SB Nation - Jacody Coleman

It's Not Plagiarism If You Link To It Checks Its Facebook Account

Hawkeye State — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 13:04:24 -0000

Good News, Bad News, A Whole Hell of a Lot of News. Medical notes from a busy July day for Iowa football...

Bad news first: Julian Vandervelde had minor surgery recently, on what we don't know:

"We were hopeful that Julian’s injury could be healed through normal rehab, but it became apparent surgical repair was the best path to take. Julian may miss some playing time, but we are optimistic he will return to full strength very early in the season. We’ll take it day by day," said Ferentz.

Speculation over Vandervelde's injury status has continued since the cryptic WOOT WOOT Facebook status update he left on June 18. At that time, Ferentz denied he had undgergone surgery; clearly, things have changed. The "may miss some playing time" part could be the nail in the coffin of the Vandervelde-to-center movement, as it's difficult to imagine Ferentz makes Julian change positions without an August camp to work him out. He's instrumental to the offensive line, though, and will start somewhere if and when he's back to 100%,

Now, the good news (and, oh, is it good):

If Monday provided any indication about the health of the Iowa football team's most important running back, Jewel Hampton delivered it with a skip and a smile.

Hampton jogged up a flight of steps to answer the door of his westside Iowa City house Monday afternoon.

The Hawkeyes' top backup last season to departed all-American Shonn Greene then was asked about a possible knee injury suffered in workouts last week.

"I'm OK," he said.

When the 5-foot-9, 210-pound sophomore-to-be from Indianapolis was asked whether he would play in the fall, Hampton said with a grin, "Don't know yet."

When Hampton bounded up the stairs to his front door, he wore sweatpants and showed no visible sign of a brace or other injury-related precautions.

If there was any chance Hampton's ACL was torn (as was initially rumored), he would almost certainly be in a brace, and would likely be unable to move (let alone run up the stairs of his house) a mere 3-4 days after the injury. This might be just a minor tweak of Hampton's springtime injury blown up into RUNNINGBACKPOCALYPSE by, well, people like us (you have to admit, we tried to limit the rumormongering here). Per reader Stein, even Hampton doesn't know anything yet. As he posted to Facebook:

Q's about my knee stop em cause "IDEK BOUT MY KNEE YET!!"

I'd have to check my Facebook-to-English Dictionary, but I believe that roughly translates to, "Kind gentlemen, please refrain from inquiring about the current medical status of my knee joint, for I have not yet receieved the results of the medical testing I recently underwent. Thank you and good day." So we wait.

Should the worst news come to pass, we might not be in the predicament we think. I posted a comment in an MGoBlog board post on Hampton's injury, and got this response from a Florida-based Michigan fan:

Brinson played for a team where he was basically options number one, two, and three. The QB could run a little bit, but couldn't throw for crap, so the coach called a lot of predictable running plays. The game I went to, the QB made a couple of pass atttempts that were so terrible that the opposing coach pretty much put eight or nine men in the box the rest of the game and almost upset them.

Running backs like carries, but it's really tough to gain a lot of yards when everybody on the field knows you're getting the ball. Despite this, he still managed to get about 175 yards and avoid an upset for his team.

Playing against Brinson may be a case of "be careful what you ask for."

It's essentially confirmation of what we've heard about Brinson for the past year (good kid, hard-nosed runner, put his high school team on his back), but at this point I'll take any comfort I can get.

I've Got My Philosophy. An interesting article yesterday by Andy Hamilton (unquestionably the Press-Citizen's best sportswriter) on a shift in Iowa's recruiting philosophy, away from postseason hoarding and toward early commitments:

While the Hawkeyes haven't gone to the extreme of pursuing junior high stars, Iowa seems to be inching toward the pack of programs that have moved the recruiting calendar forward.

The Hawkeyes already have secured eight commitments to its 2010 class, marking the most ever by July 1 under Ferentz.

"Just because of the way kids have been committing early, we've been a little more aggressive in our approach to recruiting and trying to get some of these guys locked up," [Recruiting Coordinator Eric] Johnson said.

"I don't want to get into specifics because you don't like to give away secrets on what you're doing. But we changed our approach a little bit. It's just like when you evaluate the season on the field, you evaluate the things you do off the field, and coach Ferentz is tremendous in doing that. We've changed some of the stuff we've been doing to try to be more successful from a recruiting standpoint."

As you may remember (and as Hamilton points out), Iowa had just two commits on July 1 last year, and one of those two left for Michigan State before the end of the month. Last year's success surely has something to do with this year's recruiting success, but Iowa has secured more early commits this summer than it ever has, even at the height of the Ferentz era. A number of them have listed the early and ongoing interest from the coaching staff as one of the reasons they decided to commit. Under the old Ferentz "wait until they play their senior year" doctrine, we may well have lost out on those players.

Footnotes Speaking of recruiting, Rivals.com gets an interview with 4-star Ohio offensive lineman Andrew Donnal ($); he likes Iowa. Single-game tickets went on sale yesterday, Get in early to pick up that seat in the 54th row of the north end zone! Jacody Coleman announces he's trasferring to Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas, which makes all the sense in the world. Beaumont is his hometown, and Lamar wil start playing I-AA football in 2010, for the first time in over 20 years. We wish him the best. Gil Thorp is on Twitter, which might break the internet if it's half as funny as Marty Moon.

It's Not Plagiarism If You Link To It Holds Its Breath

Hawkeye State — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 12:54:18 -0000

Ruh. Roh.

No Comment. Yeah, we know about this. There's no confirmation from the coaching staff, so we're holding out on the story, but the internet sources aren't ones with a history of playing loose with the truth. Morehouse is also getting prepared; that's usually a sign to buy canned goods and head to the basement. Of course, we blame Hinton.

Wherefore art thou, Jacody? Remember the Jacody Coleman redshirt saga? As a refresher, about 2 months ago, backup MLB Jacody Coleman was stuck behind Pat Angerer and prepared to transfer, but instead decided to burn a redshirt season this year and compete for the position after Angerer's graduation in 2010. It was apparently resolved, only, no, it wasn't. Coleman is again transferring to a school closer to his home in Texas.

Losing a player is almost always bad for a program (Thanks, Captain Obvious! -- Ed.), but the Coleman transfer is especially damaging. Angerer hasn't exactly been a picture of perfect health, and there is no ready-made backup at middle linebacker. Our guess would be Troy Johnson moves over from the strong-side (we'd like to see Tyler Nielsen get a look, but he's too perfectly-sized at OLB), or Tarpinian becomes the all-purpose backup at both WLB and MLB.

We were working on two Assume the Position posts over the weekend: running back and linebacker. Needless to say, they are both in embargo for the moment.

Iowa Basketball: Catch The Fever! While UCLA demands its basketball ticket holders donate $500,000 to the university for the right to sit courtside, Iowa is thinking about running a blue light special:

Barta faces sort of a Catch-22 dilemma in that the team needs more fans inside Carver-Hawkeye Arena on a regular basis in order to help it get better under coach Todd Lickliter.

But the problem is that many fans won't come to the games on a regular basis until the team gets better.

Unfortunately for Barta, Iowa has combined to lose more games (36) in the past two seasons than during any other two-year stretch in school history....

Barta has to give fans a reason to endure the bad weather and everything else that goes with attending an Iowa basketball game in the winter.

He has to make it cheap enough that many fans won't be able to resist not going, because after all, it's still the Iowa men's basketball team and it's still the Big Ten Conference.

Harty goes on to propose one of the dumbest things I've ever heard: Set a base price of $10 per ticket, only raise the price $1 for every win over 10. The Harty Party, who has apparently never paid money to see a game, doesn't realize that most fans purchase tickets long in advance of the day of the game. You want even more empty seats than last year? Tell people they can buy tickets now for $10, but could pay $15-20 for them in February. Fans (especially out-of-town fans) will buy their tickets now for games they might attend, and if the season goes south, stay home. Prices that low would also kill the market for low-level scalping; the typical single-game ticket holder might stand outside CHA in mid-January to get the $54 face value for his unused seats back, but is unlikely to do the same for $20. Combine the two, and you could see more empty seats than last season.

That's not to say a bargain-basement price doesn't make sense in one context: Ticket packages. Not only would lower ticket package prices increase attendance (package purchasers are local, and are more likely to attend even when the team stinks), but it could alleviate the unintened side effect of last season's decision to lower late-season prices. I know a number of long-time ticket holders who paid $27 per seat, only to watch the seat next to them go for $10 in February. Most of them have looked at the off-season carnage, expect more of the same, and are declining to pick up tickets for next season. Tell them they can buy those seats for $10 and I guarantee they'll change their minds.

Footnotes Iowa State WR Wallace Franklin hit with his third arrest in 15 months and kicked off the team. Cyclone Fanatic (which you may remember from breathlessly-worded punctuation-free posts about every Iowa arrest) doesn't mention it on the front football page and is more preoccupied with who will play running back for us. Tomahawk Nation posts the Vegas over/under season win totals; Iowa is at 8, which is exactly right. We missed this when it happened, but J Leman apparently signed with Carolina. Rock M Nation lampoons the Illini. And readers of my old blog will recognize this topic: The effect of the 2006 internet poker law on the field sizes at the WSOP.

Should I Stay Or Should I Go Now: Jacody Coleman

Oops Pow Surprise — Mon, 04 May 2009 12:00:16 -0000

(If, god forbid, you don't get the reference in the headline.)

We got a bit of a scare earlier when we found out that backup MLB Jacody Coleman, who had played extensively in 2007 as a true freshman, had decided to transfer after Pat Angerer had beaten him out for the spot (and put a stranglehold on it for 2009). It sort of made sense; it's not fun to stick around a team after you get demoted, regardless of whether it's merited.

But at the same time, he can choose to not play this season at all (which, let's be clear about this, SUCKS) and then play two seasons at some brand new school, play this season and next at a I-AA school (he's got a redshirt season to burn on a transfer, but that won't affect his "junior" status either way), or he can choose to barely play again this season and then--ostensibly--have one last season at the top of Iowa's depth chart.

OR, as Iowa's coaches have apparently convinced Coleman to do (check out that thread, specifically where Blair breaks the good news and the tone of the thread changes substantially), he can spend that redshirt/transfer year at Iowa, then use his last two seasons of eligibilty as the early favorite to start at MLB. So that's apparently what happened, which--if true--is great news for the program (especially since he was a member of the influential Leadership Council in 2008).

Why are we adamant that this is great news? Let's take the wayback machine to 2007; what if we'd told you this?

It looks like Pat Angerer is leaving the program. He didn't play much, he's had a history of injuries, and word around the program is that he's partying too much instead of focusing on football. He's not a 2-deep mainstay and wasn't projected to be a major loss. Next man in.

Honestly, nobody would have flinched at that 15 months ago; as a matter of fact, I halfway expected Angerer to leave the program. Attitudes change with playing time. It happens.

But a program like Iowa can't just keep bleeding 2-year veterans who haven't had a lot of playing time, replacing them with freshmen, and expecting Iowa to compete at high level. Doing so requires depth and experience, two things most freshmen just can't provide; no offense to the incoming kids or anything, but I'd say about 3-5 of them will play this season, and something would be wrong if that number rose.

So we'll see where the Coleman situation ends up, but for now, we're content to keep holding his #55 jersey. And again, that'll probably end up being a better thing than is immediately apparent right now.

The Takeaway: Iowa State

Oops Pow Surprise — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 00:01:30 -0000

Sure, Iowa just outlasted an underwhelming Iowa State team, 17-5. But how much do we really know? What was really important about beating ISU? What does it all mean, Basil? The Takeaway has the answer.

In the most gruesome play of the afternoon, Matt Kroul rips Iowa State quarterback Austin Arnaud's head off. No penalty was called, as Kroul did not grip the face mask.

The Hawkeye defense is as deep as it is tough. For the third time in as many games this season, Iowa held its opponent out of the end zone, limiting the Cyclones to five lousy points; ISU's points came from a made field goal and two pity points after kicker Grant Mahoney clanged a kick from 21 yards away.

The third quarter looked disturbingly similar to the first half of last season's Iowa-ISU game, where the ball was on Iowa's side of the field the whole time. This time, the Cyclones couldn't even put points on the board with special teams. All credit goes to what might end up being the stoutest defense in the conference. While most of the top-end talent is on the defensive line, there are no real weak spots in terms of athleticism, performance, or depth.

Nowhere is that more ably demonstrated than the secondary. If you'd told us that Jordan Bernstine would barely be on the two-deeps at this point, we'd be horrified at the prospects for the pass defense. Sure enough, as he recovers from hamstring problems, Bernstine is essentially the fourth corner on the depth chart, and those in front of him are showing no signs of relenting any snaps. Bradley Fletcher has improved demonstrably from last year, Amari Spievey is the surest tackler at CB for Iowa since Benny Sapp, and true freshman Shaun Prater was in at crunch time, breaking up ISU's last gasp in the back of the end zone on fourth down.

All in all, though Austen Arnaud seemed to pick apart the Iowa pass defense at times, the Clones couldn't get in the end zone again (it's been more than 10 quarters since they've hit pay dirt vs. Iowa), and the Iowa defense is now ranked third nationally in pass efficiency. Credit should also go to the linebackers, especially AJ Edds, but great pass defense starts in the secondary, and Iowa is rock-solid there.

Another example? Why, sure. Harold Dalton started all last season at strong safety, and he was no liability. Then, during spring practices, coaches frequently mentioned Dalton's backup, Lance Tillison (who, by the way, is jacked as hell), as a strong contender to start. So with both Tillison and Dalton healthy, the coaches started Tyler Sash, a freshman from Oskaloosa. Sash responded with 12 tackles, a key third-down sack, and a goal-line interception that he ran out to the one-yard-line before walking out of bounds. That was one boneheaded play in an otherwise brilliant debut for Sash, who should be a strong contender for the BXI's defensive player of the week honors.

Broderick Binns is also good.

You want more? We'll give you more. Pat Angerer's first two years at Iowa were disasters, last season marked by mononucleosis and a variety of injuries. He thought about quitting football, and few would have questioned him. He stayed, and on Saturday he usurped Jacody Coleman, who started multiple games as a true freshman last season in relief of Mike Klinkenborg. Angerer was flying around the field all day against ISU, but no play was bigger than him blowing up a screen pass on third and short with Iowa protecting a 10-3 lead. Iowa State was forced to punt, and this happened:

Ballgame.

Iowa's ground game is no longer a question mark. Shonn Greene's numbers look good on their own: 20 carries, 120 yards, one touchdown. That they came in the rain is seemingly no surprise, as rain is supposed to help a ground game (and let's be clear, in dry conditions, he doesn't sneak out of that tackle and gain 31 yards in the first quarter). But make no mistake, Greene would have easily topped 150 yards on a decent field yesterday.

Greene slipped several times on the slick surface, usually every time he tried to make a hard cut. Thanks to outstanding blocking from Bryan Bulaga and the rest of the offensive line, Greene rarely encountered any trouble near the line of scrimmage, and when he did, his strength was enough to carry him forward for respectable numbers. Perhaps ISU's just miserable in the front seven, but we're not so quick to discount the quality of what appears to be Iowa's most brutish ground game since the days of Nick Bell.

The Surgeon General recommends that you avoid trying to tackle Shonn Greene at all costs. Also, eat 4-6 servings of vegetables every day.

Iowa's passing game, on the other hand, is more of a concern than ever. Oh boy, where do we even start? How about Stanzi to Brodell in the first quarter? Having drawn ISU offsides on a hard count, Stanzi had a free play, and he rolled out to his right, looking long. There was Andy Brodell, who was laughably, insanely open. Rather than squaring his shoulders and planting his feet, Stanzi threw on the run, despite no evident pressure from the ISU rush. The pass sailed and missed Brodell by about three yards, and what should have been an easy touchdown to put the Cyclones down by 10 early instead fell to the ground harmlessly. A false start erased the five-yard bonus of the offsides call immediately afterwards, and the Iowa drive would end in an interception. Indeed, Iowa wouldn't see those points until the fourth quarter, well after the end of the Ricky Stanzi Experience.

Stanzi's overall numbers were as horrifying as his play seemed to indicate: 5-14, 75 yards, 0 touchdowns, two interceptions. The second pick was so ill-advised that Ferentz had no choice to bring in Christensen--it was a curl route into triple coverage that wouldn't have even garnered a first down on third and long. Stanzi sailed passes all game long, including one on third down in the end zone to an easily open Allen Reisner on the game's first drive. Between that and the Brodell debacle, Stanzi left 11 points off the board for Iowa on those two throws. It's tough to say whether Christensen would have erred so badly on the same two plays.

Christensen entered the game with one play remaining in the third quarter. He started the drive with a checkdown pass to Shonn Greene, who motored ahead for a first down, and later Christensen made arguably the most important move of the game without throwing the ball. Facing 3rd and a long 4 at the ISU 25, Christensen audibled to an off-tackle run for Greene, who took it inside the Clones' 5-yard-line. Greene scored on the next play, and Iowa had all the momentum from there on out.

Don't tackle him, it only makes him mad.

Christensen still looked shaky, though, despite converting four of his five passes. Only the pass to Greene resulted in over five yards or a first down, and Iowa went three and out while trying to protect that 10-3 lead late in the fourth.

Anyone who tells you right now who will start at Pittsburgh this Saturday is either guessing or lying. They don't know. Kirk Ferentz doesn't even know. So naturally we don't know. We do know that nobody was booing Jake when he came in this week, and nobody's going to be booing him for a while after Iowa hoisted that stupid-looking trophy that ought to be thrown into a volcano like some sort of reverse sucktastic Ring of Sauron. The QB race continues, and as long as Iowa keeps winning, that's just fine.

It may be a shitty trophy, but it's our shitty trophy.

Photo credits, top to bottom: John Schultz, Lee News Service/QC Times; John Schultz, Lee News Service/QC Times; Doug Dornath, HawkeyeSports.com; John Schultz, Lee News Service/QC Times; AP Photo/Charlie Niebergall; John Schultz, Lee News Service/QC Times