"If Gabbert throws that ball away or takes a sack, Iowa would have been down by 10 less than a minute later because Missouri was shreading Iowa at that point."
And if my aunt had balls....
And IF Coker trips and falls on the long TD run.............man that was easy.
Now this is what I'm talking about!
After wins when the ball bounces Iowa's way even when they are outplayed & an eyelash away from being down double digits with 5 minutes in the game, its "everything is fine, nothing to see here, in Kirk we trust, blah blah".
But when Iowa doesn't get the bounces and they lose a tight game in which they were in the lead quite a bit, the same peeps are "sky is falling, fire the coach, Dline sucks, too conservative" etc.
Fact is you saw pretty much the same thing all last year as you did against ISU two days ago:
1. Conservative on both sides of the ball, avoiding mistakes at all costs
2. Defense not giving up a lot of points through 55 minutes (17)
3. Defense failing to hold a 4th quarter lead
4. Offense going into a shell for large portions of the game unable to move the ball
5. Really the only difference between last year & ISU 2011 was Iowa was up by 7 late instead of 3,4,5, or 6. Last year they gave up the winning TD late, this year the D gave up the tying TD late and proceded to give up 3 more TDs in overtime, not any different than what would have happened last year if the same situation would have presented itself against NW, MINN, OSU, AZ, or WIS.