Iowa football: Five observations in crazy win over Cyclones

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AMES, IA – SEPTEMBER 14: The Iowa Hawkeyes leave the playing field for a lighting delay in the first quarter of play against the Iowa State Cyclones at Jack Trice Stadium on September 14, 2019 in Ames, Iowa. (Photo by David Purdy/Getty Images) /

Hawks need to improve clock management

This is starting to become a trend, and I don’t like it. Against Rutgers, the Iowa football team got an interception at Rutgers 30 yard line and proceeded to run just five plays in three minutes and settle for a field goal. This included nearly 25 seconds of runoff between their 3rd and 4th play. The lack of urgency to get a play in and ran was frustrating but not a big deal because it was against Rutgers.

But against Iowa State and actually talented teams in the Big Ten, we can’t afford to waste valuable opportunities to score or kill the clock.

Versus Iowa State, we did it two times.

In the first half, with three timeouts, the Iowa football team ran just six plays inside the two-minute mark and settled for a field goal. It put them within 1 of Iowa State so I was okay with it, but at the end of the game, they had to do better.

The Hawks got the ball with two minutes left with Iowa State having just two timeouts. At the very worst, Iowa State should have gotten the ball back around the 55-second mark. Don’t worry, the Hawks will find a way to mess that up. They ran twice with no success and then called a play-action (which I actually thought was a great play call) with routes running towards the sidelines. Nate Wieting hauled in the catch and was tackled out of bounds stopping the clock.

Iowa needs to clean that crap up.

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