When questioned about just how great Iowa played, the following UNI Panther players provided varying comments. “It took my breath away. I’m so tired of running” said a breathless Carlos Anderson, the undersized running back who led the day in rushing yards but who Iowa obviously would never recruit.

“I speak for all of us when I say we are all exhausted from catching passes” said Jarred Herring of a UNI receiving corps who obviously felt like they had played through a painfully-long day.

Finally, UNI quarterback Pat Grace was overheard saying that “…My arm hurts a little. Not so much from having it driven into the ground, but more so from throwing for 270 yards.”

 It is this reporter’s conclusion that the great Iowa defense has not skipped a beat from last year’s excellent performances.

nicework

Just awful. Makes you appreciate just how absolutely dominant Shonn Greene was. I hope that Brinson bounces back VERY quickly from his injury. Otherwise, it’s going to be a long, long fall. On the plus side, I don’t know when (certainly not in my lifetime) Iowa was deep or talented in the receiving department.

Still, that’s extremely funny, and funny, as you know, is part of the healing process.

I thought there were a few positives of note:

I thought Robinson did okay, especially since the right side of our line showed all of the anger, resistance and generalized violence of the checkout lady at the Hy-Vee. Obviously he’ll start next week. With luck Calloway will make a big difference and he won’t get killed before he’s old enough to drink.

I thought McNutt had very unusual field presence, presence in the sense that he controls the space he’s in. Too bad he dropped a good one.

I thought it was mighty interesting to see us running a zone blitz of some sort, leading Clayborn to man up and chase their TE (successfully) into the end zone. It looked like he needed a respirator when the play was over, but still.

Spievey is all-world. Forget the coverage skills, when he says you are going down, you are going down immediately.

Stanzi was 16-21 in the second half. We should just script his Stanzi-ball in O’Keefe’s first 15 plays, so we get that out of the way in order for him to get started earlier on his heartwarming personal comeback.

Nobody got hurt?

That’s all I got. I’m not sure I’ll have the nerve to watch next week. That Kirk Ferentz! He’s such a cutup, messing with our expectations.

GOOD:
Second-half Stanzi. 16/21, 180 yds, 1 TD (or something like that) and not to play the coulda/shoulda game, but that doesn’t include two drops by McNutt and Stanzi or the beautiful TD pass to Chaney called back for holding. The Stanziballs and the inexplicable turnovers are infuriating, but Stanzi’s ability to bounce back and come through in the clutch is mighty impressive. I think it says something for him when he’s led us to a pair of come-from-behind wins in the fourth quarter in just 12 starts, which is almost half as many comeback wins as all the other KF QBs put together. (Last year, I remember seeing some absurd stat last year that KF teams were like 4-40 when trailing after the 3rd quarter; Ricky at least gives me hope that he might be able to pull it out.)

TonyMo: Without DJK or Myers, Moeaki was definitely the main object of Stanzi’s affection yesterday and he did a great job of catching damn near everything thrown his way. And he didn’t get hurt (knock on wood). Huzzah! This is the TonyMo we all dreamed of five years ago.

Spievey: What a stud. Good coverage ability and fantastic tackling yesterday (which is good, since most of the other defenders wanted to play two-hand touch rather than tackle football). In fact, he was so good (and the other CBs were so… less good, to be kind) that it’s made me re-evaluate my position on Spievey as return man, too. The drop-off from him to the remaining CBs is pretty damn precipitous – far moreso than the drop-off from him to another return-man option.

Donahue: Yeah, that was way more punting than you should ever see against a I-AA team, but he was money. He more than did his job at the end of the game by pinning UNI back at the 8-yard line; it’s not his fault the defense was so spectacularly unable to take advantage of his great field position.

WRs: I can’t recall ever being more excited about a crew of WRs during the KF Era. Maybe 2002 after it became clear that CJ Jones and Mo Brown were gonna tear things up. But this group has a ton of talent: Chaney looked super-motivated and he brings a speed threat we haven’t had for a while. Using him on the end-around was genius (though if Sandeman was healthy, I have depressingly little doubt that KOK would have called that play for him instead) and he made a great catch on the called-back TD. He may not be a 1/2 WR option, but we need to try to get him at least 4-5 touches a game. McNutt looked like the sure-handed, find-the-holes-in-the-defense guy we’ve missed since Hinkel (or maybe good ol’ Double D), until that unfortunate drop. Stross had a great catch and looked solid and DJK was DJK. I don’t know why he, KF, and Campbell can’t all get on the same page but it needs to happen ASAP. And I was intrigued to see Keenan Davis get a shot on one play; I don’t consider it a waste of a redshirt (unless he doesn’t see the field again all year, of course) because he’s clearly very talented (he has a great combo of size and speed) and we can ill-afford to leave talented guys on the bench.

BAD:
RBs: Paki was what we all feared. If he doesn’t have the burst to hit the hole against an FCS defense, what prayer does he have against Big 10 defenses? He can keep his third-down RB job and do some damage on special teams (although he didn’t impress on KR, either), but please no more heavy RB duty. Robinson flashed some promise, but he seems to have trouble seeing (and hitting) the holes at the right time and he doesn’t seem to be as tough a runner as Shonn or Jewel were. Let’s hope that Brinson or Wegher can progress quickly.

OL: The interior line was a sieve for much of the game. I am hopeful that the guard positions will improve with the return of Calloway and Vandervelde; Julian should take over one spot and hopefully Dace can slide over the other guard spot; Doering and Gettis looked rough out there. What happened to Kuempel? He looked great filling in for Olson last year against Wisco, but now he can’t beat out those guys? Weird. Still, even if those guys get the G position settled down, we need better play out of the C spot. Raf has no shortage of experience, but he still seems to struggle a lot.

Whoever was responsible for pass coverage in the middle of the field: The LBs? The safeties? Grace was gutting us out there, which surprised me given the coverage abilities of Edds and Angerer (and the latter’s nose for the INT). There wasn’t much punishment being delivered out there, either. Granted, part of the problem was that Grace too often had way too much time to work with, but the soft zone got wrecked yesterday; that makes me a bit nervous for the ISU game. When the coverage tightened up in the third quarter, the defense looked a lot better.

The other cornerback spot: Come back soon, Prater… there’s a starting spot waiting right here. It would be idiotic to throw in the towel on Castillo/Lowe after one bad game (Antwan struggled mightily as a frosh, but it paid off later in his career), but they’re definitely not our best option at that spot this year.

Kick/punt returns: We’re still getting sweet fuck-all out of the return game.

Besides Keenan Davis, did any other true frosh see the field?

I’m losing track of who is returning and when. Can someone fill in the question marks…

Player / Yr / Po / Return / Reason
Shaun Prater SO CB Arizona? Suspended for OUI
Kyle Calloway SR OL ISU? Suspended for OUI
Jeff Brinson FR RB Arizona? Ankle injury

I know that Berstine and Hampton are out for the year. Adam Robinson and DJK should both be starting soon. Might Clayborn still face a suspension down the road for the alleged assault?

Wait, I didn’t see that in the notes.

But it’s important to remember that UNI is a very good team, one that could probably beat any number of D-1 teams.

I thought Iowa was supposed to contend this season, not listen to Joe Pa’s famously complimentary pressers…

The realist in me says Iowa, sans Jewel Hampton, isn’t as good as I thought they were…

The realist in me says the Minnesota Twins aren’t as good as I thought they would be without Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau either…

I applaud the determination and the"it’s only week 1"itus of the Iowa Fans, but to be surprised when your #1 offensive weapon goes down and you struggle to bean UNI…it spells bad news…

Syracuse…even with Tea Bag Paulus… could put up a fight against the “Ground Squirrels” you never know, but if Iowa keeps playing like this…well…good thing I saved my pilgrimage to Beaver Stadium for OSU…but time will tell.

I thought we looked crappy the last couple of years playing the cupcakes. Last year we looked okay; Shonn looked great. But we didn’t look great, if by great you mean dominant and destructive at the LOS. We pushed, we didn’t punch. There was no obvious talent gap, again, not factoring Shonn.

I think Ferentz has a major issue with early season games, and probably always will. I think he’d like to win them, but he’s just never had a team as ready for them as other coaches do their teams. (And of course some teams look all-world in ooc and get steadily more ineffective through the season.) I think one reason for this is that Ferentz does not coach with fear and humiliation, so the players have a greater responsibility to prepare themselves mentally. And remember, you’ve got an average age of 20 on that squad, and a young 20 at that. So they’re learning, each year, what it takes to win.

I think now we may be missing Bruggeman even more than Shonn. Bruggeman was smart — and nasty and intense. Center is just a really, really important position in this offense. Also, as SMA notes above, the line has been in disarray throughout camp, and you can’t run this offense with strangers playing next to each other.

If we go by history we have no idea what kind of team this will be, and so should just have fun with it. UNI was tougher and hungrier than Iowa. That’s not good. The shadow of the ‘fat cats’ season will always be there, on the margin.

Footnote: Ferentz mentioned that our backs needed to develop some patience in this one-cut run scheme. I’m curious if they move Robinson back a half-yard or even a full yard. We have been lining up 7 deep. Freddie Russell was 8 deep.

The arm tackling of the backs was disturbing.

The arm tackling of the backs was disturbing.

That was far more troubling than the lack of patience in the running game. I think that Robinson will get better about learning how (and when) to hit the holes given a bit more experience, but he’s also going to need to learn to run with a lot more toughness.

Jake and Signor had a good day Saturday.

EISU game summary

King and Chandler were re-signed to practice squads, Tenn. and Dallas.