Iowa football recap: Special teams turnovers ruin potential Wisconsin upset
By Andrew Wade
The Iowa football program took on the Wisconsin Badgers Saturday night in a key Big Ten West matchup. Unfortunately the end result was a 28-17 loss for Iowa.
The Iowa football team and the Wisconsin football team are the two front-runners for the Big Ten West title this season, and throughout most of Saturday night’s contest, it appeared Iowa would be claiming victory. A series of special teams mistakes and turnovers, however, set the Hawks back as Wisconsin in this pivotal matchup. Here is a recap of Saturday night’s game.
Iowa versus Wisconsin is truly a test of the trenches. Whichever team typically wins in the trenches will take home the Heartland Trophy. Saturday night was a weird one though.
While Wisconsin’s All-American offensive line was able to bulldoze a path for Wisconsin rushers leading to 210 yards on 44 carries, the Iowa defense stopped Wisconsin when it mattered. Seven drives would end in punts for the Wisconsin Badger program. The other four drives ended in touchdowns but only two of those occasions were a result of a well-led Alex Hornibrook drive.
Unfortunately, one of those four was the result of bad special teams play and the other was because Iowa desperately needed a stop late in the game after losing the lead to Wisconsin. Wisconsin just called the perfect play that led to a 33-yard touchdown scamper by Alec Ingold.
In a game that Iowa had to play perfect football to come away victorious, they just flat-out weren’t. There were two key issues on special teams. The first of which came after a fantastic punt return by Kyle Groeneweg towards the end of the second quarter where he netted 23 yards before inexplicably fumbling the ball without taking much of a hit. Wisconsin would recover the fumble, and the Iowa football defense would force a three and out.
The Iowa football team was not as fortunate on the next special teams mistake. Early in the third with Iowa leading 10-7, the Badgers punted to the Hawkeyes. Returner Groeneweg decided to not catch it, but reserve linebacker Shaun Beyer accidentally hit the ball as he was attempting to seal a block. Wisconsin pounced on the ball and would score three players later.
Iowa would answer the calling with a 8-play, 75-yard touchdown drive of their own to put the Hawks in the lead 17-14 with the fourth quarter remaining left to play.
The Hawkeyes and Badgers would swap punts twice each before the Badgers managed to sustain a drive late in the fourth. Their ten play, 88-yard touchdown drive was gut-wrenching to watch like watching the 2015 Big Ten Conference Championship game all over again. Wisconsin would score with less than a minute remaining.
On Iowa’s comeback drive attempt that could have helped build on Nate Stanley’s legacy, the Hawks faltered. On a key third down play, Stanley rocketed a ball (on a pass that needed more touch than speed) off of Ihmir Smith-Marsette’s hands and right into the Badgers hands.
This game was incredibly frustrating for an Iowa fan base who knows how special this team can be. Iowa won two of the three key matchups in this game, and still walked away with an empty feeling in their stomachs. Kirk summed it up pretty nicely in his post-game press conference.
"They played clean football tonight and they played good football. A couple things, I mean typically they’re pretty good about being smart with the ball, securing the ball. They do play good field position football. That’s where our turnover really cost us. We had the ball up near mid field there, so you don’t get many of those possessions against Wisconsin typically. We had one and then squandered it with the turnover there. Yeah, so if you don’t take advantage of those opportunities or make the little mistakes — and obviously the punt that hit our guy, that’s a bad play for us. So, but a couple of those and that is the difference in the game, really."
This is not how the Hawkeyes wanted to head into a bye week before embarking on a difficult portion of their schedule where they will be on the road four of the next five games. Over the next few days we will continue our post-game analysis pieces on the Wisconsin game before turning our focus on our longest standing rival, the Minnesota Gophers.