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Iowa’s 2023 team brings flashbacks of 2015 Hawkeyes that also ‘had a lot of resiliency,’ close wins
Hawkeyes’ 2015 trip to Indianapolis included touchdown that still gives ‘chills,’ holding call that prevented another special moment
IOWA CITY — Jordan Canzeri’s pregame catching routine with a manager ahead of the 2015 Big Ten football championship was different.
“I think there had to be like eight cameras on the both of us during it,” said Canzeri, the former Iowa running back.
As soon as the camera operators moved on, Canzeri and the manager smiled and laughed.
“We’re like, ‘Hey, that was probably the best throwing routine we did all year,’” Canzeri said. “So I don’t know if it helped.”
As the bright lights and onslaught of cameras focus on the Hawkeyes again in the 2023 Big Ten championship game, the 2015 team serves as a reminder of how close Iowa has been to the long-elusive first outright conference title in the Kirk Ferentz era.
“Obviously, I’d love to go back and win, but it was going to take something unbelievable to beat us,” said Matt VandeBerg, a wide receiver on the 2015 team. “Unfortunately, that day, (Michigan State) had it.”
A win in Indianapolis would have vaulted the then-fourth-ranked and undefeated Hawkeyes into one of the four spots in only the second year of the College Football Playoff.
“It felt like a playoff-type game,” said C.J. Beathard, the starting quarterback on that Iowa team. “And it really was because if we had won that game, the winner went to the College Football Playoff.”
The environment at Lucas Oil Stadium had a “different vibe,” former tight end Henry Krieger-Coble said.
“The Hawks fans were there, and we could feel the energy right from the start,” Krieger-Coble said. “We played in some pretty cool environments over my five years, but there’s few that match up with a Big Ten championship.”
Those fans certainly had something to cheer about early in the fourth quarter after Beathard launched an 85-yard touchdown pass to Tevaun Smith to take a 13-9 lead.
“It’s just one of those things you still get chills even thinking about,” said Canzeri, who was watching from the sidelines at that point after suffering an injury in the first half.
It was such a poignant moment that fans still bring up the touchdown to Beathard eight years later. It is to the point that Beathard can do his own impression of play-by-play commentator Gus Johnson exuberantly screaming his name with a heavy emphasis on the “C” and the “J.“
Some fans have told Beathard it is “their favorite play ever in Iowa history.”
“I’ve also had people come up to me and say, ‘Man, if y’all would have won that game, that would probably be the No. 1 play in Iowa football history,’” Beathard said. “Yeah, I know. Trust me, I know it.”
On Iowa’s next drive, the Hawkeyes were an arm’s reach away (or more like the lack of an arm’s reach away) from another touchdown that would have deflated Michigan State’s comeback chances.
VandeBerg ran a comeback-and-go route on the first play of the drive and “killed” the defensive back, as Beathard remembers it, on the double-move.
Iowa’s wide receivers coach at the time, Bobby Kennedy, had only one “coaching point” for VandeBerg before the play.
“Do not get held,” VandeBerg remembers Kennedy telling him. “Whatever you do, don’t get held.”
With that in mind, VandeBerg “aimed like 2 or 3 yards, maybe even 4 to 5 yards” outside of the defensive back to avoid the risk of a defensive hold.
“Even then, it didn’t matter,” VandeBerg said.
Michigan State’s Darian Hicks still found a way to grab a hold of VandeBerg to prevent him from breaking away with what likely would have been an easy touchdown.
“He definitely would have scored,” Canzeri said. “If there was anybody on that team that had sure hands, it was him."
The penalty obviously gave Iowa a first down, but the drive eventually stalled at the Michigan State 40-yard line as the Hawkeyes punted with more than nine minutes left.
Michigan State then strung together first down after first down, converting five times on third down and one time on a fourth-and-2, in a grueling nine-minute touchdown drive.
“Nobody would have picked that against that Iowa defense,” VandeBerg said.
It culminated with a 1-yard rushing touchdown by Michigan State’s L.J. Scott, who stretched his arm out with the ball into the end zone as several Hawkeyes tackled him and Marcus Spears dived to try to stop him..
“It was a battle,” Iowa defensive coordinator Phil Parker said earlier this year, looking back at the 2015 game. “There’s a lot of plays — you can go back and look at it — and if just one guy (does) the right thing, the game’s over.”
The parallels between the 2015 Hawkeyes and 2023 Hawkeyes extend beyond their Big Ten West titles.
Injuries hampered both teams. In 2015, star defensive lineman Drew Ott suffered a season-ending knee injury (after he was already playing through a major elbow injury).
In 2023, star defensive back Cooper DeJean suffered a season-ending injury late in the season. (That was in addition to major injuries to quarterback Cade McNamara and tight ends Luke Lachey and Erick All.)
“That's probably not totally shocking for us, but that team had a lot of resiliency, too,” Ferentz said.
Beathard played in all 14 games, but he was far from healthy after suffering a sports hernia in the Week 3 win over Pittsburgh.
He spent plenty of time in the trainers’ room, “trying to make it kind of Saturday to Saturday.”
“I didn’t practice a ton,” Beathard said. “I practiced enough to be ready for the game. … I took a lot of Toradol.”
Iowa battled through some close games in 2015, too. Six of the Hawkeyes’ 12 wins were by nine or fewer points.
That included a nail-biter against Pittsburgh, when Marshall Koehn’s 57-yard field goal lifted the Hawkeyes over the Panthers as time expired. There also was the 10-6 win over then-No. 19 Wisconsin that vaulted Iowa into the AP Top 25.
“At that point, we kind of knew that we had maybe what it took,” VandeBerg said of the win over Wisconsin. “But not only that. Everybody was having so much fun. … When people buy in and people have fun, that’s what makes you elevate your play even more.”
Iowa’s 31-17 win over Iowa State would not seem close when looking solely at the final score, but the game was tied as late as the three-minute mark in the fourth quarter.
“They gave us everything we could handle that day,” Krieger-Coble said.
Perhaps no win was more emblematic of the Hawkeyes’ ability to battle through unfortunate circumstances than the 40-10 win over then-No. 20 Northwestern.
“I don't mind telling you, I had my concerns, like from grave concerns in that one,” Ferentz said.
Beathard was practically “banged up that whole season,” he remembers, but it was especially bad in the week leading up to the Northwestern game.
The quarterback, Ferentz recalled, “couldn't walk that week.”
“That was part of the creation of my indigestion,” Ferentz said. “Man, this isn’t good.”
But the Hawkeyes ran away with the 30-point win, in large part because of Akrum Wadley’s 204 rushing yards.
Iowa’s 12-0 season in 2015 was despite not having the same star power, at least in its senior class, that some other top-10 teams might have. The only player drafted in the following spring was center Austin Blythe, and he was a seventh-round selection.
“There’s a lot of guys on the team that were kind of playing their role,” Krieger-Coble said. “We were a really selfless bunch.”
The parallels to 2023 are visible in that regard as well, considering the Hawkeyes had only three first-team all-Big Ten players.
Both the 2015 and 2023 Big Ten West teams were not exactly national media darlings.
In 2015, Fox Sports pundit Colin Cowherd called Iowa the “fake ID of college football.” In 2023, Iowa has taken plenty of digs from national media, which included one columnist saying he did not “want Iowa to win another game.”
“People love not to love us,” Ferentz said. “That’s OK. It is what it is. … I don’t know why. We’ve got great colors. Iowa’s easy to spell.”
Many of the fans who do love the Hawkeyes have put an asterisk on Iowa’s 10-2 record. Had a Big Ten replay official not called an invalid fair catch on DeJean that wiped out his punt return touchdown — a call Beathard described as "one of the worst calls I’ve seen“ — Iowa would presumably be 11-1.
An 11-1 record would have been the best regular-season mark since 2015. Nonetheless, the 2023 Hawkeyes are part of a small group of Ferentz-led teams to win 10-plus regular-season games, joining the 2002, 2009, 2015 and 2021 teams.
"There’s a lot of head coaches that would pay a lot of money to be 10-2 right now,“ Beathard said. ”At the end of the day, that’s where Iowa is at.“
Looking ahead, it would mean “everything” for Canzeri and the other 2015 Hawkeyes to see the 2023 team do what they fell short of doing eight years ago.
“I’ve been hoping for a Big Ten championship for a long time,” Krieger-Coble said. “If these guys can pull it off, that would be pretty special. I think they have what it takes.”
VandeBerg, along with the outright Big Ten title, would love to "see Coach (Kirk) Ferentz cry at the end of it.“
“I would love to see that kind of emotion because it’s something that we’ve been chasing for a while and been really close,” VandeBerg said. “I’d be really happy for him to get something like that.”
Comments: john.steppe@thegazette.com
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