Lunch Links is Straight Cash

Howdy!

Our beloved defensive coordinator and often maligned offensive coordinator addressed the media Tuesday afternoon. Phil Parker had some good nuggets in his presser, divulging details about the state of his roster, the intricacies of the cash position (and why it was a necessity) and RPOs. It’s a pretty good hang.

Brian, on the other hand. He’s been taking notes from his dad when it comes to these. Whatever.

Let’s start with Phil Parker, he was in good spirits yesterday:

• It’s going to be tough to replace Anthony Nelson and Amani Hooker.
• The defensive line expects to rotate 7-8 guys. The front four is pretty set.
• DJ Johnson, Matt Hankins, Michael Ojemudia and Julius Brents are all candidates to take over Hooker’s cash position. Parker said installing the position into the Iowa defense was a necessity after Alex friggin’ Hornibrook carved Iowa’s secondary up.
• Kaevon Merriweather seems to have free safety locked up, for now. A walk-on from Des Moines named Jack Koerener is apparently pushing him in practice.
• Genuinely thoughtful interaction between reporter and Parker:

Q. A lot of coaches talk about RPOs and how they are kind of not fair. You’ve never really bashed them. How do you defend that?

COACH PHIL PARKER: I think what’s helped us a little bit is we’re a split safety team and we’re not a straight man-to-man team. I think that’s kind of helped us, but eventually, I like to play with a lot of zone I’s, and the more zone I’s I have, but still play tight coverage within that. It’s a little trick that you’ve got to play a little bit.

But I think there’s things that you can pick up. You know, what kind of RPOs are they running. It’s been tough. It’s always tough. As long as we can play quarter, quarter, half and we’ve got a chance in there, I don’t think it’s that big of a deal.

The only thing I get kind of discouraged with is guys changing the rules of how far the linemen can go downfield. I mean, let’s play by the rules. I don’t care, just tell me the rules, whatever they are. If he can go downfield, that’s fine, I don’t need to talk about it.

It’s hard because these guys are running the ball; whoops, we want to come out and throw the ball and all of a sudden you have a guy nine yards. If I’m coaching the safeties and I see that lineman down, you know, eight yards, I think it’s a run or screen draw, right. That’s what I’m thinking. At least that’s what I’m coaching them.

But when I see them sitting there hitting the safety and he’s deeper than, you know, nine yards, it’s kind of a little bit -- it’s hard to swallow a little bit.

But that’s the way the game of football is. It’s all about advertising. You all know that.

Q. How do you get that point across at the national level to encourage officials to see it because they can only see so much, they can’t see --

COACH PHIL PARKER: Well, we send in stuff on tape. It’s still hard. The way society is, everybody wants points nowadays. So the more points you score, everybody’s happy and you keep their attention span going.

If it’s a 6-4 game, you’re going to lose a lot of people, you know what I mean (Laughter). Lose a lot of TV tests. You’re going to lose a lot of people just disinterested in the game of football. I don’t think it’s ever going to change, you know. Just not.

That’s my defensive coordinator!

The other guy’s turn:

• Brian expects Drew Cook to “contribute in a meaningful way” this season.
• Too much talk about the outside zone.
• Like seriously. There’s about 1,000 words of back-and-forth about the outside zone.
• For reference, this post is 907 words.
• Brian isn’t super sold on the positive impact recruiting-wise Noah Fant and TJ Hockenson will have due to their presence on ESPN this Thursday. I don’t know if I am, either, tbh.
• Expect the same trio of running backs this year.
• Sounds like it’s Tyrone Tracy and Nico Ragaini gunning for the slot role.
• And that’s kind of it. BF went on a “Iowa is Iowa and it will always be Iowa” rant twice; once in regards to recruiting and again in offensive philosophy (Run the football. Protect the football. Score when it’s convenient for us). Otherwise, he was a chip off his dad’s block in this presser.

The rest

• File this in the “it ain’t broke so let’s fix it” department:

• Fran is diving headfirst into the transfer portal, it would seem:

Landing some free agents would be nice!

• In more basketball news: the mens’ team is playing its preseason tournament in Las Vegas. The Continental Tire Las Vegas Invitational (catchy name!) includes the Hawkeyes, Creighton, Texas Tech and San Diego State. Iowa will play Creighton in its first game on Nov. 28, and will take on the reigning national runner-up the following day after it smothers the Jays.
• The Iowa athletics department handed out their Golden Herky’s tonight. Here ya go!

Not much argument from me there.

• Iowa baseball is the gift that keeps on giving:

• College basketball’s recruiting scandal is spreading to college football.
• Let’s talk about this:

• This story on a hot pepper eating contest.
• And I think that’s it. Goodbye!