Out of Towner: Iowa Plays Poorly; Still Remains Unbeaten
I don't think I'm alone in saying WTF was that? How do we consistently just squeak by these sub-par teams? A week ago we were undefeated and ranked 13th in the country. Come tommorrow, we will remain undefeated and probably be ranked closer to 17th and behind Penn State. We beat Penn State! This ratings game is such a bunch of bullshit it makes my head hurt.
The only reason I care at all is because right or wrong, it determines the fate of our bowl status. What difference does it make how much we win by? We won. End of story. And as far as I am concerned, I will trade a "W" for 4 or 5 ranking spots any day. We are undefeated. 5-0. Period.
Iowa's 24-21 victory started out looking like the blowout I predicted. Two TD passes to Trey Stross and Marvin McNutt put the Hawkeyes up 14-0 barely 8 minutes into the game. Stanzi looked uncharacteristically good in the first quarter leading all to believe that the game was already over. This may have been just the problem. After that the Hawkeyes seemed to sputter offensively and give up way more ground defensively than was expected.
After starting nearly perfect, Stanzi wound up finishing the game 18 of 26 for 296 yards (a personal best) and 3 TD's with 2 INT's. One of these interceptions was an ill-advised throw to Johnson-Koulianous that was returned 80+ yards for 6 pts. As that was happening, a friend of mine sitting next to me yells, "We just got Stanzi'd again!" As funny as that was, I wasn't able to laugh until after the blowout-turned-nailbiter was over.
Another thing I would like to rant a bit about was Ferentz's decision to take a knee at the end of the first half. What the hell? We had a hot offense, the ball at our own 38 (a mere 35 yds from decent FG range), 38 seconds on the clock, 3 timeouts and only a 7 point lead. Take a shot, man! It's not every day you get Ricki Stanzi throwing the ball well in the first half.
Some positive notes... Marvin McNutt caught 4 passes for 121 yards and 2 TD's. Bryan Bulaga looked solid in his return today. Tyler Sash had his 5th pick of the season. And we won. We won.
Some not so positive notes... We will probably fall 4 or 5 spots in the polls. Our defense looked a little tired toward the end of the game. Ricki Stanzi has yet to put up an entire game of good football this year. I just don't think Stanzi has what it takes to ever be a really good Division I quarterback. The inconsistency in his game has me really scared this year. Don't get me wrong. I think we have the talent to go undefeated this season. I really do. But it all hinges on our Defense. And if Stanzi doesn't put at least one or two complete games together we do not go undefeated. Scary stuff. Enough to drive a man to drink.
But hey, don't worry about all these things today. I will do enough of that for all of us. And I'm sure Ferentz is giving his team an earful right about now. The rest of you just go out and do what I am gonna do. Celebrate!
We are 5-0 for the first time under Ferentz and that means I am going to get smashed and find a woman wearing TigerHawk panies and celebrate with her! Try and do the same, or at least your equivalent of a good Saturday...
Questions, comments, hatemail, or tickets can be sent to pixleyjackson@yahoo.com. I am also available for appearances at home game tailgating parties.
Editor's Note: The Out of Towner will be at Homecoming! See if you can find him.
Comments
blog comments powered by Disqus
