The Career of J.D. Clark (NCAA 14)

[Hellisan]

Coaching Carousel Coverage

Alabama keeps Howell;
Michigan, Georgia, and Cal hire new coaches

There weren't a ton of big teams hiring new coaches this year.

Alabama extended the contract of Nick Howell but it probably wasn't an easy call. The Crimson Tide have been just a shell of their former selves over the past few years, and a 7-6 record last year wasn't anything to celebrate. Nevertheless, the school saw enough in their late season performances, including a near upset of Iowa, to keep Howell. Howell isn't likely to do much with his Level 3 game management and Level 8 recruiting.

Michigan hired coach Todd Orlando, who was head coach at Georgia State as they surprisingly finished in the Top 10 this year. Orlando parlayed his A+ prestige rating into a spot in the Big Ten. He replaces Eliah Drinkwitz, who has played a role similar to that of a doctor assisting in his patient's suicide in his time at Michigan. For Michigan's sake, this needs to be the right hire as Michigan has been so bad for so long that their name and image aren't quite what they used to be. Orlando runs a spread offense and a 4-3 defense. Orlando was an offensive coordinator by trade and will need to build up his game management and especially his recruiting skills if he is to give Coach Clark any trouble on the recruiting trail.

Georiga has dug up the grave of Gary Patterson (how is he only 61!?) and put him in charge of their football program. Patterson will bring his 4-2-5 defense to Athens as well as his Level 18 game management including Big Game and Coachstradamus into the fold, as well as Level 13 recruiting.

Cal (5-star prestige) had a horrible year and fired Rod Carey as a result. They have hired Karl Massey, former offensive coordinator at USC, to fill the position.

Notable Names

Skipping to some guys I've heard of before....

Major Applewhite was named the head coach at Bowling Green. Hew as 9-4 at UAB and felt that Bowling Green would be a better job for him... Apparently.

Nick Rolovich, formerly an assistant on Coach Clark's staff, has accepted the head coahcing job at Maryland after going 9-5 at San Diego State last year. Yep... All of us dynasty heads are a just a little worried about this move. He gave up California recruiting for the Maryland job? We wish him well in getting Maryland back on their feet.

Lincoln Riley has been hired by NC State as a head coach. Tim DeRuyter (another former assistant of Coach Clark's) was fired. Riley has awesome offensive coordinator skills. Now the question is whether he has what it takes in the ACC.

Phil Parker (Iowa's DC last season) was hired away to be the head coach at San Diego State. Parker's name got around thanks to the 12-2 season Iowa had. Iowa in response has hired Victor Brown, formerly the DC at TCU (9-4 last year) as their DC.

UCLA has hired Sonny ****s to be their offensive coordinator. He will take on a ton of talent that has been assembled by the brilliant mind of Jim Mora Jr. over the years. Being serious now, Mora has gone 105-43 in his 11 years at NCAA.

[Hellisan]

Khayman Chia to Stay another year

Junior defensive end Khayman Chia had plans to go pro and was a projected 3rd round pick. Knowing Chia's work ethic Clark promised him that if he stayed he would be at least a 2nd round pick. Another part of the pitch: Clark promised he would not regret staying to get his college degree. Chia will return for his senior season which is a huge boost for the team. As an aside it's cool when a player's extra ratings coincide with his actions. I haven't been able to convince many players not to leave early and with his incredible citizenship rating (which in my mind encompasses program loyalty) it should be no surprise he was open to the discussion. Chia needs 12 sacks this season to tie the school record of 42 sacks, set by Jared DeVries. (Note: NCAA says 42 and Wikipedia says 43. We'll go with what the NCAA says because I'm not that 4N4L.

Freshman WR from Hiawatha to transfer to NIU

Freshman wide receiver Matthew Rexroth will transfer to NIU due to lack of playing time. Rexroth redshirted this season. Clark saw promise in Rexroth and wants to give chances to Iowa recruits, however there is typically better talent in other states and they are expected to work hard to earn spots, not complain after one year on the bench. After a discussion with Rexroth, Clark felt it was best not to push the issue. Rexroth will no longer be within 30-40 minutes of his home town, but family will be able make the trip out to DeKalb, just outside Chicago, in 3 to 4 hours.

Injury Departure and Discipline Dismissal

Defensive end Jordan Parsons had the best speed of any defensive lineman on the team, and earned a pair of sacks in little time on the field at the end of his freshman year and beginning of his sophomore year. Although not a starter, the team saw a role for him coming off the bench to provide energy and speed off the edge this season. Parsons earned a sack, but was badly injured in the same game, and his career is over at Iowa.

Freshman tackle Quay Fellows got in trouble a few times in class and on campus. Eventually, he had a falling out with Coach Clark and even when contacted at home following a dismissal from the team, he no longer made himself available to the team from a distance. Therefore, he was cut.

#37 Kenard Goodman, #60 Tyris Wyckoff, and #83 Lukas Halligan

Other Players Leaving

WR Matthew Rexroth - Transfer, NIU
LT Quay Fellows - Dismissed from Team
C Scott Rollins - Graduation

RT Derek Walton - Graduation - Walton was the rare walk-on that gets a chance to start. He improved a lot and was slated to start, but got rocked in his first start, and Alec Gehlhausen stepped in. It wasn't necessarily the way Gehlhausen played that led to Walton never getting another shot. Walton was 6'2" and despite weighing near 300 lbs. was manhandled so thoroughly that it was a little eye opening. Gehlhausen looks more the part. However, the long absences from doing this chise made me forget about the storylines to some extent, and I would have liked to get him some extra time in blowouts or something and see how he responded.

[Hellisan]

Don't believe what you heard -
Iowa have signed their best class ever

Signing day is tomorrow. I've been digging, begging, spying, and rumor mongering to the best of my ability and I'm confident in saying that this recruiting class is going to take Iowa to new heights. Iowa hauled in the #1 class in the nation last year on paper, but few of those players contributed significantly to the team this season. Iowa might not be called the #1 class again this year - Suburban Meyer and OSU or Brian Kelly at Notre Dame might have something to say about that. Comparing last year's Iowa class to this one: There Ain't No Comparison. Whatsoever.

Looking at the classes, and assuming I knew nothing about what Nick Vessel did this year (pretty good) and even considering the promise offered by players like Harkless, Joshua Mack the quarterback who redshirted, 5-star DE Jordan Kijenmij (they don't have a 5-star in this class).... Looking at these players on tape, I would take at least four, and as many as seven players before I would take any of last year's players. This class is that good. I'd put it up against Ohio State's class sight unseen.

This is literally the best class in the history of Iowa football. And like... take my hand, and let's go back 10 years to a time when the term "literally," uh... meant something. Like LITERALLY.

I honestly don't know how anyone will stop this team in a couple of years with the talent they have and the talent they're adding to it, and I'm pumped AF! My only concern is they have signed so many players and lost so few that it might be difficult to figure out who to cut.

My favorite player in the class is TE Hayden Polk out of Grapevine, TX. It's difficult to know which former Hawkeye to compare him to, but a Dallas Clark type is what I'm thinking of now. Tight end U!

I think CB Laterion Thomas, OLB Dez Dillon, DT Jerry Adams, and at least one of the offensive linemen they signed will start immediately. Go past those top tier guys, and there's a massive amount of depth beneath them. Players like 4-star MLB Willie Nelson, TE Sal Hernandez who is just massive, and a host of other solid players are in line behind them.

And don't sleep on my boy Seth Bodensteiner out of Decorah! Go Vikes!

Strap it on because this season is going to be sick.

Joe is a new writer. Let us know if you can stand him enough for us to keep him. Joe played football at Decorah then attended Iowa, smashing kids in intramurals. Joe wanted to be a scout in either baseball or football but he and his wife started pumping out so many children that it just wasn't feasible.

[Hellisan]

[Hellisan]

It's the annual time where I shill for the usage of some type of progression / potential regression system because I feel it is a lot of fun and leads to a much more realistic looking and feeling roster. I see that there are some cool options that people are doing for College Football Revamped that could just be worked right into it if you're working on PC. That looks super promising and hope to try it out one day. But using an existing dynasty that I don't want to chance screwing with, that is for the future, for me.

I have a thread detailing how I do mine somewhere in the NCAA forum if you're interested in seeing how it works.

I added one column above, there, to what was there before. EXP Train, or expected training/improvement. It's really simple, it just means that of the range that player's ETH (work ethic) grants him as the random roll, that is the expected mean improvement if you rolled a bunch of times. We had an astoundingly good training session overall, I think it is the luckiest one yet. The sum of the expected training for the players was 180, and we got 209 points of improvement. All players had an average training of 3.9, and the players that had at least one point of improvement (rather than regression) averaged 4.27,

Where we obviously got unlucky was that 1) the QB's rolled horrible improvement, 2) Larry Lloyd rolled a zero, 3) Khayman Chia who I promised would be drafted a round higher next year rolled a zero improvement... Well, we can complain all we want but both of our top corners had awesome improvement and are (on paper) complete shutdown cornerbacks now. My strong safety rolled a +10, and should continue to improve well every year with his 95 Work ethic rating.

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Cuts

Walk-on Cuts

HB Chase Simpson - Evergreen Park, IL >> CUT <<
WR Darius Richardson - JUCO SO - Fenton, MI >> CUT <<
OLB Antonio Edmonds - University West, FL - >> CUT <<
CB Jason Butler - Englewood, CO >> CUT <<

Team Cuts

SS Kevin Miranda - Extremely low Work Eth, low speed >> CUT <<
T Darren Bower - Poor CSH & ETH - Very poor IL KID (we have plenty from IL) >> CUT <<
DT Chris Wilson - SLOW, low Citizenship AZ Kid (not a pipeline) >> CUT <<
MLB Ryan Sagbo - Low Citizenship, Not any good >> CUT <<


Preseason Transfer
Cut that I recreated on Penn State

C.J. Terry - left on own accord - JR, 6'4" 231 - #84 preferred number
81 OVR, 74 SPD, 75 STR, 67 AGI, 82 ACC, 72 AWR, 79 BTK, 77 TRK, 68 ELU, 76 BCV, 71 SFA, 68 SPM, 69 JKM, 68 CAR, 77 CTH, 76 SPC, 88 CIT, 83 RTE, 80 JMP, 79 RLS, 72 PBK, 77 RBK, 74 IBL, 63 RET, 81 STA, 83 INJ

CJ Terry was our starting TE for the last two years. The first year it seemed like he was going to have a nice career wearing the black and yellow. The second year, he didn't improve in the offseason at all and led the team in drops in the second half of the season, including on a few key third downs. When Terry saw that we had recruited a pair of TE he brought his concerns to coach Clark, who did little to assure him that he would be the starter; He would need to work hard and compete against the new players in the spring.

Terry decided to transfer, and selected Penn State which has a dearth of TE at the present time. He is projected to be their opening day starter.

[Careless Whisper]

I missed a good bit over the last couple of weeks it seems like!

Solid, albeit sloppy win in the bowl game. Although it's good to finish the year out with a win, I'm sure the end of the season was frustrating with the loss to Michigan State and then playing one of your non-conference opponents in a non-BCS bowl - maybe it's just me, but I would've liked to play someone new and fresh in the bowl, especially when you're shut out of the biggest ones.

NCAA's CPU playcalling remains baffling at the end of games, regardless of the game's year - good to see the OC's idiocy didn't cost USC. Great uniform matchup between USC and LSU... really wish we would've gotten that game in 2003.

Love love love your season overviews. So much depth to everything and the synopsis is great - provides the perfect overview of how the season went. Definitely agree that 12 wins is pretty impressive for a "down" year.

Iowa's athletics website says the sack record is 42, so good call using that mark. Hoping that Khayman Chia reaches that numbers because of his name alone.

Joe wasn't kidding about this recruiting class - it is LOADED. Feel like you did well avoiding bust as well outside of Hernandez, which doesn't matter all that much with signing of Hayden Polk. Fitting that only Ohio State put together a better class - love the wrinkles you've added about Urban Meyer and the rivalry that's becoming.

I didn't realize Harkless had that low of an overall, and completely forgot you had Joshua Mack potentially waiting in the wings. Could you see Mack taking over the starting role this year? If so, does Harkless return to his package role or does he have any attributes that would allow him to help at another position?

[Hellisan]

Quote: Originally Posted by Careless Whisper

I missed a good bit over the last couple of weeks it seems like! I was pumped to get back into the swing of things with the dynasty but as usual instead of just being happy with slow progress I wanted to see out the season and then get into a more slow-paced update schedule. I forgot just how much work it is but yes, I've been on one, weekends and everything lol. Solid, albeit sloppy win in the bowl game. Although it's good to finish the year out with a win, I'm sure the end of the season was frustrating with the loss to Michigan State and then playing one of your non-conference opponents in a non-BCS bowl - maybe it's just me, but I would've liked to play someone new and fresh in the bowl, especially when you're shut out of the biggest ones. There's something weird going on with Iowa, and that is we just seem to get shut out of BCS games and kicked to the Capital One Bowl if we're not in the BCS game. Oh well. It's pretty annoying admittedly. I was happy for the chance at revenge against Auburn, as they beat us in the regular season. So I didn't care where it was. I was determined to run up the score which seems funny now. They had a really, really tough D and the conditions sucked for offense. At the end I was just glad to hang on for the W. NCAA's CPU playcalling remains baffling at the end of games, regardless of the game's year - good to see the OC's idiocy didn't cost USC. Great uniform matchup between USC and LSU... really wish we would've gotten that game in 2003. It was a fun game to watch, I should really watch more games or see if I can get work done while they're on in the background. But yeah crazy call at the end, I was gonna be bummed for USC because they really outplayed LSU. If they played again I'd take LSU because their offense couldn't be that pathetic back to back I don't think. Love love love your season overviews. So much depth to everything and the synopsis is great - provides the perfect overview of how the season went. Definitely agree that 12 wins is pretty impressive for a "down" year. Thanks bro. I know how tough it can be to find time to read dynasties since just finding the time for any updates at all is rare for me, so I wanted to give people something they could look at and not feel obliged to click every page, but yet quickly find an interesting game. It's as much for me as anyone else. I'm the absent minded type and forget unimportant things pretty quickly so sometimes I need a primer on old games etc. Iowa's athletics website says the sack record is 42, so good call using that mark. Hoping that Khayman Chia reaches that numbers because of his name alone. Joe wasn't kidding about this recruiting class - it is LOADED. Feel like you did well avoiding bust as well outside of Hernandez, which doesn't matter all that much with signing of Hayden Polk. Fitting that only Ohio State put together a better class - love the wrinkles you've added about Urban Meyer and the rivalry that's becoming. Urban is my example for why it isn't necessarily cheese to have a consistent winning team, and comparing and contrasting his record compared to mine (in a freaking video game!) makes me feel like there is some element of realism to this. His record as a college coach is astonishing. Even now, with the run Iowa has been on, we're still not all that great against Top 25 teams, in conference championship games, etc. Home wins and bowl game wins are a strong suit. But Urban beats them all. I didn't realize Harkless had that low of an overall, and completely forgot you had Joshua Mack potentially waiting in the wings. Could you see Mack taking over the starting role this year? If so, does Harkless return to his package role or does he have any attributes that would allow him to help at another position? The plan is actually Mack as the starter, yes. He improved, and the others didn't, and now there is a decent gap in talent because he's a little faster and more elusive than Harkless. He can absolutely run a lot of the read game as well and has way better AWR. However, I love the idea of Harkless in Heavy shotgun here and there, especially when Larry gets tired. He'll definitely still be involved. Hark could probably (I don't have all the ratings in front of me) play linebacker at some schools however not at Iowa :-) I'm actually gonna look at see if he could help us as a fullback or something I don't think he can block at all.

Bro, thanks so much for checking in, I have been waiting to get the preseason updates and maybe my first week game in and then I'm going to hit the brakes, catch back up with everybody else, and not be so pell mell.

[Hellisan]

Rudy Geiland, Staff Writer

Mack the new QB as offense reboots

Harris Jr., Mack, and Lloyd are making headlines this Spring

Larry Lloyd has big goals for his final season at Iowa

Here we go. One shot for "Larry Legend," or "Feed me Larry," or any number of nicknames to have the season we all know he's capable. Say it with us: He just has to remain healthy.

"The difficult thing for Larry hasn't been that he's been hurt. Everybody gets hurt. It's that he's gotten hurt badly enough that he can't return, twice now. Not to tempt fate but that's very unlikely to happen three seasons in a row. He might get dinged up here or there but we think he'll be ready to go the distance this season. He's in as good a shape as he's ever been, and he looks more explosive than he ever has."

Larry Lloyd has played in just 15 of the 28 games in his career, but really he was injured less than halfway through one of those, so he has played in about half the games. That's not good enough for him.

"I'm looking for big things this year," said Lloyd. "I want to work hard and remain healthy. I think my luck holds out this year. The goal is to double my career numbers this season. That's it."

Reading between the lines, Lloyd is therefore looking for a 2,000 yard season as he has run for just over 2,000 yards in his career so far. If he can do it, the Hawks would have their best shot at lifting some serious hardware at the end of the year.



Mack named starting QB

Iowa QB Joshua Mack redshirted his freshman year after having his heart set on starting as a true freshman. He doesn't regret it.

"That's true, I definitely felt as though I was going to win the job as a true freshman. I'll always be confident in that way, try not to be cocky, but that's just me. I felt I was going to be the man right away. It wasn't to be, so we went to plan B and it worked out well. I was able to learn more from the sideline than I ever would have thought possible. I asked a lot of questions, they never got tired of me doing that and I worked hard to study the playbook and learn it as well as I can.," said Mack.

Coach J.D. Clark said Mack simply looked like the starter in spring practices and the spring game and that's what won him over .

"We knew he was a solid player and he performed admirably. There was a sense of normalcy there. He can run the offense and do everything we need him to do, so he's going to start the season for us there."

Anticipating the question, Clark was still every positive about the starter at the end of last year, Antwione Harkless..

"This doesn't mean that Hark doesn't get any shot this year. He's going to see the field. He's going to be ready to come in if we struggle. There's every chance he could play as much or more as he did last year, he just has to compete. And we've seen him do that before, to a high level."



Harris Jr. has been one of the surprises of camp

In addition to a new quarterback, the Hawkeyes will start with a new fullback. Nathan Richardson has been the starter for the entire time he has been at Iowa, however he will find himself starting on the bench this season.

Clark faces a new challenge this year to fill a certain position his offense requires, and that is chiallenging the defense with covering the short passing game.

Kenard Goodman was a great receiver out of the backfield and did a pretty good job of keeping teams honest or occasionally making the big play in the passing game. While the current group of running backs, led by Lloyd, has its strengths, catching the ball is not one of them. And while Richardson is fine at catching the ball, he wasn't doing enough with his chances in the end.

J.J. Harris, Jr. is getting a shot to do more than Richardson did. Harris has been seen lining up all over the offense so that Coach Clark can see what he can do. From running back to fullback to tight end, to H back, Harris has been doing it all.

"He has been a sparkplug for us this spring," confirmed Clark. "He's just a player with a litlte bit of extra zip, who can make things happen and we're going to need him to do that."

Clark cited the short area quickness and hands of Harris as the biggest factors for him gaining the role.

"He gets moving NOW," said Clark. "Not after a few steps. For a big guy (6'0", 261 lbs) that is a huge deal. In the blocking game he is getting through the line and peeling off for a block like we haven't seen anyone do. In the run game, he's quick an decisive, a real problem when the defense knows how bad Larry can hurt them with the long gainer."

Harris has noticeably quicker feet than Richardson and really gets into and out of his cuts a lot more quickly. Hopefully, he can stick at the position and bring the passing game threat the team needs.

2023 Offensive Preview