Iowa’s loss to Ohio State serves as reminder of Hawkeyes’ distance from top tier of college football

COLUMBUS, Ohio — One could be forgiven for feeling a slight sense of deja vu in Ohio Stadium’s visiting team interview room on Saturday evening.

Kirk Ferentz spoke in the same room at the same dais with the same gray Iowa football lectern in front of him as he did after Iowa’s previous loss to Ohio State in 2022.

Two years ago, he was talking to reporters following a 54-10 blowout. This time, it was a 35-7 blowout. Both followed relatively competitive starts — a 7-0 halftime deficit in 2024 and a 16-10 second-quarter deficit in 2022.

“Turnovers are tough to overcome,” Ferentz said in 2022 after a game in which Iowa committed six turnovers.

Turnovers were tough for Iowa to overcome in 2024, too, with Ohio State scoring 21 points off three Iowa turnovers in the 28-point game.

The two games — two years and 17 days apart — epitomize a trend for Iowa football in recent years. The Hawkeyes have increasingly shown an inability to be competitive with teams at the highest level of college football.

Iowa has not defeated a ranked team since its 23-20 win over then-No. 4 Penn State on Oct. 9, 2021 — almost exactly three years ago. Since then, the Hawkeyes have consistently shown an inability to keep up with high-level competition.

The Hawkeyes have played eight ranked foes since the memorable 2021 Penn State win. They have lost all eight games, with only one being decided by 10 or fewer points.

The picture has been especially bleak in Iowa’s last five games against ranked foes, which stretches over roughly a two-year span. Iowa has been outscored in those games more than tenfold — 181-17, to be exact.

“Obviously it’s unfortunate that we lost, but we don’t want to measure ourselves against lower competition,” Iowa quarterback Cade McNamara said after Saturday’s game — Iowa’s eighth consecutive ranked loss and ninth consecutive loss in Columbus. “We’re striving to be the best team in the Big Ten.”

The lack of competitiveness in big games marks a contrast from other stretches of the Ferentz era. The 2021 win over Penn State was Iowa’s fifth consecutive win against a ranked opponent, and three of those five wins were even against top-10 foes.

Ferentz, when asked Saturday about the current gap between Iowa and higher-ranked teams, said you simply “go back to work” and “try to get better.”

“There’s no magic formula,” Ferentz said.

There seemed to be hope in Iowa City before this season that the 2024 team could rise above past teams’ ceilings. After all, Iowa returned almost every starter from last year’s defense and had an experienced quarterback and offensive line. McNamara said at the team’s annual media day that a berth in the 12-team CFP was a “very realistic goal for this team.”

“I think — just the overall experience and the amount of talent that we have on both sides of the ball — that if we weren’t to have that goal, we’d be holding ourselves short,” McNamara said at the time.

McNamara continued to express optimism about what this team could accomplish after Saturday’s loss.

“I think the difference between really good and being good is very slim,” McNamara said on Saturday. “We’re really trying to hit that. We’re really close to getting that.”

Iowa’s best-case scenario would be to win its remaining seven games and finish the regular season 10-2. That scenario certainly is no guarantee, but it does happen, a CFP berth would still be a long shot.

With five spots in the 12-team CFP reserved for conference champions, Iowa would realistically need to be in the top 10 or 11 to earn an at-large bid.

When the Hawkeyes were 10-2 in 2021 ahead of the Big Ten title game, they were No. 13 in the CFP rankings. When the Hawkeyes were 10-2 in 2023 (also ahead of the Big Ten title game), they were No. 16.

Every team that finished in the top 12 of last year’s CFP rankings was either ranked or (in Missouri’s case) the top-vote-receiving team outside of the Top 25 at this point in the season. The 2024 Hawkeyes — with votes from only one out of 61 AP ballots this week — would need a bigger jump than what Missouri accomplished last year.

“We have seven more games left,” McNamara said. “We can’t throw the towel in now. … We just can’t allow this to derail us because there’s a lot of potential and there’s a lot of good guys on this team.”

Comments: john.steppe@thegazette.com

Sign up for our curated Iowa Hawkeyes athletics newsletter at thegazette.com/hawks.