Punting really is winning for Hawkeyes ... this time

IOWA CITY — It’s a good thing for Iowa that it sold all its tickets to this year’s football home games before the season started.

How would you like to try to sell hope and dreams after what was seen here Saturday, not to mention watchable offense?

There are no bad victories, but the Hawkeyes’ 7-3 win over South Dakota State in the 2022 season opener at Kinnick Stadium was gruesome.

The 7 came with 3 points, then 2, then 2 more. It was like staggering across a desert, and periodically finding just enough water to survive until you finally reach the Death Valley Kum & Go.

Iowa had 10 first downs, 166 yards, 2.7 yards per play, and 1.6 yards per rush. Its 3 offensive points came after it gained just 5 yards in three plays after taking possession at the SDSU 33.

Surely, this isn’t what Iowa was selling to you the last eight months. This wasn’t just an extension of last season, when the Hawkeyes averaged only 17.4 points over their last eight games and won four of them. This was even worse.

“We’ll be better next week,” Iowa Coach Kirk Ferentz said. How could they not be?

Imagine if the Hawkeyes’ defense were merely good. Imagine if Iowa punter Tory Taylor was merely adequate. Iowa would be 0-1 and you couldn’t walk in the general vicinity of Kinnick in the week ahead without dodging torches and pitchforks.

When your offense only accounts for 3 points and 166 yards, you better hold your foe to 3 points and 120 yards, and pick up a couple of safeties in the process for scoring purposes. That’s precisely what Phil Parker’s defense did.

Stellar, hide-saving football is what those defenders played. As many times as the thought of the Jackrabbits busting off just one big scoring play may have thrown fear into Hawkeye hearts, it never seemed like a real possibility.

“We want to be the group that just continues to play Coach Parker defense year in and year out, but nothing fancy,” Iowa linebacker Jack Campbell said. “Just a lot of effort and a great attitude.”

Campbell ripped down Jackrabbit running back Isaiah Davis in the SDSU end zone for the third-quarter safety that broke a 3-3 tie, and had 12 tackles total. Iowa has had sensational linebackers, but this guy is something else.

In a postgame interview, Campbell went out of his way to not only avoid criticizing his team’s offense, but to praise it.

“I’m always going to have their back,” he said.

“If we’re just going to point fingers and complain, I just think we’re not looking at the right things.”

Campbell is a great teammate, a colossal player. But in the big cash-money world in which he performs, the customer expects a little more entertainment when the home team has the ball. Instead, it was the football version of C-SPAN 3.

Spencer Petras’ passing was ragged and the blocking for him was substandard. As offensive combinations go, that’s a liverwurst-and-marmalade sandwich.

Iowa has an offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach. It has an offensive line coach. It is paying about $90,000 for six months of quarterback whispering from Jon Budmayr, officially titled a football analyst. Kirk Ferentz has called him “a great resource.”

Ten first downs, 166 yards, three offensive points. Eight months.

But oh, does Iowa ever have a fan-pleasing punter. Taylor placed seven of his 10 kicks inside the Jacks’ 20 and four inside the 6. He set up Campbell’s safety with a boot from the 50 to the 1.

Taylor said he has cut his repertoire down to four basic kinds of punts, and used all of them Saturday. He got “MVP!” chants from Hawkeye fans. He deserved them.

Terry Roberts, a mayhem-making gunner on Iowa’s punt team, can’t really watch Taylor punt, but “I just look up and try to find the ball and it’s just like magic.

“He’s very consistent. In my opinion, the best in the nation.”

“Punting is winning,” people have joked about the Hawkeyes. It’s absurd. Punting is winning?

“I’m going to say yes,” Taylor said.

This time it was. Defense is winning, too. But at some point passing and blocking need to enter the equation. What a concept, eh?

Comments: (319) 398-8440; mike.hlas@thegazette.com