I like your optimism and hope that you are correct. The skeptic in me is having a difficult time seeing progress towards winning those margin plays.
H
Campbell Still in Demand?
- Thread starter danelson4
- Start date
I like your optimism and hope that you are correct. The skeptic in me is having a difficult time seeing progress towards winning those margin plays.
H
Every coach believes they can save themselves. Everyone else knows that's ******** and it never actually works out that way. Rhoads still had another game after that one, and neither of them mattered or were playing for anything meaningful. There was no value or fan goodwill involved in keeping him whatsoever. That said, he played the second half of the KSU game like most teams up 2-3 scores would, until a bunch of stupidity occurred in the last 2 minutes. I guess he could've tried running up the score, but that carries a ton of risk.
You can choose to believe McDermott left willingly, but I don't buy that. Normal people confident in their roles and job don't leave at the first glimpse of a lesser role being presented to them. Especially not coaches, the infinite optimists of sports who thinks they and only they can fix every problem that any team has. The only reason to run for a lower job is the fear of being pushed out. 10-15 win seasons in basketball are the equivalent to 3-5 win seasons in football...which got our guy fired. The evidence is right in front of you.
He went after the fans claiming they were attacking the freshman kicker for missing the kick, when it was more like 90% were angry that good old CMC put all that pressure on the kicker, instead of using a timeout and trusting his offense to get 20 yards on the road and secure a victory.
That was chicken ****.
No, it really doesn't. We are not a ball control, run heavy, RPO-based offense like you keep pretending we are. We are fundamentally, completely different from that now.
Jace Gilbert has been fine since. Maybe the confidence shown is why is successful today.
Grow up.
People are allowed to criticize Saint Matthew.
Have a degree from ISU, used to be a significant donor when I could easily attend games, even had courtside seats for basketball for a couple years.
A true Hawk troll would be one that sees what is happening at ISU and doesn't want to see changes made. Either during the season with the current staff changing methods and tactics (sadly, that passed), or personnel on the offensive side during the offseason, and absent that, the head guy. Because this isn't working and is not going to work moving forward.
Can you even explain what ISU's offensive gameplan and strategy is this season? I can't. At all.
Because I honestly have no idea. And I sure haven't seen any meaningful change even as it fails repeatedly to secure victories.
Dude, you've got no leg to stand on here. If you hate "CampbellBall", then you want Campbell fired, now. It's his offense going out in the field. Good luck finding a decent candidate to coach at Iowa State after firing a coach after one bad season.
They're now a pass-first offense without the skill players to run such an offense. They do this because being run-first would be even worse. They don't have the time allotted via OL to push the ball downfield or get into more RPO tendencies. They operate slowly because they have a tendency to make procedural mistakes and collect dumb penalties when running with less direction (exception to this was the Texas game).
Our biggest problem this season offensively is that Dekkers sucks against zone defense. When teams can sit back in zone and deflect/intercept his bad passes while he doesn't actually have time in the pocket for WRs to find better holes, there's nothing left to do there. Dekkers own accuracy and jitter problems don't help there, either.
Hawk Troll. Winter Quarter Farm Op does not qualify as a degree.
I absolutely do NOT want him fired.
I want him to be our Bill Snyder.
I want him to adapt to reality, make some changes, and get back to playing winning football, which he has shown being capable of doing in the past.
But if his stubbornness and loyalty is valued more than victories, well, he'll seal his own fate.
I still want to see wins this year. They are out there, just gotta take some chances, throw deep, and open things up. Run some sweeps. Go no-huddle. Blitz more and go for turnovers. Chance favors the bold.
If we roll 0-9 in conference, and there isn't a massive shake-up on the offensive side, I don't know how you sell that to fans next year. Or how anyone could expect improvement.
Part of Campbell's ongoing evaluation is staff.
But the overall environment in the Big12 and greater college football ecosystem also is a factor. Campbell was successful because the Big12 was ripe for a ball control offense and strong defense to succeed. Has the environment evolved where having a dynamic offense is critical because defenses have had 5+ years scheming against RPO offenses?
IMO to have a successful offense in 2022 it takes:
But the overall environment in the Big12 and greater college football ecosystem also is a factor. Campbell was successful because the Big12 was ripe for a ball control offense and strong defense to succeed. Has the environment evolved where having a dynamic offense is critical because defenses have had 5+ years scheming against RPO offenses?
IMO to have a successful offense in 2022 it takes:
- A dynamic QB- a run/pass threat.
- An offense that can score with big plays. Defenses are too good for an offense to consistently score getting 5-10 yards at a time.
- The run game needs to be diverse
- Gotta use motion to confuse defenses
We had some really solid back 7s in a few of those seasons but Wally refused to blitz, almost ever. The team would go an entire half without blitzing, blitz early in the 2nd half and get a sack, then go several plays without trying it again.
You can't blitz on every play and I wasn't asking for that. But when your defense is getting beat due to 7-8 second pockets (front 4 wasn't getting it done) you need to get creative and mix a healthy amount of blitzes in to give a chance. Especially when we had the Knott-Klein LB cores. Let them make some plays.
You can't blame him for that! He honestly determined the best chance to win that game was send the kicker out there who had just experienced the most psychologically difficult kind of field goal miss that game. He knew that offense was not scoring touchdowns anymore (and proven correct in the following game against Kansas State). The only hope was to tie it with a field goal and win it in overtime with field goals.
The victory that our kicker is successful now and his success may be attributable to Campbell’s confidence in him. I’ll always take those types of victories. We care about our Cyclone players.
I don't think one has been a problem, even with Dekkers. Two is a combination of pass protection, play/route design, and personnel for big plays. Manning isn't creative enough (as you put it in #4) in motion, deception, or level utilization (he's terrible here) to even maximize the talent we have. Poor offensive lines, blocking schemes, and technique/strength makes our running game completely dependent on the back and/or catching the defense in a bad play call. We RARELY get push at the line of scrimmage. The last and maybe only lineman who did that was Osemele. At some point you'd think we'd be able to field an above average offense line, even if only in sporadic 1-2 season spurts.
Taking chances with an offense that already turns over the ball way too much is pretty piss-poor advice, I'd imagine. On the flip side, we're pretty good defensively in that regard -- we lead the conference in forced and recovered fumbles.
As I said already, we usually don't have the time to throw deep. He gets sacked long before the throwing window shows up. The few times he does it them off, the accuracy is generally poor. We also tend to leave TEs and a RB in to block with the OL, taking away resources out in the field that a defense has to account for and cover.
We do try sweeps here and there -- they suck because our WRs don't block well. Same problem as some of the option stuff they've attempted. These horizontal runs are still getting contacted behind the LOS.
I'm with you on the tempo, if only for the reason that it could lead to more mistakes for opposing defenses. It also creates predictability and mistake opportunity for us, so it can't be relied on...but it could be mixed in here and there more than it is.
I wouldn't change anything defensively. That system is highly successful and has created plenty of opportunities for the offense to take advantage of...which they often fail to do.
I love when people talk about this stuff like they have any actual experience. Oh just throw deep, blitz a lot and get turnovers!? Sounds easy!
