Ok. Time for some podcast notes:
- QBs: after reviewing the tape, Gunnar did not look good. Stares down receivers, struggled with accuracy, threw 3 interceptable balls, poor pocket presence which leads to sacks. Looked good and made the right reads with rpo's as the lone bright spot. Spent about 5-10 minutes bashing the decision to give him 57% of the snaps over the others and that he really did not deserve the shot. They saw enough to say that he is not the guy moving forward. They felt Bowman looked ok, but seemed to really struggle after a couple early drops including the Bray drop for a sure TD. The INT they wanted to put on the WR not running the right route. Rangel was sick the week before and missed a practice, they didn't see why he was not given any snaps if they were only going to give him 9% at the end of the game. Called the 3 QB decision an "abomination". They want to see Rangel or Bowman get the majority of the snaps against ISU and to eliminate GG from the running except for some JW Walsh goaline stuff.
- RBs: Criminal how few carries that Ollie got last game. They feel that it should be 55% Ollie, 30% Collins and 15% or less for Nixon. Not super impressed with Nixon as when he has one guy to beat, he cannot make him miss or break the tackle.
- WR: Brays drops are a killer. Must get that fixed because it completely negates his ability to separate from DB's. Several WR's seemed to have issues running the correct routes and reading the coverage due to a dropping safety making the cover 1 actually a cover 2.
- TE/HB: Not a ton on this grouping this pod.
- OL: Yikes. Pretty terrible game all around until the end of the game when Cooper slid to LT. Wilson performed the best, but just about everyone else struggled. Birmingham was really bad, they don't want to see him play tackle moving forward. Surmised that he must have lost lateral agility after the last injury. As a group, they are regressing when pass blocking even from last year's performance.
- DL: Kirkland and Goodlow looked good, but were not dominant. The others were getting blocked effectively and were not causing chaos. At times were getting blown off the ball.
- LB's: Oliver had a hell of a game (10 tackles, a strip sack, a fumble and a pass defended), the other LBs didn't play super well. Martin got eaten up by larger blockers several times, and they wondered what Benson does. Does not seem to be super effective in his position. They took bad lines a lot or were effectively blocked, allowing USA's running game to get to the 3rd level.
- DB's: Safety play left a good deal to be desired. Daniels has been out of position and Rucker got beat several times after getting faked out on shorter routes. Needs to be cleaned up for next week. CB play was pretty good overall.
Iowa State:
- They really struggle running the ball and their o line is suspect. QB seems to have struggles like ours due to no run game. Both the QB and their best receiver (a slot WR) were throwing up with the stomach bug last game.
- Unlike their last several years, the D line is the weaker part of the ISU D. That being said, they are a good unit and the best we will have faced by far.
- Will be a "get right" game for our D. If they don't clean things up and look better, it is going to be a long season.
- Want to see playcalling improve and went as far as to say that Dunn is running out of rope. That and a lot of plays they saw during camp have not been run at all.
- Bet the under.