A "silver lining" in giving up 252?

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g1976b

g1976b

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I, like most of us had many moments on Saturday with my head buried in my hands watching Coker run for 252 yards and 2 TDs. It just seemed like they were running at will and he was a steamroller.

The more we watched though, I actually noticed how many of those yards were after initial contact. That's both good and bad. Some of it you could put on tackling which needs to improve. On the other hand, it made me realize that maybe there really is something to the fact that the team is just undersized. It looked to me like the guys were getting where they were supposed to be fairly often, but they just couldn't make the play.

Perhaps it's true that the scheme itself isn't as far off as we feared and it's the talent that needs to improve.
 

Yeah, but a better back would've housed two of those runs.
 



Stan The Caddy said:
I see a silver lining...WE WON THE GAME!
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Beat me to it.

One thing I did notice is that Coker delivers one hell of a stiff arm! Dude was a beast. If I remember right we were in his top 3 before he verballed to IA. Wish we had him.
 


I was hoping that Coker would declare for the draft at halftime and sit out the 2nd half. That guy will never look better.
 


paulser21 said:
If I remember right we were in his top 3 before he verballed to IA.
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There was even an (apparently erroneous) article by GI that he had verballed to Minnesota, which he vehemently denied almost instantly.
 




Great points all - the key silver lining is that we won the game. We had an annoying idiot Iowa fan (sorry for the redundancy) behind us, who felt he needed to yell something on every play. He was a big fan of pointing out how many yards his offense had gained, which made me chuckle when the score was 7-7 at half.

But it is an interesting point about poor tackling/players being in position and not making the play. I think Kill has shown so far that he's willing to play the guys who know what they're supposed to do rather than other guys who might have more raw talent or physical ability (like Donnell Kirkwood and others). So for optimists like me, you've got to believe that as the guys who know what they're doing physically mature and as the guys who have the physical skills learn that they have to know the playbook to be on the field, then we should see significant improvement overall.

On Coker, I think he's pretty good (and I'd sure like to have him on our team) but I don't think he's a great back by any stretch. I agree with both Studwell and Formo about his runs - a better back would've taken it to the house on at least a couple of those runs while a worse back would've been more easily tackled for a lot less yards on a lot of runs. He's only a sophomore, so he could improve, but I doubt he'll do much in the NFL based on what I saw Saturday.
 

How many times did we run for 300 yards in a game and still lose because for one reason or another we couldn't run it when it counted? Coker had over 200 at the half, but they had shot themselves in the foot. He had a 40 yard run, several 18's. When it came to the 4th quarter, we owned it by virtue of the onside kick. Leaving Iowa with little time, and they chose to use Vandenberg. That was an Iowa coaching decision. They had no opportunity to use him to run the clock. That on side kick you could say, won the game.
 

FYI Coker
1st half: 18-181, 10.1 average
2nd half: 14-71, 5.07 average

We certainly didn't shut him down but we at least contained him in the 2nd half.
 




Bob_Loblaw said:
There aren't a lot of backs better than Coker in the Big 10.
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Well, there's the one we're going to see at our next home game for sure, and probably the one we saw at our previous home game. Maybe Redd?
 

Coker's a real good back, but he doesn't have the breakaway speed. A guy like James White gets those holes and he's probably gone. I still think Coker's a better back than White.
 

RedPoo said:
Well, there's the one we're going to see at our next home game for sure, and probably the one we saw at our previous home game. Maybe Redd?
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Don't forget about Herron at OSU. Have to remember he missed 5 games this year so his stats won't look great.
 

The fact that he didn't score on any of his long runs, and that Minnesota chased him down and didn't let him score on the longest shifted us away from our usual "fall behind early and big" this season. Remember, they were stopped on 4th down and shanked a FG after his two longest runs.
 

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