Even in victory worries about the “E” word abound

“We have met the enemy and he is us.”– Pogo

If shooting yourself in the foot was an Olympic sport, the Iowa Hawkeyes football team would be solidly in medal contention.

It feels much, much better to write that sentence after a victory in which it never really felt like the Hawks might lose, but it is just as true this week as it was after the dismal outing in Evanston the week prior.

Between the dropped passes, untimely penalties and crippling turnovers, the fact Iowa managed a more-comfortable-than-the-score-indicates victory over the Minnesota Golden Boat Rowers is a minor miracle.

I hate to parrot the head Hawk, especially when this particular mantra of his is so unpopular, but simple execution errors continue to plague this team. There has been some renewed grumbling about Iowa’s play calling and schemes, particularly on the offensively offensive side of the ball, but I don’t see it. If Iowa had held onto the dropped passes or not held Gopher defenders, this probably would have been a 28-7 laugher and we’d all be somewhat cautiously optimistic with the dreaded Buckeyes coming to town.

Instead, it’s hard to imagine how the Hawks can possibly score enough to keep up with Ohio State.

I also want to note, for the record, that saying play calling and scheme aren’t too blame is not the same as absolving coaches from all responsibility. While I feel youth and inexperience are pretty valid excuses for many of the miscues, we are halfway through the 2017 season and some of the basic mistakes are inexcusable. That is the type of sloppiness you’d like to see get cleaned up in practice, and I’m sure it will be hammered home inside the performance facility this week.

On a more optimistic note, I’m not so sure this wasn’t Nate Stanley’s best day throwing the ball, the drops notwithstanding. His long touchdown pass on play action to Noah Fant was a beauty of a bomb, but a play with a negative outcome may have been the best of the day.

Backed up at his own six yard line with a first and ten, Stanley drops back, pump fakes once, then unleashes a perfect throw that hits a streaking Ihmir Smith-Marsette in full stride sprinting down the sideline. Somehow, Smith-Marsette has the ball bounce off his hands and directly into the arms of a badly beaten Gopher defender for an interception. Make that catch, and Iowa is up 14-0, has a 94-yard passing touchdown in the stat book and no one is grumbling about the “boring” and “predictable” offense.

But that’s football. (Snort)

While we are thinking happy thoughts, let’s think about this Iowa defense. If you would have told me the Hawk D would be holding Big 10 opponents to 17.4 ppg after its first five conference game, I would have assumed the West Division record would be 5-0 or 4-1 at worst. Lost in the nail-biting of one-possession games has been a pretty impressive performance on that side of the ball.

Critics will gripe about allowing big plays and teams to move between the 20s, but at the end of the day, if you keep the opponent out of the end zone, you will win a lot more than you lose. I also think the pass rush has finally gotten on track the past two games and raised quite a bit of havoc with the opponent’s passing game.

The bad news is Iowa still has to play the #1 and #5 scoring offenses in the next two weeks, so it will be imperative that Iowa defenders ramp up their play even more, if possible.

As for the big picture, it’s not going to be easy for Iowa to hit my predicted 8-4 record, but it’s hardly impossible. To me, the key will be to split the next two games against the #3 and #4 teams in the country. Piece of cake, right!?

History says a win over a Top 10 Ohio State team is a virtual impossibility, and I’m afraid I have to agree. I’m in my mid 40s and I’ve only seen Iowa beat the Buckeyes four times and they were only ranked in the Top 10 once, in 1983. Of course, Iowa itself was a Top 10 team that year, coming in at #7.

It’s hard not to expect next week’s blackout game to be a case of “too big, too fast, too strong.” But I do think the Hawks can keep it relatively respectable.

That brings us to our old friend Bucky Badger.

Now, I got sick of everyone badmouthing Iowa’s 2015 schedule while the Hawkeyes were on their way to a perfect 12-0 regular season. So I’m not so much calling Wisconsin a fraud as wondering why they get a free pass when 2015 Iowa didn’t.

The Badgers have played only 1 team with a winning record to date and that is the decidedly mediocre Northwestern team that managed to take advantage of Iowa mistakes to beat the Hawks in overtime. The Badgers didn’t exactly blast them, either, eeking out a one-possession victory at home. In the Badgers’ only other game against a common opponent, Bucky slept-walk through a 24-10 victory over an Illini team Iowa dispatched 45-16.

Does this mean Iowa is sure to win their third-in-a-row at Camp Randall? Nope.

But I think they have more than a fighting chance – especially if they clean up that dreaded execution.

Growing frustrations

Iowa trips over its own miscues and hands Northwestern an overtime victory in Evanston.  With the West now out of reach, what does success look like for the 2017 Hawkeyes?

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Marching toward mediocrity? Iowa football is all close, but no cigar

Well at least we don’t have to worry about arguing with AP voters not placing Iowa in their Top 25 poll this week.

The Hawkeyes managed to fritter away any chance at rankings, relevance or redemption from last year’s narrow loss to Northwestern by repeatedly, mind-numbingly, ridiculously shooting itself in the foot over and over in a dispiriting overtime loss to the Wildcats in Evanston on Saturday.

As anyone who regularly reads this column knows, I often advocate for giving credit to the opponent and not just focusing on the mistakes of your own team. But for the third time in a loss this season, it was primarily Iowa miscues and basic execution errors that prevented the black and gold from winning.

Failing to catch a punt led to bad field position that resulted in Northwestern’s go-ahead touchdown. A ridiculous false start on fourth-and-less than one late made Iowa kick a tying field goal instead of likely getting a go-ahead touchdown. A blown backfield assignment led to the long run in overtime setting up the Wildcat’s winning score. Dropped passes, a missed field goal and a litany of other errors large and small conspired to prevent what looked like a better Iowa team taking advantage of a pesky (and less error-prone) foe.

This brings me to my other sore spot of the weekend. While I share in the collective angst over this loss, I am a bit perplexed why it has manifested itself in so much vitriolic rage aimed at the Iowa coaches from Iowa fans.

I’ve always believed that a coaching staff’s primary job was to put its team in position to win, and Iowa’s has done that every week. Saturday’s game was there for the taking. But again – just like in the Michigan State game – it was lack of consistency, untimely errors and general screw ups by players that led directly to the loss.

Now, I don’t absolve the staff from all blame. Indeed, it is their job to coach the players up so such errors are few and far between and not seemingly always happening at critical times. But I’m not sure that is a legitimate criticism this season. (People who call me a coaching apologist will call these excuses, but I believe they are objective reasons.)

The biggest one is that 2017 was always going to be a rebuilding year of sorts.

No one wanted the Greg Davis offense to be retired more than me, but adding a new coordinator and other new coaches is always going to result in some growing pains. Throw in the fact Iowa is breaking in a new starting quarterback, virtually all new receiving corps and is playing more true freshman than ever in the Ferentz era and it really isn’t surprising things look hinky and out-of-sorts on the offensive side of the ball.

The critical thing now is for this current crop of Iowa players – and the coaches in new positions – learn from their failures and excel in the future. I am currently reading a biography of Henry Ford, and America’s pre-eminent industrialist frequently talked about failure being the only sure way to eventual improvement. My favorite of his (numerous) quotes on the subject follows:

“Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.”

This must be the mantra of every Iowa player and coach going forward for the rest of this season.

In addition, it should also be noted that thus far, Iowa has won every game it was favored in and lost every one in which it was an underdog.

While Kirk Ferentz has earned a reputation for slipping up against underdogs, that is not a fair disparagement to throw his way this season, no matter how badly many Hawkeye fans want to believe Northwestern is still the abject failure of a program it was in the 1980s when Hayden Fry routinely hung 50 or more points on them. Being mad that Ferentz doesn’t do the same is just not being very smart about the current landscape of college football or Big 10 history.

One slice of light in the gray cloud of the Northwestern loss is that once again, the game was there for the taking. Unlike last year – when Iowa was run off the field by Penn State and manhandled by Wisconsin – the team hasn’t once looked like it didn’t belong on the same field as its opponent.

Now, this could still happen in a couple weeks when the vaunted Buckeyes come to town, but I think this team – despite its warts and propensity for ill-timed gaffes – has enough raw talent, heart and grit to hang with anyone they play.

And as fans, is there really anything more we are owed?

Torbee puts the Big 10 media on blast for “disrespect”

Imagine, if you will, that you are an ink-stained sports scribe for the Toledo Blade, or the Fort Wayne Gazette or the Peoria Journal. Your assignment is to predict which Big 10 basketball teams will finish where in what is likely to be the best conference in college basketball.

It’s a tough job, requiring you to weigh previous results, exiting and incoming personnel, recruiting rankings, coaching history and many other factors. But it’s a required exercise, and now the sorting begins.

Here is Team A’s blind resume to consider:

  • · Previous year’s team finished tied for 4th in the conference race
  • · Four of five starters return, though the lone exit was 1st team All-Big 10
  • · Two of the returners were on the conference All-Freshman team
  • · Team returns conference’s 6th Man of the Year
  • · One of only 3 conference teams to post winning conference record each of past 5 seasons
  • · Starting point guard was 1 of 2 freshman in college basketball with 175 assists and 84 3-pointers
  • · Team returns 77.6 percent of its scoring

Hmmmmm.

Sounds pretty good. This team is predicted to finish ……………………….

EIGHTH?

If you are an Iowa fan, you know that Team A is your beloved Hawkeyes. And if you have been following the preseason college basketball news, you will know that eighth is exactly where the Big 10 media predicted Iowa to finish the 2016-17 conference season.

If this doesn’t put a Rodney Dangerfield-sized chip of disrespect on every Hawkeye player’s shoulder, I can’t imagine what will.

I will go on record right now (seriously, print and save this column) saying if Iowa indeed finishes eighth or lower I will attend Iowa’s last home game in Carver Arena in a Nebraska cheerleader uniform and let Tom Kakert post a pic of it on this webpage. If Nebraska cheerleader uniforms come in that small of a size, that is.

Now I’m not saying that Iowa is a Final Four caliber juggernaut poised to rampage through a very deep, very talented Big 10. But with what it has coming back – and a relatively soft unbalanced conference schedule – it is extremely difficult for me to see any possible way they don’t crack the top five or six at worst.

Add in some eye-opening and unusually optimistic insider rumblings about the elevation of Tyler Cook’s game, Jordan Bohannon’s growth at the point and two big-bodied, big time freshman and the Hype Train might be taking on passengers early and often.

I write this with the full disclosure that I have done next to zero research on Iowa’s conference opponents. I am way too invested in this year’s football season to waste time perusing Wisconsin’s roster or Illinois’ incoming recruits. But I know a good basketball team when I see it, and Iowa is going to have a good basketball team this season.

And while we are feeding coal into the aforementioned Hype Train’s boiler, how can any Iowa basketball fan not be super stoked about Fran McCaffery’s recruiting? Two of his 2017 recruits – Connor McCaffery and Luka Garza are four star recruits and they will be combing with four star, #40 nationally ranked Joe Wieskamp in 2018. After that, more four star, Top 100 types are either committed or in the pipeline, giving Iowa fans more hope for the hoops future than they’ve seen in ages.

So I tell you Mr. Chicago Tribune, Mr. Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel and Ms. Columbus Post-Dispatch know-it-alls: Don’t eat too much at your post-game spreads this season. Because Iowa is going to be serving a huge, heaping pile of crow to you come March.

Tuesdays With Torbee: Rainy days and Lovie can’t get me down

To paraphrase one of my favorite comic strips, the underrated Jim’s Journal:

I went to the Iowa-Illinois game Saturday. It was OK.

It seems churlish to call a 45-16 victory over a border rival underwhelming, but there it is. All-in-all, it was one of those days where nothing was terrible but nothing was particularly great, either.

The weather was spotty, with rain dampening the tailgate, but staying dry and warm for the game. Decent, not great.

It was a ho-hum 11 a.m. start on Big Ten Network, not the bright lights and excitement of national television and a night game. Decent, not great.

Iowa’s offense got things going in the second half, after Nate Stanley shook off a late second quarter interception and another pretty bad series right after. Decent, not great.

The run game found life again, with Toren Young acting as thunder to Akrum Wadley’s lightning, but a few too many rushes were still blown up at or behind the line of scrimmage. Decent, not great.

The defense gave up a big handful of giant “chunk” plays, but the bend-but-don’t-break didn’t break, holding Illinois to field goals on three critical drives. Decent, not great.

The crowd was mostly full, and got loud a few times at key points in the game. The band’s Beatles-themed halftime show was boring-as-usual, but the wave formation was neat. Decent, not great.

Special teams unleashed a couple of successful trick plays and Miguel Recinos remains locked in, but the punt game is still a work-in progress. Decent, not great.

I don’t mean for this to come across as complaining or that I didn’t enjoy the eventual dismantling of Lovie Smith’s Illini. I had a blast tailgating with friends as usual and outside of a few anxious moments in the first half, was never worried Iowa was going to deliver a clunker to a bad team.

It’s just that between Illinois being the shadow of a competitive program, a bye week on the horizon, and a couple Big 10 losses already on the books, the stakes just didn’t feel high enough to justify a lot of intensity. Thank goodness the Iowa players didn’t show that same level of apathy.

Much has already been written about the items on the weekly Ferentzian “clean up” list: picking up run blitzes, ball security, wrapping up on one-on-one tackles and other areas of minor concern. But one gigantic positive that I haven’t seen talked about much, but is a harbinger of better things to come (perhaps even yet this season, but definitely in the longer term) is that the only thing that seems to hold this team back at times is simple consistency.

I just don’t see any glaring holes in talent or scheme. And that’s a pretty big change from the past, including as recently as last season.

In 2016, Iowa didn’t look like it belonged on the same field as Penn State and barely was able to keep up with Wisconsin. That was from both a talent side and a scheme side. Those teams looked like they were playing a better, different form of football than Iowa.

Flash-forward to this season, and the only thing holding Iowa back is itself. Both the Penn State and Michigan State games were there for the taking, if only Iowa could have avoided some self-inflicted disasters.

Perhaps the best example of this is the signal caller, sophomore Nate Stanley. Yes, he still has a tendency to overthrow open receivers (hey, OPEN receivers, that’s a new one!). And he can get a little antsy-pantsy handling the ball (maybe one reason the coaches seem loathe to run sneaks with him?) But the dude stands tall in the pocket and absolutely rifles the ball. He also seems to never get rattled or let a screw up linger and cause him to lose confidence.

Like the rest of the team, all Stanley is missing is a bit more consistency.

If Iowa can harness that consistency and put together 60 minutes of football with the offense, defense and special teams all humming at full capacity in each of its remaining games, this can be a team that rises above decency and approaches greatness.