Intro:

The Iowa offense is the Chewbacca Defense: it doesn’t make sense. It’s nonsensical. It’s barely relevant. It’s not something a real lawyer/OC would use. But…you can win games with it. If Chewbacca is from the planet Kashyyyk, you must score 325 points for the season!

But now there’s a problem: both Old Frenemies Cade McNamara and Erick All are currently injured. Cade is out for the season (along with star TE Luke Lachey), and Erick is still being evaluated at MASH 4077, under the care of Dr. Pierce, also a “Hawkeye.” I bet he prefers Maudlin Later-Seasons Alan Alda; he doesn’t seem like the type for Slapstick Alan Alda.

So let’s talk about “Offensive” “Coordinator” “Brian” Ferentz. This guy was a good OL at Iowa, spent time on two NFL practice squads, coached TEs for the Patriots during their “we have Gronk and Aaron Hernandez, you automatically lose” 2011 season, then joined his dad’s staff in 2012. He’s coached OL, RB, TE, and now (disastrously) QB, with “Offensive Coordinator” as part of his title since 2017. Iowa put up 55 points in a win over #3 Ohio State his first year as OC.

Nepotism-rules-avoidance aside, taken as a whole his time at Iowa has NOT been a complete and utter disaster. From 2017-2022, Iowa averaged 28.2, 31.2, 25.8, 31.8, 23.4, and 17.7 PPG, and won 8, 9, 10, 6 (Covid year), 10, and 8 games. How much of that is due to defensive greatness? Lots.

This isn’t good by championship contender definitions, but from an Iowa perspective it isn’t bad by any stretch either. Iowa is Lite Beer: some people claim to like it better than regular beer, you see lots of folks who prefer to drink it and you low-key respect them for not buying into the hipster-mustache-twirling-shitty-IPA frenzy, but at the end of the day it’s all about getting the job done and Lite Beer does the trick if you’re not terribly particular about actually enjoying your drinking experience.

Iowa’s offensive line has been performing terribly, though, and this is the part that gets me: it doesn’t make sense that this guy has forgotten the importance of the offensive line. You know how Don Brown’s utter neglect of the DT position made absolutely no sense? This is the watered-down Lite Beer Iowa version of that. It would be like Mike Hart suddenly producing bad running backs. It would be like Brian Hartline producing bad wide receivers. It doesn’t make sense.

I guess I don’t really know whether Brian Ferentz deserves to get fired in my opinion. Conventional wisdom is yes, but conventional wisdom can sometimes be a superficial kangaroo court. With like 75% of the Iowa offense injured and/or out for the season, should he get a mulligan? Context is important, and I don’t think a single other team in the conference has been snakebitten like that.

Week 7 Update

One-Sentence* Summary:

No longer content to win football games solely by playing defense, the Iowa Hawkeyes are doing their damndest to win without utilizing the fancy-schmancy forward pass. Deacon “City on a” Hill threw for 37 (!!) yards in this game. And they WON.

The Iowa defense, virtue of two takeaways, a safety, and a grand total of 6 points surrendered, continues to be the Fighter/Thief that rolled for 18s in strength, constitution, intelligence, and dexterity. The Iowa offense continues to be… ...have you ever felt the need to burp, but had to really work for it, and then when you finally succeeded it was a disappointingly tiny burp for all the effort you put in? That’s the 237 total yards that Iowa burped up in this game. 82 of them came on a single play: the Leshon Williams TD rush, part of a 25-carry, 174-yard day for him (for an average of 7 ypc!).

We probably just witnessed the de facto B1G West Championship Game. And just like usual, it less resembled a gripping game of high-stakes football so much as a cordless drill battle: they mostly just flop around, and you know that on even/solid footing the torque differences would end the contest pretty darn quick, but as-is the laws of physics mean they’re just going to keep flopping until they start to run out of battery.

The Wisconsin Fightin’ Fickells are likely to lose exactly one more game in the regular season (to Ohio State, but I’d love to be wrong about that); the Iowa Fightin’ Ferentzes might lose one more game (to Rutgers), but that’s not for sure. A head-to-head win was likely the clincher for both these teams, and Iowa won 15-6. Really, the only wildcard here is whether Nebraska pulls itself together into a massive Year-Zero overachievement to beat either of these teams in late November.

Saving Private Brian

Once again, Iowa would still have won this game even if their offense hadn’t scored a TD.

Amazingly, there are 3 B1G teams scoring fewer points per game than Iowa: Illinois, Nebraska, and Indiana. If it wasn’t for Iowa’s defense putting up points on their own, that number would be reduced to, uh, zero.

9 out of 14 B1G teams are scoring as few or fewer points per game than the lowest-scoring SEC team (Auburn at 27.7 ppg). Someday, football historians will try to call this the “dead ball era” and make the argument that since the existing phrase “Dead Ball Era” is for a different sport, that they aren’t appropriating a moniker.

On the flip side, though, the very best scoring defenses in the SEC (Georgia and Alabama) would be duking it out with Rutgers for 4th or 5th place in the B1G.

Futility Rate

Iowa’s offense burped for 3 scoring drives, EIGHT 3-and-outs, and the Hawkeyes were 4 of 17 on 3rd down. Wisconsin (drop-back passing team????) wishes their offense had performed that WELL.

So Iowa’s status as one of the slowest-moving teams in the country is making a lot of sense right now. If your offense is only going to be on the field for 3 plays at a time, you want those 3 plays to take as long as humanly possible so that your otherworldly defense can catch their breath. And it WORKED! Iowa won the time-of-possession battle by 33 seconds.

I’m still not done tweaking this chart. Missed field goals that are part of a 4-and-out are a 4-and-out, otherwise I count them as Drives Ending in Turnovers. So if the math ain’t mathin’ from last week, that’s the difference.

RB Receptions are Moneyball, Dammit

Iowa threw 1 pass to an RB, for 4 yards. There is no money. There is no ball. There is only Zuul.

Welcome to the First Annual Moneyball Awards! There are two trophies up for grabs today, to the teams that get the most receiving yardage from their running backs (and fullbacks!) and the least. Let’s start with…

Most Moneyball Trophy: a massive upset win by INDIANA. The top spot is running away from the rest of the conference: the Fightin’ (For Their Job) Tom Allens, with 281 RB receiving yards, solidly edge out runner-up NORTHWESTERN by 41 and have 64 more than third-place MICHIGAN. PENN STATE edges us for RB receiving yards/game, so this might be a temporary bronze for the Wolverines, but right now Donovan “Wherefore Art Thou Not Saquon Barkley” Edwards is the difference-maker for Michigan.

Least Moneyball Trophy: another upset. NEBRASKA takes this one with only 66 RB receiving yards, a comfortable 21 fewer yards than runner-up IOWA. The MICHIGAN STATE Fightin’ (Literally) IDK-Probably-Dantonios take third place here with only 8 more RB receiving yards than the Hawkeyes. Using average yards/game would put RUTGERS into 3rd place here.

So this is how Northwestern is able to keep its rotten offense ranked higher than Iowa’s: they throw to the RBs, dammit. Someday, when my frustration boils over and I explode into a million frowny faces and ruptured blood vessels, please tell my wife to read everything I’ve written on this topic at my funeral.

One-Phase Football

Reminder: Iowa’s defense plays more snaps than any other defense in the conference. They’re being run ragged as an inept offense hangs them out to dry. They need sleep. They need a deep tissue massage. They need a hug from their moms. They need to hear their dads say that they’re proud of them.

Oh, and this SP+ Gap continues to be historic (check out last week’s diary for the Top 5 SP+ Gaps Ever). With a SP+ Gap of 120 spots, Iowa moves into a tie for 6th place (last week they were tied for 4th) in “the most mismatched offenses and defenses in the history of football.” Hey, incremental improvement is incremental improvement…

Hey, It Could Be Worse

I don’t see how. Haweyes are dropping like flies. For the fourth week in a row, Iowa has the worst SP+ offense in the B1G. And for the second week in a row, the worst offense in the P5. But Northwestern is still visible in the rearview mirror with 110th SP+ offense. If only Iowa passed to their running backs, they could finally let Northwestern take their rightful place at the bottom of the conference…