
This is kind of a futile exercise, but I can't help but wonder how this game would have turned out if Dekkers had started.

I'm not saying Dekkers would have done worse, but Becht was 10/13 with 2 TD passes, 1 TD rushing, 0 interceptions, and an overall QB rating above 200. Pretty hard to beat that.

Dekkers was a mental midget that really cost Manning his job along with the ineptitude of the Oline. Dekkers stopped his progressions when he locked on X. He wasn’t capable of hitting a tightend consistently.

I’m of the opinion that if the Oline would have progressed over the years Manning would still be here. Was he a terrible coordinator? No but he wasn’t a great one. But Dekkers inability to grasp things probably forced a simplified game plan out of Manning.

I’m not a Manning fan so don’t come at me like I am
 
The offense is pretty much completely turned over, including key departures that happened too late to address through the portal in a meaningful way. Yet the offense was every bit as efficient as it was the last time ISU played UNI with Purdy, Hall, and X.

The offense wasn’t that good, but early this season modest production with low turnovers will be a win.
 
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Got back and watch the historical play calling between games 1 and 2, it's quite obvious we open it up quite a bit in week 2.

I'll guarantee next week you will see Higgins and Noel targeted ALOT more.

Right now Iowa has no idea what Higgins is good at. If he is as good as advertised then he could be a problem.
 
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Rocco is easily QB1. JJ looked scared to throw the ball, game was moving too fast for him right now and that's totally fine.
Hopefully we can keep on getting him reps, but Rocco is so poised in the pocket. Showed great lateral movement and knew when to run versus throw.

Our DBs are starting to finally turn into ball hawks :') happy years. I hope we pick off McNamara lol.

Also, Big Citrus is going to make the Iowa O-line lives h3ll

Big Citrus? Is this a thing? If not it needs to be
 

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