I don't even know where to begin with this, Iowa was awful yesterday. I've been on the Kirk Ferentz bandwagon all along, but after yesterday, I'm not so sure. This was painful to watch, even if the Hawkeyes would have won the game, it was not a good showing. I felt pretty good with a 14-3 lead at halftime, but Iowa State played to win in the second half, Iowa did not. They attempted to establish the running game with Mark Weisman and Damon Bullock, Weisman had a couple tough runs, but Bullock was awful, missed a couple of holes where he could have picked up some decent yardage. He's a good pass catcher, but he's not a good running back. He got away with holding on a play where Jake Rudock had to throw the ball away. Jordan Canzeri had three carries for 18 yards, good for six yards per carry, but that's all we saw of him. I'm thinking he was probably injured since they brought Jonathan Parker back in for kick returns. The passing game was just as bad, there was nice 33 yard pass to tight end Ray Hamilton, but other than that I can't think of any decent gains through the air.
The defense wasn't awful, but the DL failed to get a decent pass rush, the linebackers struggled with coverage and the secondary got rocked by an ejection that really hurt.
QB - Jake Rudock didn't have that great of a game, he's still hitting 68% of his throws, but he's not going downfield at all. He had a couple nice runs, but also some head scratchers. I'd like to see C.J. Beathard get a couple of series per game and see what he could do.
RB - Weisman did ok and had some nice runs to pick up first downs, but he's slow. Bullock, like I said, was awful. Canzeri needs more touches and LeShun Daniels didn't play at all that I saw.
FB - John Kenny got his first action of his career, he arrived as a LB, but played FB due to injury. He seemed like he did pretty good for his first time playing FB.
WR - Derrick Willies averages 21.7 yards per catch and Damond Powell averages 14, why were they not getting any balls thrown to them? I didn't even see Powell in the game. Kevonte Martin-Manley is a good WR, but he's not a huge playmaker. I still don't understand why there are no throws downfield against ISU? They have short CBs, throw some up to bigger WRs, take some chances?
TE - Ray Hamilton had a great 33 yard catch, but other than that the TEs didn't get much action in the passing game. Why not use George Kittle some more? And throw to Jake Duzey some more.
OL - They gave up four sacks against an ISU front seven that is not that great. Brandon Scherff probably wasn't 100%, but that's no excuse. The line created some nice openings for running backs, but they weren't hitting the holes.
DL - The DL struggled getting a nice rush on the QB and didn't put much pressure, they looked pretty winded. There wasn't much subbing going on, I think the loss of Darian Cooper has hurt the DL. The DEs aren't getting to the QB either, Nate Meier is just too small to play every down.
LB - This unit is very slow and have a really hard time in coverage. I think they're pretty solid against the run, but one-on-one with a running back they're going to lose every time. Bo Bower missed out on an interception that would have been huge. I like the way he plays though. Saw the first glimpse of Josey Jewell and he made some costly mistakes.
DB - Desmond King and Greg Mabin looked pretty good at the corner spots, John Lowdermilk and Jordan Lomax played well at safety, but Lomax got ejected for targeting on a very questionable call. Anthony Gair came in for Lomax and got a huge offsides penalty late in the game.
ST - Marshall Koehn drilled a pretty big field in the fourth quarter after some confusion on the field. It was nice to see him hit that, definitely a confidence booster. Dillon Kidd did a nice job pinning the Cyclones deep.
Ferentz really needs to work on clock management, a timeout could have been taken with about a minute left and Iowa could have some time to actually get down the field for a chance to win or tie.
Well, next week will be an even bigger challenge at Pittsburgh. I watched part of the Pittsburgh-FIU game and FIU was roughing them up 16-0, that's when I stopped watching. Pitt came back and won 42-25. Iowa's going to have to play flawless to win on the road, but I don't see that happening with this vanilla offense. If they can't even get to 300 yards against Iowa State, how will they be able to move the ball against Pittsburgh?
How many games has Iowa lost by a touchdown or less under Ferentz? Lets take a look.
1999 ISU-7, Northwestern-2, Indiana-7, Minnesota-4
2000 W. Michigan-6, Wisconsin-6, Minnesota-3
2001 Michigan State-3, Michigan-6, Iowa State-3, Wisconsin-6
2002 Iowa State-5
2005 Michigan-3, Northwestern-1, Florida-7
2006 Indiana-3, Wisconsin-3, Texas-2
2007 Iowa State-2, Wisconsin-4
2008 Pittsburgh-1, Northwestern-5, Michigan State-3, Illinois-3
2009 Northwestern-7, Ohio State-3
2010 Arizona-7, Wisconsin-1, Northwestern-4, Ohio State-3, Minnesota-3
2011 Iowa State-3, Minnesota-1
2012 Iowa State-3, Central Michigan-1, Indiana-3, Purdue-3, Nebraska-6
2013 Northern Illinois-3, LSU-7
2014 Iowa State-3
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