Iowa football: Three ways the Hawks need to improve before they face Wisconsin
By Andrew Wade
It can be tough to find issues with a dominating win, but the Iowa football team is not perfect. Here are three areas they need to work on before Saturday.
I’ll admit, after that great performance Saturday night that saw Hawks control the Northern Iowa Panthers from start to finish, it is tough to find areas that Iowa needs to approve. That doesn’t mean there are not improvement opportunities, just that the Iowa football team played so well for so much of the time, it can be easy to forget a few of their mistakes.
Against a team like Northern Iowa, mistakes won’t result in a loss. Against tougher teams like Wisconsin who plays a similar brand of football to Iowa, mistakes can be quite costly. Games against Wisconsin aren’t going to be 50-point games, so every opportunity to get on the board is important.
One of the fun things with this analysis each week is watching the Hawks actually come out and perform better in given areas.
Week one we noted that the passing game struggled and that Noah Fant wasn’t nearly as involved. Furthermore, the run defense performed poorly against Northern Illinois. Against the Cyclones, the Iowa football defense held First Team All-Big 12 running back David Montgomery to 44 yards on 17 carries.
We again noted after week two that within the passing game, Nate Stanley was really struggling and the play calling by Brian Ferentz was questionable at best.
Week three saw Nate Stanley play a solid all-around game and throw for the second most yards in his young Hawkeye career. Noah Fant busted out in a big way with a five catch, 99 yard performance, and Brian Ferentz showed a few wrinkles in Iowa’s offense that we don’t typically see (most notably the jet sweep, up tempo looks, and going for it on fourth down repeatedly).
So what can be improved on after the Iowa football team’s win over UNI? Let’s take a look.