It wasn’t pretty and it wasn’t easy, but the Iowa football team won their fifth straight game versus ISU in what might have been the most bizarre game ever.
I’ll be the first to say it. The Iowa football team probably didn’t deserve to win that game. Throughout the game, I felt like they were outcoached, save for the first drive of the game. At the end of the day though, a bizarre game came down to one of the whackiest endings I’ve never seen.
Let’s start with the Iowa issues though.
They moved the ball well, but they couldn’t do anything in the red zone, and on 3rd and 1 they continuously picked rock as the Iowa State Cyclones picked paper. Whether it was the failed play-action attempt (that to be fair, I liked) that Iowa State snuffed out and blitzed too many for Stanley to handle. Or it was the Iowa football team deciding that it was a good idea to run the ball against a 10-man box and subsequently getting no yards.
Then there was the bogus clock management that saw the Iowa football team appear to be playing for 3 points as opposed to 7 late in the first half. It also reappeared late in the second half when the Iowa Hawkeyes had to kill two minutes to seal the deal versus Iowa State. Instead, they ran the ball twice (where the Cyclones called two timeouts) and then did a play-action pass (which again, I loved the call), but proceeded to pass the ball to a tight end who was running towards the sideline. He ended up getting tackled out of bounds effectively stopping the clock and giving the Cyclones 30 more seconds than they should have.
That’s it for the self-inflicted wounds by Iowa, but the story doesn’t stop there.
Outside of Matt Campbell and staff outcoaching the Hawks, the weather gave Iowa no favors twice stopping the game for upwards of 3 hours of delays. Obviously, this impacted both teams, but the Iowa football team didn’t seem to be nearly as ready after the break as Iowa State was.
The real icing on the cake though was when the Hawks had to punt the ball to Iowa State with 1:29 left. With the ball falling towards the Iowa State return man, Datrone Young just drilled his own teammate, and in the process allowing the ball to bounce off his own back by which Iowa recovered.
I’ve literally never seen anything like that happen, and to be honest, I don’t want to have to win that way, but a win is a win, and in one of the ugliest, most bizarre games I’ve ever seen, I’ll take it.
The Hawkeyes would claim their third victory of the season in their most important non-conference game of the season (and possibly in the Kirk Ferentz era) 18-17. The offense wasn’t perfect (or even close) but senior quarterback Nate Stanley finished with 201 yards on 22 completions. Redshirt freshman Nico Ragaini had another good game hauling in 5 catches for 46 yards, and Mekhi Sargent led the way with 13 carries for 58 yards.
The defense struggled, and by struggled, I mean they were real bad, but they did employ a solid bend-but-don’t-break philosophy that did the job.
With the Iowa secondary severely banged up, the Hawks head into a bye week before a game against Middle Tennessee State. They will be back in action on September 28th.