Iowa Football: Re-Visiting The Senior Day Loss To Purdue

Just when you thought this game could be a beat-down on senior-day, it turns into a nightmare, instantly.

After a meltdown in Madison, Wisconsin, just a week earlier, the Hawkeyes continue their offensive struggle against the Boilermakers of Purdue. Not only offense, but defensively, the Hawkeyes seem lost on an island. Things aren’t looking very good as we head into our final game of the season against Nebraska on Black Friday.

Iowa is looking for its first bowl win in nearly 7 years. With this level of play, that is not looking possible at all. It seems as if Iowa had used all their energy on the Ohio State game on the 4th., and that was the rest of the season’s worth. All that can be said is that the Hawks better figure something out, or this nightmare will continue for the rest of the year.

Another offensive slug-fest left them clueless under poor play-calling and dropped passes.

If there is one thing that can be said about 2017, it’s dropped passes. The Hawkeyes could be two more games in the win-column just solely on passes that should’ve been caught 10 times out of 10. We all understand that receivers drop here and there, but not as often as the Hawkeyes have in 2017. With this team being so young, there is obviously a lot of mistakes that need to be fixed. Although, after Ohio State, I thought we could beat ‘Bama. Half jokingly.

Nate Stanley threw 33 passes which were successfully hauled in 16 times. Stanley threw an interception and accounted for a single touchdown to Noah Fant. On the ground, Akrum Wadley ran 22 times and racked up 78 yards with a touchdown.  The leading receiver on the day was Nick Easley, most like always, with 5 receptions for 60 yards. Overall offensively, this looked worse than Wisconsin. As I say every week, it’s a young team, but the play-calling has been horrendous this past few weeks. Ever since Ohio State, we let off the gas a little bit. Whatever the issue may be needs to be fixed as soon as possible, especially for the bowl game.

The Hawkeye defense couldn’t stop the Boilers.

Josey Jewell lead the day with 3 tackes-for-loss and 2 sacks, 5 standalone tackles in total. With this being the final game on Kinnick Turf for the senior LB, it was a sad day, indeed. Although, he did in fact add a very nice clip to his highlight reel which got the stadium rocking.

The Hawkeyes accounted for zero turnovers defensively against Purdue. This was one of those games where the Purdue offense ran over the Hawks towards the end of the game, pushing to a 24-9 lead late in the fourth quarter. The Hawkeyes gave up 294 yards of total offense throughout this game, 229 passing, alone. With 7 minutes less than Iowa’s total time of possession, the Boilers still got it done.

The season is taking a dramatic downfall in the worst possible fashion.

As if the loss to Wisconsin wasn’t bad enough, the same happened against Purdue. Although, we got more than 66 yards, which is a plus, I guess. Overall, the Hawks seem slumped. Ohio State, again, I believe was the game we put it all into, and ran out for the rest of the year. However, the game against Nebraska looks promising, and the bowl game should hopefully be a good game if the Hawks come prepared. All we can do now is hope and pray this gets figured out.