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Campbell? Meh
BleachedAnusDawg
Member, Swaye's Wigwam Posts: 10,601
Don't want a guy who sets low expectations for his team and who, with 20 starters returning, significantly regresses coming off of a surprise Fiesta Bowl. They had a Heisman finalist running back, the best quarterback in school history, the preseason favorite to win the Mackey Award, and the Big 12 DPOY all back this year and were mediocre.
Campbell clearly didn't have his guys ready to handle expectations this year. No thanks.
Campbell clearly didn't have his guys ready to handle expectations this year. No thanks.
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He's 30-23 in conference (he was 24-8 in conference at Toledo).
He also has a top 25 recruiting class coming in.
Let's not make the perfect the enemy of the good enough.
That being said, 0-6 vs rival Iowa is terrible. As is most of '21 in general, and yes I never put stock into close losses. Loser doog talk.
UW could do 800x worse than this dude though. Two separate programs winning well above expectations, with both stops long enough to show he didn't get lucky or just ride a hot QB or senior laden team. He has recruited and developed and generally been pretty decent.
Unless you think Texas Tech hitting a last second 62 yard fg was somehow Campbell’s responsibility?
The best way to win close games is to not get into hem in the first place.
& 0-6 versus Iowa is almost disqualifying. You can spin a lot of bullshit about Iowa state being a little sister or the poor (yes, true), but that’s baffling.
Campbell is benefiting from the hype of last year, & the fact that there just aren’t many consensus “next great thing” coaches on the market right now.
That said, I fully expect he will be the hire (Campbell doesn’t want the bright lights of USC), and I will accordingly doog, if only because it will be viewed as a big dick hire, even if not fully justified.
In his favor, that he has a top 25 class at ISU gives me some hope.
That said those with money aren’t going to let Jen throw money around on mediocrity
Let's start with the "Coach Speak" comments ...
The comments in the presser are coach speak to the media and that's that. Moreover, as many of you probably don't want to hear, the most important thing for a coach to establish is process and consistency within the program ... do that and the results tend to follow. I'm not going to say that winning and losing doesn't matter, but the reality is that Iowa State's probably been a bit on the unlucky side this year. In their 5 losses, they've lost by a total of 29 points and all 4 of their conference losses (all on the road) being by a TD or less. In some respects, their season this year reminds me a lot of the '88/'89 seasons for UW. In '88, UW was 6-5 and lost their 5 games by 15 points. In '89, UW was 8-4, lost 3 of the 4 games by a total of 13 points, and the other game was a loss to the national champion.
There's probably some PTSD from Jimmy talking in his pressers about being one play away, one call away, etc. and Grandpappy Race would just tell you winners win and losers lose and there's some truth to that. But if we're being honest here, I think most of us with a brain know that there's a difference between losing competitive games where you can point to a couple of items that swung the outcome and getting your ass blown out the way that Oregon did at Utah.
Campbell's lost 3 games in the last 5 years by more than 10 points:
2018: at Texas 24-10 ... this was the Texas team that beat Georgia in the Sugar Bowl
2019: Notre Dame 33-9 ... Camping World Bowl with a ND team that was 11-2
2020: Louisiana 31-14 ... 1st game coming out of COVID and I'm willing to basically not pay too much attention to anything last year
When you factor in the fact that this is being done at Iowa State (which is a bottom 10 P5 job in the entire country to be honest) ... that's damn impressive
Let's talk about the record vs Iowa ...
If you really want to put a flag on Campbell, this would be the one that I would put out there as being valid. But here's the thing, after throwing out the first year as the initial part of the rebuild, the other 4 losses have been by a total of 24 points and included an OT loss and a 1 point loss. Another thing, in each of those 4 years by SRS Iowa has had the higher rated team ... so what we're really complaining about is the equivalent of the Cougs beating UW. Did not beating UW make Leach a bad coach? Iowa State has a number of challenges to start with ... then add to it that it's the clear #2 school in a state that isn't producing substantial CFB caliber talent?
In the end, I'll note that you want Campbell to perform better against his rival. If he was to get the UW job, a 5 game losing streak against Oregon isn't going to endear himself to anybody. But if this is the biggest red flag that you can find on somebody, then you should be in a full fledged praying Doog pose hoping that he's the choice.
2021 - What Happened?
I watch a lot of Big 12 football and in particular I've watched a lot of Iowa State because my affinity for Matt Campbell and what he has done at Iowa State is well known. To say that they've been snake bitten this year is an understatement. Against Baylor, they fell apart in special teams and failed to tie the game late in the 4th on a 2 point conversion. Against West Virginia, you're looking at arguably the most home cooked officiating game of the year. At Texas Tech they lose to a 62 yard FG. Against Oklahoma they get gashed early in the game for a long TD, have a strip fumble TD given up, and still have a chance to go tie/win the game at the end. It's seemed like one of those years that what could go wrong has gone wrong.
To the average outsider, the Big 12 race this year is a 3 way one with Okie Lite, Oklahoma, and Baylor ... but the in-conference numbers tell you that Iowa State is right there in that mix ...
Offensive Stats:
Yards per Carry = 4.97 (5th, Oklahoma 1st at 5.30)
Yards per Pass Attempt = 7.93 (6th, TCU 1st at 9.25)
Yards per Completion = 10.97 (8th, TCU 1st at 13.87)
Completion % = 72.3% (1st)
Yards per Offensive Play = 6.47 (3rd, Oklahoma 1st at 7.10)
Points per Game = 33.1 (4th, Oklahoma 1st at 36.1)
Plays per Turnover = 68 (2nd, Oklahoma St 1st at 87)
Defensive Stats:
Yards per Carry = 4.32 (5th, Oklahoma St 1st at 2.55)
Yards per Pass Attempt = 7.44 (3rd, Oklahoma St 1st at 5.94)
Yards per Completion = 11.91 (5th, Oklahoma St 1st at 10.91)
Completion % = 62.5% (3rd, Oklahoma St 1st at 54.5%)
Yards per Defensive Play = 5.70 (4th, Oklahoma St 1st at 4.13)
Points per Game = 23.8 (4th, Oklahoma St 1st at 13.1)
Plays per Turnover = 45 (3rd, Baylor 1st at 41)
Combined Stats:
Yards per Play Differential (Offense - Defense): 0.78 (4th, behind Oklahoma St, Oklahoma, Baylor)
Scoring Differential: 9.4 (3rd, behind Oklahoma St and Baylor)
Turnover Margin: +3 (T-2nd, 1 behind Oklahoma, tied with Oklahoma St and Baylor)
So basically, when you look at every major stat in the conference this year, Iowa St is an upper half team. The only area that Iowa State isn't is when it comes to explosive offensive plays ... which I'd be willing to bet you gets fixed with BETTER PLAYERS (which comes from moving from Iowa State to a better school).
Conclusion
Bottom line, you can see the improvement and leveling up of Iowa State under Campbell's tenure. Recruiting is where he levels up Iowa State from there and who knows where they end when all is said and done but they are Top 25 right now for the 2022 class and has players coming in from all over (Florida to Arizona). This class is a significant level up from prior classes stemming from that NY6 win over Oregon that validated what Campbell's been doing and opening doors. You give him the platform that he has at UW and you're going to get strong results.
There are a lot of similarities here to the best that Chris Petersen had. A big difference here is that Campbell is far more aggressive and operates with a perpetual chip on his shoulder. If anything, this year was a great lesson for him and his team of handling the attention and being the hunted instead of the hunters. There is absolutely nothing in Campbell's resume that doesn't suggest that he'll take lessons from this and be better for it going forward.
This would be an absolute home run hire for UW ... we should all be jumping up and down if Matt Campbell is the next UW Head Coach.
I'm hearing a lot of excuses for a guy who couldn't win close games all year with a team that was pre-season top-10. If those were his results at UW this season we'd want him gone for being a choke artist.
That's the part you're missing. It's fucking Iowa State. Ames, IA. Still not convinced it's an actual city, I'll have to take everyone's word for it. Until Campbell got there, it was one of the top 3 schools you always forgot existed in a power 5 conference. The intra-conference talent disparity that exists there makes his 41-33 record far more impressive than an identical record at a G5 school in a mid major conference. How that translates to a school with actual resources like UW is always a crapshoot, but it's about as good of a fucking bet as we're going to get.