What was Ferentz thinking?

[tjgopher]

Nice analysis except for the fact that I am not comparing MN to IA. I know IA develops better.
You also started 24 guys on each team...so I don't know what that is about.
Also you leave out the fact that a redshirt freshman Matt Garin should not be playing at the same level as a Karl Klug who is a redshirt senior. You didn't answer my question.

The answer is that IA starts 3 guys who are 2* or lower on offense. One is a FB and another is a TE (positions that do not get nearly as many 3 and 4 star players. One is a RB who is only playing because IA has lost about 9 running backs over the past 2 years.
On defense they start 3 2-stars and 1 walkon. The 2-starts are all pretty veteran guys, as is the walkon.

So they start 7 not 9 as you stated. You can't call sandeman and the FB starter, you gotta pick one of the other. You can't start 5 D-linemen on a team that runs a 4-3.

As for Minnesota, Mcknight was a 2 star, Chris Bunders was a 2-star. Allen is not a starter. There are something like 2 seniors starting on the defense.

2 things:
1) you are not comparing apples to apples because of the class that the people were in. 99% of highly rated 2-star seniors would be as good as a young low-rated 3 star. You completely ignore the fact that one team is a young team and one team is a veteran team. You also ignore the fact that one defense may be playing better because of the scheme.
2) Your statistics are way off and skewed in the direction of your argument to the naked eye. You start 24 players per team to make your argument look better. You call 2-star players on the gophers roster 3-star players for the sake of your argument.

I never made the claim that Iowa didn't develop talent. I said that their talent development is vastly overrated by many on this board.

Vastly over rated? I laid it out fairly simply. He's utilizing A LOT of 2-star or less guys in key spots and his roster is not littered with 4-star talent, yet he's in the title hunt on a nearly yearly basis. Not sure what you're talking about. I'd say you are simply wrong. His player development is not vastly overrated. I'm not sure how you can reasonably look at the evidence of this year's team, the names of no-star walk-ons he's put into the NFL, and think that his player development is vastly overrated, unless you are just so anti-Iowa you can't think straight.

A few followups:

1) I used Rivals rankings. They are accurate. Chris Bunders and Da'Jon McKnight are 3-stars there. Sorry if that throws off your ideas.

2) You say you can't count Adam Robinson?? Really? He started as a redshirt reshman and set the all-time freshman rushing record at Iowa. He taken EVERY carry at tailback for IA in the last four+ games. But, you want to throw him out?? Why? He's a 2-star that is a MAJOR factor for them.

3) I used 24 guys on both teams simply because Iowa rotates three WRs (as does MN). Sometimes all three WRs play, sometimes a FB is used (by both teams). Same with DTs, both teams rotate three. In fact, for Iowa 2-star Mike Daniels was Big Ten Defensive Player of the Week earlier this season. He STARTED the Wisconsin game. So, he counts. Garin has started multiple games this year. He counts.

4) I NEVER said age didn't count. Iowa's team is more veteran and has been developed very well (again proving my point). It will be very interesting to see if the new MN coaching staff can have similar success developing MN's current young crop of defenders. Although, that said, we have A LOT of veteran offensive players who were highly recruited starting for us and that hasn't helped.

5) Even if you want to throw out major contributors such as Sandeman and Daniels, they still start 7 players who were 2-star or less. That's pretty impressive for a nationally ranked team Iowa (when compared to the OSUs, Alabama's, Florida's of the world) and proves the point. I doubt there are many BCS teams in the Top 25 that have that many 2-star or lower guys in the regular rotation. We have only 3 and cannot win a freaking game.

 

[Bob_Loblaw]

How many 2-star or lower rated players start on his team?

The great myth is that Iowa and Wisconsin are starting a bunch of guys that no one else wanted.

It's actually not a great myth.

Iowa is starting 7 guys who were 2 or less (walk ons...no stars), while they only started three guys with 4 stars.

Their average star rating as recruits (per rivals) was 2.54

 

[Bob_Loblaw]

I was actually at the game (not that it gives me anymore insight than anyone else), but I thought Ferentz was outcoached at the end of the game pretty bad. It's hard for me say because I hate Bielema and I respect Ferentz, but it's the truth.

Iowa should have been protecting against a fake punt. This isn't a hindsight is 20/20 type of thing, it was pretty obvious that Iowa was going to be very difficult to beat once they got the ball back at that point in the game (assuming they got the ball back). Iowa should have just carted out their defense and ran a defense to protect against a fake punt. I wouldn't have even put a return man in the game. The only thing that should have mattered at that point was getting the ball back.

As far as the timeout, well that's a tough call in my opinion. Iowa was on their 3rd kicker (I believe), who had a career long of 30 yards coming into the game, had problems with their kicking game all day, and needed a big chunk of yardage.

IMO, it wasn't outlandish to think..."call a TO right here". I think there plan was to dial up a play that would either get them a first down or out of bounds (in which case they could have spiked it then or not needed to stop the clock).

I think calling the TO gives them a better chance to dial up the play they wanted (even though it didn't work) because they needed about 15 yards for it to be realistic, but I can understand the logic either way on that play.

 

[Rosemountian]

It's actually not a great myth.

Iowa is starting 7 guys who were 2 or less (walk ons...no stars), while they only started three guys with 4 stars.

Their average star rating as recruits (per rivals) was 2.54

Iowa is starting 7 guys who are 2 stars or less. All are redshirt Jr's or older. It happens. There probably 10-20 programs around the country that have 2 losses and are starting similar star rated players.

As I said, he does a good job of developing players. But people act as if he is some sort of miracle worker and as if he is the only program doing this. There are dozens of programs around the country that play some lower rated players coming out of high school with some success.


I didn't say Adam Robinson doesn't count. I am saying that they'd be starting someone better than Adam Robinson if they didn't have such issues at the position.

As to whoever said Da'Jon McKnight was a 3-star on rivals....you may want to check again...cause not only was he 2-star on scout, he was on rivals too.
http://rivals.yahoo.com/minnesota/football/recruiting/player-Da%27Jon-McKnight-66130
Chris Bunders is a 3-star on rivals you are correct.
If you are taking key contributors into consideration to bump up Iowa's 2-star guys. You better put Ryan Grant in for Minnesota, considering he has started multiple Big Ten games. You also may want to consider Duane Bennett if you are considering guys who "rotate."

The point was never that Ferentz was bad at it. The point was never that he was worse than Brewster at it. The point was that he isn't some kind of God at doing it. He is a very good coach. He is a solid developer. He is not a sculptor making a masterpiece out of nothing though. He has got a bunch of highly rated guys with a select few of lower rated upperclassmen mixed in. It is a setup that dozens of programs around the country use.

Perhaps Iowa's on the field success has less to do with player development and more to do with superior schemes.

 

[Bob_Loblaw]

Iowa's starter if everyone was healthy would be Jewel Hampton, but he is another 2 star recruit. Adam Robinson would have been the #2 this season behind Hampton. All of the other issues at RB would have been behind Robinson on the depth chart.

As far as how good or great Ferentz is at building players who weren't very highly recruited, I guess that all depends upon your opinion. However, if you compare Iowa's rivals rankings to the other schools who have had similar success, he has done a very good job. It makes no sense to compare Iowa to MN because Iowa routinely has a starting lineup peppered with 2 star recruits (usually more 2 stars than 4 stars) and they have had a pretty nice roll for the last decade. I admit that a lot of teams start some seasoned vets who were 2 star recruits, but most programs haven't finished in the top 10 in the country 4 times in the past 10 seasons.

 

[Rosemountian]

Iowa's starter if everyone was healthy would be Jewel Hampton, but he is another 2 star recruit. Adam Robinson would have been the #2 this season behind Hampton. All of the other issues at RB would have been behind Robinson on the depth chart.

As far as how good or great Ferentz is at building players who weren't very highly recruited, I guess that all depends upon your opinion. However, if you compare Iowa's rivals rankings to the other schools who have had similar success, he has done a very good job. It makes no sense to compare Iowa to MN because Iowa routinely has a starting lineup peppered with 2 star recruits (usually more 2 stars than 4 stars) and they have had a pretty nice roll for the last decade. I admit that a lot of teams start some seasoned vets who were 2 star recruits, but most programs haven't finished in the top 10 in the country 4 times in the past 10 seasons.

If you switched MN and IA's coaching staffs this year, so Iowa still had all of the Ferentz development and Minnesota had all the Brewster development....Ferentz would still have put together a better season than the MN staff.

In my opinion what makes Iowa a good program isn't player development. It is having a top 15 staff in the country schematically. (Though time management was ugly this week )

 

[tjgopher]

In my opinion what makes Iowa a good program isn't player development. It is having a top 15 staff in the country schematically.

I guess we'll simply have to agree to disagree.

There is NOTHING special about the schemes that Iowa runs. In fact, they are the most basic and simple schemes that any Big Ten team runs. Defensively they blitz less than any team in the league, play a basic cover 2, and don't do anything fancy what so ever. In fact, they freely admit they don't. Same on offense. Simple power running game that sets up a very well-run play-action passing attack. It isn't anything at all that they do schematically that is amazing. Nothing. There is no mad scientist aspect to their schemes on offense or on defense. There are high schools running more advanced schemes than what Iowa does.

What they do is develop their players into being hard-nosed, tough football players. On defense, they coach guys to become excellent tacklers, to be in the right spots on defense, to get great reads to be opportunistic at the right times. On offense, they coach linemen to block as fundamentally sound as any O-line in the nation, play smart, penalty-free foootball, take care of the ball, throw and catch, etc. They know there are times where the other team knows what play is coming, that is how simple they are on offense. They simply won't fool you with schemes at all. They will out-execute you, which is all about player development.

Then, there's strength and conditioning, which at Iowa is a key component to player development. They have arguably the best S&C coach in the country in a guy named Chris Doyle.

To run schemes as basic as they do and win lots of Big Ten football games, is all about player development, IMHO.

 

[wait!what?]

The fake punt by WI was pure genius. MN is down by 17 with nothing to lose and still punts. WI play calling is light yrs ahead of MN.