Keeler: ISU’s Arnaud learns to stop beating himself up
Ames, Ia. — Tom Herman reckons that there are two types of problem athletes, the kind that make coaches want to pluck their hair out, follicle by follicle. The first is the golden boy, the gifted jerk who won’t listen because he never feels he has to.
The second is the dweller — someone who clings to a mistake so tightly that it sinks him, like an anchor, for the next two hours. Once he zones out, there’s not much chance of getting him back.
Austen Arnaud, Herman said, is the latter. Or rather, he was — until last September’s 35-3 home loss to rival Iowa.
“I think maybe after that game last year, the light bulb finally clicked with him,” Herman, Iowa State’s offensive coordinator, explained Monday. “We talk about it all the time: We’ll never ask him to win a game for us. Just don’t lose it.”
Football has a funny way of teaching lessons sometimes. The 2009 Big Game was Arnaud’s nadir as a collegian: four interceptions, 10 completions in 22 attempts. And yet it was hitting rock bottom that set the stage for the climb back to sea level.
In hindsight, Arnaud says, he was too jacked up, too amped, wound up tighter than the twine inside a baseball. It was his last home game against the Hawkeyes. His house. His hometown. His time. His moment. Or so he’d thought.
Emotions, unchecked, can cloud your judgment. And, in some cases, your vision.
“Just not seeing the rotations of the safeties,” Arnaud said when asked about what he’d missed against the Hawkeyes last fall.
“A couple of times where they caught me — and went one-high or two-high, and where I didn’t see it, and I should have. So I’ve just got to make sure I see the entire field and see what they’re doing.”
Herman: “I think he let the speed of the game and the hype and the energy of the game get to him a little bit. And it snowballed.”
Arnaud insists that he is kinder and gentler now, and settles more easily into the even keel that separates the great quarterbacks from their inconsistent brethren. Compared to a year ago, his release is tighter and quicker. His temper, less so. These are good things.
“I think, just my experience as an individual — before even sports, things with my famly,” explained Arnaud, who completed 27 of 36 throws in the Cyclones’ impressive season-opening win over Northern Illinois but also was picked off twice.
“Coaching changes and all that stuff. I’ve seen it all. So I buy into things, and I let people get close to me, but in the end, I’m a pretty independent person. I depend on myself to just get past that stuff.”
Since 2008, when Arnaud throws two or more interceptions in a game, Iowa State‘s record is 3-7. When it’s one or fewer? Seven wins and nine losses — and a 5-3 mark since the start of last year. The Hawkeyes force you to jab-jab-jab, to nibble, to nickel-and-dime it down the field. Impatient or overzealous signal-callers inevitably wind up losing their lunch money.
“And therein lies the challenge of making sure we have the quarterback prepared just to play his best game,” coach Paul Rhoads observed, “and not press and ‘make amends’ as you say. He’s just got to go out and perform and execute as one of 11.”
Beating Iowa at Kinnick Stadium is hard enough; beating yourself up along the way only makes it worse.
“He doesn’t mind a (butt)-ripping,” Herman said. “I think he’ll tell you that his own worst enemy, nine times out of 10, is himself.”
Letting go has its own rewards. Arnaud’s learned that, too. The hard way.
Category: Iowa Hawkeyes Football
