Sure, I don't like they amount of time chewed up getting plays off when Dekkers was in, but you have to set him up for success. That meant running the ball and taking a long time between snaps. In the end it was too conservative and we ran out of time.
But the bagging on Campbell is pretty ridiculous. My only major criticism is ISU has looked terrible in September consistently now for 6 years. Campbell knows it, and if he knew the answer he'd address it. He isn't fine with sucking in September, and it isn't some stupid thing like he doesn't care as much about Iowa as the conference games or as Mac did, or whatever idiotic nonsense people want to throw out there. If you want to achieve the goals that Campbell wants to and knows are attainable, you can't go into every conference season 2-1, and you can't lose conference game 1, which happened every year until 2020.
Look, until last year ISU had a swoon in November and December. They got a little better in correcting that each year. Every week you have a finite amount of time, and how much you focus on general fundamentals, your own execution of details and working against what the other team wants to do is adjusted throughout the year, and is adjusted based on your own performance. It is not a simple formula. How you do that, how much contact stuff you do, etc. all effects how well you play in September, October, November, and December, and there are tradeoffs for everything.
Their approach before led ISU to poor play in games 1-4, great play in games 5-8, and poor play in games 9-12. It seems like they have adjusted their approach, as well as developed the depth to be playing much better in games 9-12. They haven't cracked the game 1-4 nut yet. I'm not sure how you can't trust Campbell to eventually figure it out. Maybe ISU will always be a slow starter, but I bet they get ISU to the point where we can start playing much better and get out to a 4-0 start.
