The Takeaway: Michigan State

but I think Campari would be a better option back there. Or Davids, maybe.

When they clamor for a special teams coach. I swore that I looked it up one time and there’s a maximum amount of coaches you can have on the sideline. Thus, we’d have to get rid of one. NOT SO EASY NOW IS IT?

The coaching staff clearly disagrees, and they’ve been watching these guys at practice all year.

http://rivals.yahoo.com/footballrecruiting/football/recruiting/player-Wes-Burnside-121856

I’ve no idea what his return average is, but I’d guess it’s in the top third of the conference. On consecutive weeks he was a slight stumble away from housing kicks.

Will have to check it out when not on a work computer

KF gets too much credit and too much blame (from me included) that should be directed at the staff.
Coincidence that Hayden’s teams just weren’t as good after Snyder left?
Coincidence that the recent decline in defense matches the decline in Norm’s health?

Whoa there. That’s dangerous thinking.

I know Davis was hurt late but they barely threw to him or KMM all game. I only remember KMM having one catch. It seemed like there were a lot of short passes to Coker when they needed real yardage.

But I keep getting in trouble for suggesting changes, so maybe I’ll just shut it :-p

but they didn’t play awful. The offense and special teams left them with a very short field more times than not and plays like Miller barely missing a big-time pick (only to have it go for a huge gain) are just one of those moments where you know the day will not go your way. And it’s not exactly like Vandy was throwing darts when the chips were down.

How many different ways can you say the defense sucks, the defense isn’t any good, this defense is going to get Denard Robinson’s Heisman campaign back on track (you and Hoya looked SO dumb in posting that two weeks ago), the defense still sucks, etc.?

I knew if MSU got the ball near midfield (which they almost certainly would if we punted from there), they would score and 20-7 or 24-7 looked mighty daunting heading into HT.

You get to erase one result per decade in that series. IT’S IN THE RULES!

Didn’t happen.

That’s my excuse.

That’s what lost the game – plain and simple. I recall the D being stout in the red zone and a few other times.

Only to be forced into BAD situations by special teams and turnovers.

Is it the scheme or is it the talent?

Or, gasp, is it both?

average starting field position on scoring drives: MSU46
average starting field position on non-scoring drives: MSU30

with Derby showing up recently also

because someone will have to replace Bernstine next year. And it scares me shitless to think it will be Sleeper.

I understand they’re only 18 but I think it’s on them to be the future of this team. We’re always talking about emotion (or lack thereof) and motivational leaders (or lack thereof). I think those guys can be both for us in the future.

was a typical Cousins throw – off-balance, just throwing it up for a prayer. Worked out for them, as Miller missed the INT and Morris was a second late on getting a sack (nice design blitz on that play, we just missed a sack or an INT – kind of how the day went, really).

We were spoiled by Greenway, Edds, and Angerer, and I agree with you, Hoya – they spoiled the coaches, too. Those guys enabled those defenses to stay base for basically the entire game, but we now insist on covering WRs with LBs that just don’t match up like Greenway, Edds, and Angerer could.

running the same scheme without adjusting for our current talent=no bueno

Just so ESPN will love Iowa more?

you don’t have to be big or highly recruited to play the position

Are in Indiana, Kentucky and (snicker) New Jersey. Those places have a much better recruiting bed than Iowa. It’s no coincidence that most of Wisconsin’s massive o-line is actually from Wisconsin.

He’s an All-Big Ten guy and a likely NFL draft pick. It’s not like “everyone” has guys like that.

And Iowa does go after bigger DTs — but so does everyone else. Big, talented defensive tackles are in high demand. They’ve also signed three defensive tackles that were 275+ in the last two recruiting classes; unfortunately one of them (Anthony Ferguson) already left, one of them (Carl Davis) hasn’t played well, and one of them (Darian Cooper) is redshirting.

As far as the recruiting goes. It could certainly be better, but your point that Indiana, Purdue, Louisville, and Rutgers are outrecruiting is flawed: they have higher ranked classes than Iowa now, but recruiting isn’t finished in November, it’s finished in February. Wait until then to judge this year’s class. Iowa’s final classes have ranked higher than Purdue’s every year out of the last four and higher than Indiana’s in three out of the last four years. That hardly suggests that they’re outrecruiting us. Outside of 2008 and 2009 (which were not good classes and we’re unfortunately feeling the effects of that this year), the classes have consistently ranked in the 30-40 range, nationally, and in the top-half of the Big Ten. Could the recruiting be better? Yes, it could. But it’s also not as horrible as you’re suggesting.

We have run the Large tackle (power) and smaller tackle (technique) guys for a while. Klug, King, and one more name I think I’m missing before him played the smaller role and played it well. There’s another line of thinking to this as well. We have praised smaller guys this year beacuse they could get out in space and help contain all the “dink and dunk” teams with QBs, RBs and receivers who were threats to break outside. That’s clearly the trend, and teams like us are now in the minority, even in the Big Ten. I agree we don’t want to go too small, and we’re both small and inexperienced, but we need to be careful about what we want here. Our vaunted D-line last year got run ragged at times.

Morehouse has written about the particular type of line play we use, I think it’s called “2 gap technique” He has suggested that not a lot of D-linemen can capably play it. That’s a scheme decision, maybe it hurts us but with the guys we want in there, it has worked pretty well.

Recruiting is fair game to criticize, and we did early on when the huge number of players who have left in the past 2 years has been brought up. I don’t know what the real problem(s) is or are, but talent evaluation can be fairly criticized. I’m not buying us as inferior recruiters to the Indianas of the world, however.

Recruiting service rankings help, but they don’t necessarily predict what a player will do—just look at a couple of our prior 4 or 5-star O-linemen who didn’t pan out or, in general for the past decade, Notre Dame. Sure, there is substance behind the rankings, and in fact we have a rankings-darling right now, a freshman D-line guy, Cooper I believe. They say he isn’t ready. We have to weather the storm of a couple of lesser D-line recruiting years (people who didn’t pan out or guys who left for other reasons) and play what we have.

And scouting athletic talent is flawed. If it were an exact science, then every NFL first rounder would be all-pro. Also, one should consider that they are scouting a 17-18 year old kid still going through growth spurts. Ever look back at your high school senior photo? These kids change a lot.

I don’t think that Iowa is “bad” at recruiting. I think they don’t care how many stars are behind a kid’s name. Frankly, neither do I, and suggest interested persons consider likewise.

What I do care about is results. The performance has been lacking. Undeniably, the Hawks are not the monsters of the midwest, which is how I like to think of them. Hard hitting, clean cut, under dogs who outplay their competition.

The attrition rate is alarming, and I think, more indicative of a problem. Don’t know how it compares to the other programs. But – if it’s way out of skew with the rest of the BiG, then “houston, we’ve got a problem.” Especially in a developmental coaching system.

Someone else now does the LB’s, and that person also has to do Special Teams. Seems like neither of those units have been very good for about three toes years, and I don’t see that as a coincidence.

Special teams maybe, but the linebackers were excellent as recently as two years ago (2009). Last year’s biggest problem was the almost-unfathomable run of injuries we had at the position that led to us digging into the third and fourth strings of the depth chart and throwing true freshmen out there. A healthy Tarp, Nielsen, and Hunter would have been a pretty good unit last year, I suspect. This year’s problems at LB are coaching-related, but more in the sense that we’re starting one senior and two sophomores/true freshmen — it would have been nice to have more experienced options to plug in there, which is in part a recruiting/retention issue.

I think one argument that can be made to "retire" Norm is that his replacement can coach a defensive unit, freeing up someone else to really concentrate on Special Teams.

As I noted above, about half the teams in the Big Ten appear to have dedicated defensive coordinators that don’t also coach positions, including some of the better units in the league (Nebraska, Michigan State, Penn State, possibly Ohio State).

I also wonder if KF shouldn’t be coaching a unit as well, again freeing up an assistant to dedicate himself to something we’ve been struggling in, like Special Teams.

As far as I can tell, Purdue is the only Big Ten team to have a dedicated special teams coach. Everyone else has a special teams coach/coordinator who handles another role, too. And five teams don’t even indicate who handles special teams at all.

I don’t think the actual job breakdowns are the problem in and of themselves. I do wonder if not having Norm out recruiting is a grind on the rest of the staff that wears them down in other facets. So far as I know, the other Big Ten defensive coordinators all go out and recruit in addition to their DC responsibilities.

Health is going to force the issue anyway. Which is why the rumor that Norm would move to a “consultant role” with someone like Mike Stoops taking over DC sure does sound plausible.

I’m not sure sure you kick up Phil Parker like everyone seems to think might happen. I think Kirk has to shake up things a little bit. KOK has actually been pretty decent this year; if the defense had even been 10-15% better we would probably not have lost either the ISU or MN game (I’m not sure even if the breaks had gone our way if we could’ve beaten MSU Saturday. They’re simply a better team than we are this year).

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Welcome to BHGP.

Maybe in a few years, depending on how this all plays out. But not now. Maybe not ever.

But seriously, are they going to put someone else on the trophy, or just leave it as the Stagg Trophy? I can think of more than a few coaches whose names could be on that trophy.