I haven’t written about the Hawkeye football team in a few weeks and that’s because this team is turning out to be exactly what I expected them to be. They are good enough to beat the bad teams and they lose to the good ones. The Hawkeyes are 6-4 with wins over Missouri St, Iowa St, Western Michigan, Minnesota, Northwestern and Purdue, not exactly murder’s row. Yes Minnesota is playing well now but they were terrible when the Hawks played them and Northwestern and Purdue are bringing up the rear of both divisions of the Big Ten. On the other hand the Hawkeye’s losses are to Ohio St (9-0), Michigan St (8-1), Northern Illinois (10-0) and Wisconsin (7-2 their loss to Arizona St is completely bogus). The good news is that this is actually progress because if this was last year they would have found a way to lose both the ISU game and the Northwestern game. Sitting with 6 wins means the Hawkeyes are going to a bowl game because the Big Ten might not even have enough teams to fill all its bowl slots and now the Michigan and Nebraska games are all about positioning for a better game. If this were the last two years or so I wouldn’t have much confidence that the Hawkeyes could pull off a win in either of these games but they play the best when the other team doesn’t have a good defense and Michigan and Nebraska are struggling there. The Iowa defense can shut down anyone if the offense gives them just a little help (I’m talking about the Wisconsin game). The Hawkeye defense finally broke down in the second half against the Badgers because if you give the opponent the ball enough eventually you get beat. After watching Michigan and Nebraska play each other last weekend my confidence is up because both teams look beatable. The bye week should help the Hawkeyes rest up and heal up (I’m looking at you Rudock and Weisman) and figure out the best way to beat the Wolverines. I’m not ready to hop on the Jordan Canzeri bandwagon after his performance against Purdue but it’s nothing against Canzeri. Canzeri was the right matchup against a big, strong but slower Purdue defense and it should be obvious to everyone that Mark Weisman isn’t at full strength right now. Canzeri proved that the coaches need to use him more, although his fumble will still give them pause. He also needs to buy Don Shumpert dinner for bailing him out by jumping on said fumble. I would also like to give Shumpert credit for his two big catches at very opportune moments against Purdue. Neither one was very pretty but they were both highly effective and through all the ups and downs of his career he stuck with it and made a contribution to the win that gets Iowa back to a bowl game. Thanks Don the Hawkeyes need the extra practices for next year.
Other thoughts
– The Oregon Ducks lost to Stanford last week and according to standard Heisman BS that means QB Marcus Mariota is out of the running and now Florida St. redshirt freshman QB Jameis Winston is the favorite. I’ve seen Winston and he’s seriously impressive but the Heisman trophy needs to stop claiming it goes to the best player in college football. If it did this would be a two man race between Alabama LB CJ Mosley and UCLA LB Anthony Barr. At this point the Heisman trophy goes to the QB of the team that is the flavor of the month. Mosley and Barr are the most dominating players in college football but they play LB so they might get a cursory Heisman mention but they don’t have a real shot to win it.
– As a Hawkeye fan I could strangle Glen Mason from the Big Ten Network for talking non-stop about how great Iowa LT Brandon Scherff is and it’s because he is completely right. Scherff has some work to do as a pass blocker but he is one of the most dominating run blockers I’ve ever seen and I’m blaming Mason for some mainstream media picking up on that. Just recently one of the draft experts from CBS Sports put Scherff in his first round mock draft and people are going to start to figure out just how good he can be. NFL scouts already know about him but I don’t want Scherff to figure out he could be a first round pick because the Hawkeyes need him next season. I hope Scherff goes the Robert Gallery route and not the Bryan Bulaga/Riley Reiff route. If he sticks around he will be a top 10 pick in the 2015 draft.
– I don’t know if Joe Philbin will lose his job as head coach of the Miami Dolphins over this whole Incognito/Martin thing because I haven’t seen much information about how much he knew. I did read a report that said GM Jeff Ireland told Martin to punch Incognito if he was having a problem with him. If this report is true that tells me Ireland knew about something going on and he certainly didn’t handle it correctly. Let’s get something straight, this isn’t bullying. Bullying is what happens in junior high and high school, what happened here was workplace harassment. Hazing is one thing, like making the rookies carry your shoulder pads back to the locker room, but this situation took it to a completely unacceptable level. I’ve always believed hazing was stupid for this exact reason, there is always some idiot that doesn’t understand where the line is and thinks it’s an excuse to act like a dumbass. If Ireland doesn’t lose his job over this he should lose it over signing Mike Wallace.
– I saw some of the basketball games the other night; Michigan St vs. Kentucky and Duke vs. Kansas. I think the NBA’s version of tankapalozza is going to kick into high gear. You don’t need to get the number 1 overall pick to get a franchise player. Andrew Wiggins (Kansas), Julius Randle (Kentucky) and Jabari Parker (Duke) put on a show the other night. Throw in Oklahoma St.’s Marcus Smart, Kentucky’s Andrew Harrison and Arizona’s Aaron Gordon and the 2014 NBA draft might redefine the league.
– I went to the Iowa Hawkeye men’s basketball game against Nebraska-Omaha; yeah I don’t want to talk about it. At least they won. I will say this while the Hawkeyes were losing by about 6 with 10 minutes to go in the game I was never afraid they would lose and it’s been a while since I could say that about a Hawkeye basketball team.
The Hott Read 
I wonder if anybody in the Hawkeye camp is reaching out to Pierschbacher to see if he wants to ditch ‘bama and come back home. He might be a little overrated but he’s still pretty good. And while they are making calls see how strong Lazard is to the terrible, terrible Cyclones.
I know Ferentz was at Pierschbacher’s game a few weeks ago and that was no coincidence.
The Hawks haven’t given that up. I doubt Lazard would flip to Iowa but I don’t think he stays with the clones either, I see Notre Dame in his future. I want the Hawkeyes to get WR Adonis Jennings (the recent decommit from Rutgers) and steal the Rutgers QB recruit Tyler Weigers.
Jennings would be nice. They will be set at QB once they realize that Eli Dunne (Grinnell) is a future star!