Iowa football’s reliance on defense, special teams adds up to unsustainable formula

IOWA CITY — Iowa’s defense had just limited No. 2 Ohio State to 184 fewer yards than the Buckeyes had averaged in their first six games. Iowa’s offense had just turned the ball over six times and failed to reach the end zone for the second consecutive game.

The Gazette’s Mike Hlas asked Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz, “How do you explain to (the defense) why you're 3-4 when they've played so well?”

Ferentz answered in the postgame news conference with a two-word phrase that already infuriated the fan base once before amid a disappointing 2014 season.

“That’s football,” Ferentz said before asking to retract the statement because he “got in trouble for saying that” last time.

Ferentz gave another “that’s football” on Tuesday when asked about keeping the defense motivated. This time, there was no retraction although Iowa sports information excluded it from the official transcript.

That may be football, but it’s certainly not winning football.

Iowa has been relying on elite defense and special teams units to make up for an offensive unit that is either the worst or among the worst in the country in several key statistics.

Ferentz recognized how unsustainable the current situation is Tuesday.

“It hasn't worked the last couple of weeks,” Ferentz said. “Obviously we want to change that formula.”

Iowa’s defensive production should be good enough for the Hawkeyes to have a winning record, data analyzed by The Gazette shows.

Iowa is one of 13 Power Five teams to allow fewer than 5 yards per play. The other 12 teams have a combined record of 67-20. Iowa is 3-4.

Of the 40 teams to allow fewer than 5.5 yards per play, Iowa is one of 10 to be below .500.

On the other side of the ball, having as lackadaisical of an offense as Iowa almost always spells trouble.

Iowa is the only Power Five team to average fewer than 4 yards per play. Six teams — Iowa, Indiana, Colorado, Virginia Tech, Boston College and Georgia Tech — average fewer than 4.8 yards per play, and all six of them are below .500.

Of the 16 Power Five teams that average fewer than 5.6 yards per play, 13 are below .500.

Ferentz is aware of the need to get the “offense in a place we can be successful.”

“And we’ve done that in the past,” Ferentz said.

But Iowa hasn’t been in an offensive slump of this magnitude in Ferentz’s 23 past seasons leading the Hawkeyes.

The 2022 Hawkeyes’ 227.3 yards per game, 3.9 yards per play, 27 percent third-down conversion rate and 52.3 percent completion rate are all the worst in the Ferentz era — even below the 1-10 Iowa team in Ferentz’s first season in 1999.

Any dramatic changes to improve the offense during the season are unlikely.

Ferentz expressed skepticism toward trying something different if it’s “not something you touched on during the course of camp or spring.”

“When you start drawing stuff up, that typically doesn't work so well,” Ferentz said.

While Ferentz is “always looking” for things to tweak or come up with a variant of what Iowa already is doing, he also believes “you can’t stray too far away.”

Kirk Ferentz already has ruled out dismissing his son, Brian Ferentz, as offensive coordinator during the season and fired back at an Ohio columnist who wrote Brian Ferentz should be fired.

Doug Lesmerises, a nationally-acclaimed sports columnist for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, pressed Kirk Ferentz on not firing Brian Ferentz amid the lackluster offensive results.

Kirk Ferentz, unprompted, then brought up in his next news conference what he initially described as Lesmerises’ “interrogation.”

“The one good thing about that it dawned on me coming home — I said, ‘As bad as today was, it could have been worse because I could have been that guy,’” Ferentz said. “I could have been that guy. Had his job and had to act like he did.”

The next day, he issued an apology to Iowa media through his secretary, saying he “should not have been dismissive of one of your colleagues” and that Lesmerises’ questions were “fair.”

“You ask tough and pointed questions, but do so with a high degree of professionalism,” Ferentz wrote. “I tell our players to take the high road, and yesterday, I did not do the same thing.”

Comments: john.steppe@thegazette.com