Iowa Hawkeyes listed as one of USA TODAY Sports’ Week 1 college football ‘losers’
This shouldn’t come as a surprise.
On USA TODAY Sports’ Paul Myerberg’s Week 1 college football winners and losers, Iowa’s offense was the only single unit featured on the list of losers.
There’s one easy path to seven points: the touchdown. Another way to seven, as Iowa showed against South Dakota State: one field goal (three), one safety (five) and then another safety (seven). Of course, Iowa still won 7-3. Only the Hawkeyes. – Myerberg, USA TODAY Sports.
Only the Hawkeyes indeed. Despite all of the preseason hype surrounding the improvements of the offensive unit, we really didn’t get to see any of it. Sure, there were some lone bright spots, receiver Arland Bruce IV was effective whenever the ball came his way and received a fairly high Pro Football Focus grade as a result, but, overall, it was a disappointment on all fronts.
We all know the quarterback struggles on display Saturday, that has been beaten to death by the media. Despite head coach Kirk Ferentz’s comments that Spencer Petras “did some good things Saturday,” his 1.1 QBR is kind of a perfect summation of the passing attack against South Dakota State.
Not all of it can be placed on Petras, even if you want to give him a lion’s share of the fault for the abysmal offensive output. Everything around him fell apart as well. The offensive line, for all of the claims of improvement over the offseason, still looked inexperienced. They were overmatched in the run game, not opening many holes for running back Leshon Williams, who actually looked fairly decent. The receiving corps limped into the game, and the lack of weapons showed.
That is a concern moving forward, too. Iowa is still not nearly back to 100% in that regard. Keagan Johnson wasn’t listed on the depth chart, joining Nico Ragaini’s absence.
Everyone on the offense didn’t do good enough of a job, and they have to equally take the blame as a team. That’s why they all as a collective deserve to be on this list.
There’s a reason why the entire team wasn’t amongst the losers for the week. Look at those around them, every one of those teams came out on the losing end of their Week 1 matchups. Every team listed except for Iowa. That’s because of the fantastic effort from the defense and special teams. Hopefully in Week 2 we can see both sides of the ball coming out as big-time winners!
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