Iowa vs Northwestern Recap

-

 Okay folks, buckle up, because this could be time to panic. Iowa came out and played like shit for all but 1 quarter of football and somehow only lost by 1 in another game that was there for them to win. It was a rough game to watch. I will do a brief recap and then drop some takes.

Recap

Iowa came out strong and put up a quick 14 points off turnovers. They punted on their opening drive and then recovered a muff to set up 1st and goal. Petras dropped a dime to Brandon Smith for the TD. Northwestern proceeded to fumble on their next possession setting Iowa up with another short field. Petras was accurate with his passing and almost impossible to sack. Iowa took advantage of the short field and capped off the drive with a Tyler Goodson rushing TD. Duncan added a field goal in the first quarter to give Iowa a 17-0 lead. The following drive Northwestern marched down the field and scored to make it 17-7. Iowa then proceeded to forget how to play football and never threatened the rest of the game as Northwestern scored two more TDs and forced 3 interceptions on the way to an eventual 21-20 win.

Takes

Petras is not good. He definitely has potential but is not where he needs to be. He went 26/50 for 216 yards, 1 TD, and 3 (count 'em, 3) interceptions. I would say out of his 24 incompletions 2 were drops, 3 were throwaways, and 19 were bad throws. The 3 interceptions were all on bad throws. He consistently overthrew open receivers on deep balls. These are not numbers that will get you a win in the Big Ten. As bad as it was, all would of been forgiven if he would of given Iowa the lead late in the fourth quarter. Instead, he missed open receivers and turned the ball over on downs. I'm not saying we need to bench him, I'm just saying Spencer is going to have to improve by leaps and bounds if Iowa is going to win games this year.

I also want to know what Iowa is doing on offense. The reason Nate Stanley had success for his entire career was the Iowa run game. Against Northwestern, Iowa ran 50 pass plays and 22 runs. These numbers are backwards. Iowa lives and dies by the run and 77 rushing yards in a game is step 1 in the how to lose in the Big Ten playbook. It doesn't make sense with Iowa's talent at RB and offensive line to not establish a run. Goodsen had 3.3 YPC and Sargent had 5. FEED THEM! I have no clue why Iowa is throwing the ball on 8 straight plays before mixing in some runs. It's not working and needs to stop. Establishing the run will also take pressure off of Petras and he needs the help.

The defense gets a gold star. They held Northwestern to 273 yards, forced 2 turnovers, and forced 6 punts. They did enough to put the offense in position to win and that's all you can ask. The one complaint is that they allowed Northwestern to convert two fourth downs, but overall a solid performance.

Now, the elephant in the room. Kirk Ferentz. Currently in his 21st season as head coach at Iowa, he has amassed 162 wins, 17 bowl appearances, 9 bowl wins, 4 Big Ten Coach of the Year awards, 4 national coach of the year awards, and a Big Ten Championship appearance. This could be his last year. I have personally thought that the racial drama from the past summer was being exaggerated by the national media. I thought this was a bump that would be quickly put behind us and Kirk would be back to being Kirk before we knew it. I am starting to think I was wrong. Iowa has not looked like Iowa this year. The quote from the Purdue announcers continues to haunt me. "Purdue is looking more like Iowa than Iowa" they said in the 3rd quarter of that game. They were right and this week Northwestern looked more like Iowa than Iowa. This article is from a very good writer that has way more inside knowledge than me and it sounds like Kirk may be done after this year. Smith-Marsette catching an OWI Saturday night does nothing to help the off field situation at Iowa. If anything, it makes Kirk's job exponentially harder. I think we, as Iowa fans, may need to suck it up and accept that it is going to be a rough couple seasons, with or without Ferentz at the helm. It sucks and I don't like it, but I try not to peddle false optimism and it doesn't look good right now. 

  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

B1G has cancelled football.

-
 The B1G and PAC 12 have cancelled fall sports.  Here  is the B1G official statement. I have been thinking about this and getting steadily more upset ever since 1:45 PM. This is horrible. I have avoided really shitting on the COVID-19 media coverage too much because I didn't want to deal with the trolling and "yOu THinK cOroNavIruS iS faKe IF yOu qUEstioN anYthIng!" crowd. I am done. Bring on the trolls. This decision has nothing to do with the coronavirus. The B1G, as a whole, is not concerned about player safety per coronavirus. Nothing has changed in the overall COVID-19 numbers between when they announced the season schedule and when they cancelled. The schedule was announced August 5. Per the  CDC report release July 31  hospitalization rate was 130.1 per 100,000 and mortality rate was 8.4% if you include pneumonia, influenza, and COVID-19 deaths. The  report released August 7   has hospitalization at 137.6 per 100,000 and mortality rate at 7.8% if you include pneumo
Read more

Stimulus packages, government spending, and other tidbits.

-
 The big news today is that Trump has stopped negotiations on a stimulus package with Pelosi. If your not familiar with story, here are links to the  CNN story  and the  Fox News story , pick your flavor of kool aid. Now I could go into the whole he said, she said drama and whose fault is it and all that bullshit, but we are missing the bigger picture and no one is talking about it. The United States of America is bankrupt. We (the collective we) have no money. Picture this, a husband and wife are in the driveway of their house arguing. Behind them, the sheriff is changing the locks on the door and posting a foreclosure notice, the tow truck is in the driveway repossessing the cars, and the baby is crying because they have no formula. You ask the couple what they are arguing about and the husband replies "I want to donate $5,000 dollars to St. Jude, but she wants to donate $5,100." It's absolutely ridiculous. This is what our government is doing. The national debt is curr
Read more

Polls are dumb.

-
Image
I stumbled across this gem on Twitter today.  No link. No supporting data. Just a side note that it's from BerkeleyISG. Now, I don't think anyone will claim Berkeley is an unbiased organization so I fired up the google. I found the  poll referenced  in the above tweet and took a look at it. This is the breakdown of respondents to their online poll and how they voted. Some takeaways here in relation to polls being stupid. There were 100 respondents. One hundred. They were also all from California, a state that leans left. Of these 100 people, 48 identified as Democrats to only 26 Republican. 41 identified as Liberal to only 28 Conservative. 71 were from Coastal counties (historically more left leaning) vs 29 from the more historically right leaning inland counties. Almost half were from San Francisco or LA. This poll had a predetermined outcome. Biden was going to come out ahead by no less than 25 points. It's also irrelevant. The Democrats could nomi
Read more