After a beatdown loss at the hands of the mediocre Purdue Boilermakers, it is safe to say that the Iowa football was never top-team material.
Many college football fans have doubted the Iowa football team from the jump, as the Hawkeyes highest-regarded wins, all season has been nothing more than running over overrated opponents and exploiting Penn State’s quarterback mishap last week.
Outside of these questionable victories, there was only so much to go off of as far as what truly made Iowa look the part of a top team. They fed on the weak, beating the likes of Kent State, Colorado State, and Maryland.
For goodness sake, even being paired up against a smaller adversary like CSU appeared to be near-fatal for the Hawkeyes, as the latter only came out of the matchup alive by a measly 10 points.
What kept Iowa football climbing the ladder despite all of their concerning traits was their outstanding performance on one side of the ball, and that was the defensive side.
The Hawkeyes defense has cemented itself as one of the best that America has to offer, and if that counted for more in the top 25 rankings then maybe them sitting at 2nd would have felt less fraudulent.
However, while they say that defense wins championships, that does not mean that the offense can just sit around and do nothing — which is essentially what it was doing whenever the defense wasn’t giving the ball back to them.
Iowa’s offense did do something against Purdue, though, and that was laying a gigantic egg (headlined by quarterback Spencer Petras throwing four interceptions). By the end of the game, the Hawkeyes had only scored a touchdown.
Now it would seem fair to say that this was the offense’s worst showing all year, and that’s because it was. But as previously established, the Iowa offense is yet to just decide to play great in a game; it’s relied on the defense holding its hand, and that didn’t happen this time around.
For the first time this season, the Hawkeyes defense failed to cause even one turnover in a game. In other words, the offense was expected to score on its own for one single weekend and now Iowa football is no longer unbeaten. Coincidence?
Just for the record, I am in no way implying that the defense deserves blame for this loss; its job is to keep the enemy’s offense from scoring, not to constantly bail out its own.
And besides, the defense still managed to do its part anyway, as Purdue is the first team all season to surpass 20 points when facing Iowa, yet only hit 24. So while this was officially the “worst” performance by the Hawkeyes defense as well, the deficit that the Boilermakers had created wasn’t exactly inescapable.
Iowa football just isn’t a playoff contender
This loss does not entirely invalidate Iowa’s overall strength, either. They are still a team that you wouldn’t want to have to face, especially on the road. Not to mention that Purdue could definitely be worse, as they now have a solid record of 4-2 on the year.
All this defeat does is show the nation that Iowa isn’t the top-dawg that they have been praised as, and most people already knew that. Obviously, the defense was going to have to rest sometime, and this game was the one where it did so.
The Hawkeyes now sit at 6-1, with a loss to a respectable opponent. But, considering that they will be falling from the number-2 slot, and that said loss was by three scores courtesy of someone who is nonetheless unranked right now, I feel that anywhere from 9th to 11th would be a good landing spot for them.
But hey, they still have a potential playoff path since the Big Ten Conference is brutal at the moment. All they have to do is win out and take the conference crown for them to be all set. However, that offense might want to pick it up a notch, first.