Iowa Football: 3 Takeaways after upset loss to Purdue

2. The Hawkeyes offense could not pick up the defense.

Anytime you have a team that relies as heavily on their defense as Iowa does, there is always one game that the offense needs the defense to pick them up and help them win the game. Today was one of those games for the Hawkeyes.

Iowa football has allowed an average of 183.7 yards passing and is fourth in the country in scoring defense (13.0 ppg). Today, the Hawkeyes allowed 375 passing yards and 24 points. The Hawkeyes offense, however, could not muster much offense against Purdue.

The way Iowa has played this season made it inevitable it was playing with fire. At some point, scoring defensive touchdowns and not being explosive was going to catch up with the Hawkeyes.

It did Saturday afternoon.

Purdue has flown under the radar all season, primarily because the expectation is for the Boilermakers to be an offensive team because of their head coach. However, Purdue does have a competent offense and a good defense.

The Boilermakers used both to pull the upset against Iowa this afternoon. The Boilermakers did a great job of winning the line of scrimmage on both sides of the football. Purdue’s wide receivers outplayed Iowa’s secondary.

In a game where Iowa’s offense needed to score points, it simply could not score.