To be fair, in 06' Iowa had no business playing Texas and made a heck of a game out of it.
That 2010 Minnie game was absurd. They dominated the entire game, and still found a way to lose. Luckily for us the staff now won't allow things like that to happen again right?? I think the Hawks had something like 250 yards rushing in that Minnie game. It's still so baffling how they lost.
I actually think most of KF teams do get better though. The staff has always done a pretty damn good job of developing players. I think the new staff has done an excellent job so far. Granted we really only have one season to go off of, but still it was definitely a solid year that got the train on the tracks again. The 08' team was probably the best example though. I still stand by that was the best Iowa team in the KF era at the end of the year. Greene coming back the next year is probably the biggest what if in Hawkeye history.
I do want to take a look at two factors though. In those 4 years did the team have a solid leader on both sides of the ball, and how was the play in the trenches? I know that the lines were relatively weak in most of those years.. Which we know is pretty much the staple for good KF teams. How about the leaders? I think back to when King left on defense. I feel like they never managed to find a replacement for his leadership until last year. The 2010 team you could definitely see King was missing that's for sure.
07' is the only real anomaly for me. The criminals.. The stand.. The hype surrounding that tOSU game. What a bizarre year. At least they pulled in a pretty good recruiting class.
In terms of improving as the season goes, throw bowl games out the window. It's well established that Iowa's coaching staff, especially when Norm was around, was stellar at bowl prep. To use the 2006 season as an example: that team did not get better as the year went along. They played a great bowl game, but they did anything but steadily improve week-to-week. Getting steadily better is what is typically implied when someone says a team gets better as the season goes along. Not sputtering for two months before pulling things back together for one game.
2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2008, 2009 and 2013 are all years that the team steadily improved as the season progressed. Some of them more so than others, but they were all better teams in November than they were in August/September. 2005, 2006, 2007, 2010, 2011 and 2012 weren't. Some of those teams started hot and regressed, others just stayed pretty stagnant throughout the year (2011 and 2012 both fit that description.
You can point out that the teams people first point to as a counterargument lacked leadership and/or strong line play, but the reasons for lack of improvement is irrelevant. That's not what's being discussed.
The bottom line is that in 8 of KF's seasons, the team has made steady progress throughout the season. In 6 of them, it hasn't. I didn't count 1999, because I'm not old enough to remember that team (they were at such a low starting point, I could see them going either way). But looking at the years the team did improve, you see a 5/6-year run at the start of KF's tenure, and then just three seasons like that since. Personally, I think it's pretty clear that people started saying "KF's teams always improve" about 10 or so years ago, because up to that point, they had. But the sentiment has stuck around when it has long since stopped being true.
Kirk is absolutely a good football coach, IMO. But it hasn't been a given that the team will improve throughout the year for a long time.