Fight For Iowa is now a real website! No more .blogspot tacked on, no more silly blogger nav bar, but still all the Hawkeye football coverage (and I'm still using blogger...I like Google a lot). Anyway, if you had a link saved to the site or RSS subscription, everything should still work. I'm going through and updating everything I can and verifying that nothing is broken with the new domain name. If you find something not working, please let me know. Anyway, enjoy www.fightforiowa.com for now, and I'll get back to the Hawkeyes tomorrow.
Obviously a much better game this week, pretty much across the board. The offense looked good, especially in the second half, and the defense completely shut down Iowa State's spread passing attack.
The Offense
Running backs: B Brandon Wegher brought a new hope to the Hawkeye rushing game. I'm not ready to anoint him as anything yet, because most of his yards game against a tired and defeated ISU defensive front 7, but what we saw on Saturday was very good. He was patient behind the line, was elusive in space, broke tackles, made a ridiculous 1 handed catch, lined up in the slot and ran a good slant, went for over 100 yards, scored a touchdown on a superman leap, and that was just his first "real" game (he played special teams last week). I'm looking forward to see how he develops over the next 4 years.
Robinson had a nice game as well. He ran for 69 yards on 12 carries, and 3 of the runs were over 10 yards. I wouldn't be surprised if he remains the starter for a while, with Wegher the main back up.
Quarterback: C It almost seems wrong to give Stanzi a C when he threw 4 touchdowns and 197 yards. But, for the second week in a row it was the tail of 2 halves. In the first half Stanzi was just 12 of 24 and had thrown 2 interceptions and 2 touchdowns. Stanzi missed some wide open receivers as well that resulted in stalled drives and missed opportunities. In the second half, Stanzi was better going 6 of 10 with 2 touchdowns and no interceptions. He's known for his ablility to shake off mistakes...but it would make me much happier if he just eliminated those errant throws altogether.
One other note: we found out who is number 2 after a long time of the two redshirt freshman being listed with an "or" on the depth chart. James Vandenberg came in on the final drive and completed 2 of 3 passes for 38 yards. Besides his first pass, which was way off, he threw 2 very nice balls. He will definitely have a bright future.
Tight End: B+ I'm pretty sure Iowa State's game plan was to take Tony Moeaki out of the game. He was well covered all day long and finished with just 1 catch. He did, however, have a huge impact on the running game. He was absolutely dominating ISU's defensive ends all day, but he did have a hold called against him. Allen Reisner also had a good day with a touchdown grab.
Wide Receiver: A- Granted it wasn't all wide receivers, but 12 different Hawkeyes caught a pass on Saturday. That is a crazy number...in all of last year there were just 16 different players. With the ball being spread all around, nobody really had a standout performace, but the unit as a whole was very good consistently getting open. Stross had a good game with 4 catches and DJK had a great touchdown. Keenan Davis is another true freshman that had a great game. He had 2 catches and a touchdown that he really showed his athleticism.
Offensive Line: B+ A much, much, much better performance by the offensive line this week. Having Vandervelde back at guard was a huge help, and Calloway back at right tackle allowed Richardson to slide inside. The big question coming into the game was a left tackle with redshirt freshman Riley Rieff as Bulaga was out. Rieff stepped up huge yesterday. He had a couple of false starts (which is excusable), but otherwise had an excellent game. It definitely makes me feel more comfortable with the idea of Bulaga leaving for the NFL after this year (though I'm still hoping he stays).
Offense as a whole: B Give credit to Ken O'Keefe, who often doesn't get enough when he deserves it. The game plan was excellent. The ball was spread all over the field, there were lots of different formations (including 5 wide!), we passed when we usually run, and it was just overall a good game.
The Defense
Defensive Line: B I think the line improved over the last week. Though the defense gave up 190 rushing yards and allowed Robinson to get over 100 (when was the last time Iowa gave up that much on the ground?), the line was still pretty strong. It was very rare that Iowa lined up more than 6 guys in the box, so the line had a heavy task trying to stop the run. Against the pass, a pass rush was definitely present, even if it didn't lead to sacks. Binns in particular had a good game. He had 9 tackles, knocked down a pass, and had one QB hurry.
Linebacker: B- It was another quite game for the linebackers. They were mostly used in coverage and I would say they did a pretty good job. Iowa often went to a 3-4 in obvious passing downs and sent all 4 linebackers into coverage.
Secondary: A The safeties get an A+. Just a great game from Sash...10 tackles, 3 interceptions, a forced fumbled, and 2 tackles for loss. He was also good in coverage. I didn't see any one running by him like in the UNI game. Greenwood was also excellent, with 2 interceptions and 6 tackles to his name.
The cornerbacks were also solid. I was very happy to see Willie Lowe step up and play a good game when he got thrown in late this week with a minor injury to Castillo. I don't really remember ISU throwing in his direction all that often, so that's a good thing. Spievey was Spievey and had another good game.
Defense on a whole: B+ The Hawkeyes kept Iowa Sate out of the end zone for the 14th straight quarter. The pass defense was very good and confused Arnaud all day (until he was pulled). If it wasn't for a somewhat shaky rush defense, I'd give the unit an A. This definitely looked like the top 10 defense of last year.
The Special Teams
Special teams as a whole: B+ Ryan Donahue again had a great game with 3 of his 4 punts downed inside the 20. When he had the chance to boom one, he did, kicking a 57 yard punt. Not much to say about Murray...no field goals attempted, made all his PATs, and did pretty good with the kickoffs. The return game still leaves something to be desired, but I'm still confident in Chaney and Spievey returning kicks. Coverage was pretty good only allowing 99 return yards on 6 kickoffs.
For the second time this year we had a head-to-head match up between future Hawkyes. Out in the Washington D.C. area, DeMatha and Gilman squared off on Saturday afternoon after rain postponed the game that was originally scheduled for Friday night. RB Marcus Coker, of DeMatha, got the best of Jim Poggi and Anthony Ferguson of Gilman, as DeMatha won 56-35 in an offensive battle.
Marcus Coker - DeMatha 56 - Gilman 35 Coker absolutely destroyed Gilman on the ground. He racked up 391 yards and 5 touchdowns on just 24 carries. That is a absolutely ridiculous 16.3 yards per carry. He is going to be a good Hawkeye.
Anthony Ferguson and Jim Poggi - Gilman 35 - DeMatha 56 Poggi and Ferguson were unable to stop the Coker show and Gilman got beat down despite putting up over 450 yards on offense.
Andrew Donnal - Anthony Wayne 64 - Otsego 7 Anthony Wayne dominated in every facet of the game. Donnal helped lead the team to over 400 yards of offense.
Austin Gray - Fitzgerald 39 - Lakeview 41 Warren Fitzgerald gave up 21 4th quarter points, losing by just 2.
Mike Hardy - Kimberly 28 - Menasha 14 Hardy and the Papermakers defense held Menasha to zero second half points on the way to a 14 point victory.
Matt Hoch - Harlan 38 - Atlantic 0 Hoch contributed to the route with a fumble recovery as Harlan won easily on Friday.
Christian Kirksey and Don Shumpert - Hazelwood East 7 - Hazelwood Central 28 Hazelwood East lost its third straight falling to rival Hazelwood Central. Last year, East was the Class 5 state champion and Central was the Class 6 state champion.
James Morris - Solon 59 - Wilton 0 Solon is just dominating every team they play, and James Morris is leading the way. Morris had 7 carries for 98 yards and 4 touchdowns.
Louis Trinca-Pasat - Lane Tech 42 - Chicago Vocational 0 After sitting out with an injury last week, Trinca-Pasat came back and caught 4 passes for 78 yards and 1 touchdown as Lane Tech got its first win of the year.
Austin Vier - Ballard 28 - Dallas Center-Grimes 7 Vier had a good game throwing 125 yards and was 12 of 18. He threw for 2 touchdowns to just 1 interception. The game was 7-7 at half time, but Ballard scored 21 in the second half for the win.
Well that was much better than last week. Iowa dominated in pretty much every facet of the game.
Quick Thoughts:
Welcome to the Wegher era. He looked good today. I'm glad he got 100 yards.
Stanzi played pretty well and hit a lot of different receivers. He still need to limit his mistakes though...and not freak out when a guy is wide open.
The defense played way better than last week. The safeties looked excellent. Sash, you were the man this week.
The offensive line looked much, much better. In the second half they were in complete control.
That's 14 straight quarters without giving up a TD to the Cyclones.
WOW...Arnaud was bad.
Just a good game overall. I'm feeling much better about this season, as I'm sure most Iowa fans are. Let's go celebrate!
Good first half...much better than last week. The offensive line looks much better with Richardson and Vandervelde as the guards. Hopefully Bulaga will be back and we'll be clicking on all cylinders. Stanzi is obviously struggling a little bit. Those 2 interceptions were bad...he just need to calm down a little. He has made some good throws, especially that TD to DJK.
Defensively, the hawks have been very good. Some poor tackling on some of the runs plays, but nothing too bad. The pass defense has been excellent, and they are making Arnaud pay for all of his mistakes.
Hopefully the second half will be more of the same. Go Hawks!