Iowa football’s resiliency again will be tested as it rebounds from Michigan State loss

IOWA CITY — After Kirk Ferentz won his 200th game as football coach at Iowa, he could be heard in the tunnel saying “you can knock me down, you can’t keep me down.”

It certainly was true on that sunny Saturday afternoon at Kinnick Stadium as his team bounced back from a 35-7 loss to then-No. 3 Ohio State. It was true earlier this year as well when Iowa bounced back from a 20-19 loss to bitter rival Iowa State with a 38-21 win over Troy.

Now, those on Evashevski Drive are hoping it also is true after Iowa’s humbling 32-20 loss to Michigan State — a team that had previously lost three straight under its first-year coach.

Since the start of the 2023 season, Iowa is 4-0 in regular-season games that immediately follow a loss.

“When things don’t go good or you’re faced with adversity, it takes experience or mental toughness and really just a lot of motivation and desire to be good,” Iowa quarterback Cade McNamara said. “And I think this team and this unit has shown that. And I don’t expect anything less than a response from us.”

Iowa has not suffered consecutive regular-season losses since 2022, when it lost three in a row to No. 4 Michigan, Illinois and No. 2 Ohio State. (Ferentz’s group also suffered consecutive regular-season losses in 2021 when it lost to Purdue and Wisconsin and in 2020 when it lost to Northwestern and Purdue.)

Regardless of how Iowa bounces back in its remaining five games of the regular season, the Hawkeyes’ postseason possibilities have narrowed. A berth in the 12-team College Football Playoff was already a faint glimmer of a possibility before Saturday’s loss; now, it is entirely out of the picture.

The Big Ten’s bowl procedures rule out a return to the Citrus Bowl — the conference’s most prestigious non-CFP bowl — meaning Iowa’s best-case scenario from a postseason standpoint would be a trip to the ReliaQuest Bowl.

Tight end Luke Lachey said the team’s goal is simply to “keep winning every game we can.”

“We can only worry about the one game that’s ahead of us, and we’re going to continue worry about that,” Lachey said.

The buy-in “obviously starts with leadership,” Lachey said. And the Hawkeyes certainly are not lacking in that department.

Iowa’s four captains are a pair of fifth-year seniors (Lachey and Jay Higgins) and a pair of sixth-year seniors (McNamara and Quinn Schulte). Thirteen of Iowa’s 22 starters against Michigan State were fourth, fifth or sixth-year seniors, and another seven starters were juniors.

Iowa’s one-game-at-a-time approach will be against some favorable competition. Even after the ugly loss to Michigan State, ESPN Analytics still gives the Hawkeyes better than a 50 percent chance of winning in each of their remaining five games.

The road ahead starts with Northwestern, which is a two-touchdown underdog against the Hawkeyes. Of course, Michigan State was an underdog, too, and now Iowa is in the position of needing to bounce back.

"Coach Ferentz always stresses to us that we have to expect everything to be tough,“ Lachey said. ”We ought to come ready to play every single game against every single opponent because everyone's going to bring their best."

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