I’m by no means one of the haters, I think Iowa does have a very solid team this year and had a daunting schedule. I still think last year was a huge missed opportunity. I continue to believe our talent level is going to continue to be strong the next few years with our recent recruiting efforts. We need to figure out how to run the ball though.
With that said, I don’t believe you can use the we only lost by a combined however many points argument. I saw someone doing that elsewhere. That is literally the style that Iowa plays, that’s Kirk’s scheme. Which means we are going to be in a lot of close games, i.e. we will play Michigan, Penn State, and UW close, but we will also play Illinois and Purdue in close games.
That would be like a Lickliter basketball team losing 42-50 to a top 10 team and saying well we only lost by 8!
Completely agree with 1) optimism for the next few years, based on recent recruiting successes and 2) your dislike of the "lost _ games by a combined _ points" argument.
I think we can take this argument one step further. I think Iowa's philosophy does indeed result in many close games. In fact, just about every game is a close game. In recent years, we've hardly ever been blown out. And even in our lopsided victories, they're not
that lopsided in our favor. By definition, this style makes us very competitive. But it is dramatically limiting and damaging to our offensive development.
So how would you define Iowa's philosophy for total team football? I think it is built around the core idea of limiting possessions and progressing the game to a "winning moment" as quickly as possible. The Minnesota game is a great example of this plan working. Play well, take the lead, hold onto it and win the game. But there are many other examples to choose from. There are other things you can point to: don't turn the ball over, let the other team make a mistake or "lose the game".
This overarching style strongly favors the defense. The goal is to limit possessions, control damage, and properly manage risk. But our offense has clearly suffered. On this website, twitter, radio SoundOff, etc. - many fans want to blame offensive play calling. But it's much deeper than that. Iowa's top-down strategy is not to score as many points as possible, it's to win the game. If that means winning by one point, so be it. On paper, this is great. The goal is to win games! But that's not the entire story and it's the very core of our offensive weaknesses. Iowa carries this strategy into every single game and every single offensive possession, and we suffer against good teams in big games because of it. In recent times (and for the foreseeable future), Iowa will schedule it's two first games against inferior non-conference opponents. In those games, Iowa should be pushing hard on offense to see what works, who their playmakers are, and to test what kind of offense they can be. Instead, the offense plays with the "our goal is to win (by one score)" mentality. Specifically, we NEVER run a 2-minute drill early in the season. The offensive staff must think we don't need to. And in games against Middle TN State, they're right, we don't. At the end of the 1st half of every game, we are incredibly content to sit on the ball and jog into the locker room for halftime, instead of pushing for a score before halftime. If we're up 3 points, why would we need another score??
Later in the year, against high quality conference defenses, our offense sputters. They don't know how to manufacture a scoring drive when they need it. And they don't know how to run a 2-minute drill / manage a high stress game-clock situation. Who would've guessed, we're in a 2 minute drill situation against Michigan and Penn State?? It sure would be nice if our offense had game experience in this type of situation... But we don't. In part, this is because our philosophy doesn't allow our offense to use early season games to experiment and get comfortable. I think Iowa's results would improve if the philosophy allowed them to try and score more points
