Despite struggling initially, the Hawkeyes picked it up in the second half. In doing so, Kirk Ferentz became the winningest coach in Iowa football history.
If you joined the Big Ten Network’s broadcast of the Iowa Hawkeyes versus the NIU Huskies in the second half, you wouldn’t be able to tell that the first half was a complete buzz kill. The difference between the first and second half were night and day, and at the conclusion of the game, there were nothing but smiles on the faces of Iowa football fans all over.
There were a few good reasons for the smiles. First, the Hawkeyes survived and even thrived (in the second half) of a game that gave many fans worry heading into it. Iowa hasn’t done well against NIU in recent history, and a team like NIU is more than capable of closing out the game if you keep them in it. Fortunately, the Hawks rallied in the second half.
The second, and arguably the more historically relevant achievement of the day, is that Iowa’s head coach Kirk Ferentz became the winningest head coach in the history of the football program. With the NIU victory, Kirk reached 144 wins. This is the best mark in program history and tied for 67th all-time.
It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows initially for the Hawks. The much-hyped offense led by Junior quarterback Nate Stanley and preseason All-American Noah Fant looked off to start the game. Mental errors, dropped passes, and turnovers hurt the Hawkeyes, but the defense managed to keep them in the game.
Weirdly enough, the defense didn’t start off strong either, but benefited from well-timed turnovers and multiple missed field goals. This was to be expected, however, that the defense will have some growing pains as they figure out who the three starting linebackers will be. Furthermore, the defensive line was gashed in the running game a few times, but easily was the strength of the defense and came up with multiple clutch pressures throughout the game.
At the end of the first half, the Hawkeyes were only up 3-0. The tweet below sums up the lackluster play pretty well.
It's not even coach speak to say Iowa has plenty of things to clean up. A couple of holding calls, at least 3 legit dropped passes, 2 whiffed blocks on fourth-and-1, way too many missed tackles from interior LBs. Still, a 3-0 halftime lead.
— Scott Dochterman (@ScottDochterman) September 1, 2018
Heading into the second half, hopes were high that the Hawks could pick it up. Needless to say they did. It took the offense 37 minutes to finally score the first touchdown of 2018, but after that, touchdowns were coming quickly.
Nate Stanley connected with Noah Fant on a one-yard touchdown pass before the running game really picked up. Ivory Kelly-Martin and Toren Young both scored in the next nine minutes to give the Iowa football team a 24-0 nothing lead.
The defense stepped up and secured a safety in the middle of the fourth before giving way to a few of the backups to come in and get some reps. The scoring, however, didn’t stop. Redshirt freshman Peyton Mansell led the second-team offense on a scoring drive that was capped by a 1-yard touchdown run by Mansell.
The defense only allowed one touchdown throughout the entire game coming on in garbage time with two minutes remaining. The final score for the day was 33-7.