Iowa football: Three things that went wrong vs Purdue Boilermakers

The Iowa football lost to the Purdue Boilermakers on a last second field goal Saturday. Here is what went wrong before that led to the loss.

Saturday’s contest was a must-win game for the Iowa football team if they wanted to win the Big Ten West. Sitting with two losses, they essentially controlled their destiny.

A win Saturday over Purdue gave the Boilermakers three losses and Iowa the tiebreaker. A win next week over Northwestern gave the Wildcats two losses and Iowa the tiebreaker. All that was needed was the Badgers to lose one more game this season, which seems pretty doable.

The Hawkeyes potentially magical season, however, went down in flames Saturday. Despite playing from behind most of the game against Purdue, the Iowa football team fought back with the help of some timely defensive turnovers and the solid, but not spectacular play of Nate Stanley. With 10:19 left in the fourth quarter, the Hawkeyes took their first lead of the game on the back of a Mekhi Sargent touchdown run.

On the very next series when the Iowa defense stepped up again and forced a punt, it appeared the Hawks were going to be able to seal the deal and walk away from West Lafayette with a much-needed victory. Unfortunately, the offense picked the worst time to stall and commit infractions (more on this later), and they gave the ball right back to Purdue. This time, however, Purdue would make sure to not relinquish control and with a few second remaining on the clock, punched a field goal through to jump ahead of Iowa and win the game 38-36.

Just like the previous two losses before this, Purdue wasn’t a better team than Iowa, and they didn’t overpower the Hawks (for the most part). This wasn’t a game Iowa couldn’t win, but regardless, they didn’t win. It hurts, it stings, and it’s going to be another long week in Hawkeye country, but we need to do some digging into what went wrong first.

Here are the three biggest things that went wrong for the Iowa football team.