Iowa football: Three areas that need improvement after win over ISU

Brian Ferentz

We won’t harp on this too long, but the offense has just looked bad. Anytime there is a good play, the offense manages to mess it up the next time. For example, after Ihmir Smith-Marsette’s long catch Saturday, there was a false start penalty. The one thing the Iowa offense is consistent about is ruining momentum.

I have all the respect in the world for Brian Ferentz, but his play calling is unimaginative and his offense looks flat in general. If it’s not Stanley misfiring a pass, it’s Noah Fant dropping a ball, or the backs failing to find running room.

Thankfully, Toren Young and Mekhi Sargent ran patiently enough to eventually find holes and attack otherwise there would have been almost zero positive takeaways from the offense. The Twitter world also wasn’t happy.

Maybe my expectations are too high for a former Bill Bilichick disciple, but I want more creativity. Let’s not run the ball every single first down. Take a few more shots down the field to one of our two game changing tight ends.

Take advantage of Nick Easley’s deceptive speed. Do something because what’s been going on isn’t working. With a game against UNI, we are likely not to see any major improvements in this, but to beat a great Wisconsin team, Ferentz will need to pull a few more tricks out of the cupboard.

As always, it wasn’t all bad in the victory, and we covered the three standouts from this past weekend yesterday. These are just opportunities for improvement within Iowa. Let’s hope they spend some time working on these areas this week in practice.