Where Iowa football stands after ‘humbling experience’ against Iowa State

IOWA CITY — Losing a game like Saturday’s Cy-Hawk game leaves a “sour taste in your mouth,” as Iowa safety Koen Entringer explained it.

Iowa Coach Kirk Ferentz used the word “setback” several times in his Tuesday news conference. Wide receiver Jacob Gill similarly said the loss was a “humbling experience.”

“It showed us that we need to get better,” Gill said. “We got some things to improve on.”

The rest of the college football world seems to also recognize Iowa’s need to improve as external expectations for the Hawkeyes have dropped precipitously in the days following Saturday’s loss.

Iowa unsurprisingly fell out of the AP Poll. This week marks the first AP Poll with Nebraska, but not Iowa, ranked since 2016. (The Huskers are No. 23.)

The College Football Playoff — something Cade McNamara said before the season was a “very realistic goal for this team” — seems like much more of a stretch after Saturday’s loss.

ESPN’s Football Power Index previously gave Iowa a 10.7 percent chance of appearing in the CFP. After Saturday’s 20-19 loss, those odds dropped to 1.8 percent.

FanDuel gives 28 teams better odds of making the CFP than Iowa, including Iowa State, Nebraska, UCF and even Texas State, as of Tuesday morning.

Barring a highly unlikely upset over Ohio State on Oct. 5, Iowa’s best-case scenario would be to go 10-2 in the regular season and hope that is a strong enough resume to be ranked as one of the top seven at-large teams. (The other five CFP spots go to conference champions.)

When Iowa was 10-2 in 2023 (before the Big Ten title game) without any ranked wins, the Hawkeyes were No. 16 in the CFP rankings. When Iowa was 10-2 in 2021 (also before the Big Ten title game) with a top-five win on its resume, the Hawkeyes were No. 13.

Meanwhile, ESPN Analytics gives the Hawkeyes a 60 percent or better chance of winning in only three more games this season — Troy this week, Northwestern and Wisconsin. Six other games are between 40 and 60 percent.

During the Ferentz era, Iowa has averaged 9.2 overall wins in seasons that included a Cy-Hawk victory. In seasons where Iowa loses to Iowa State, the Hawkeyes’ average win total drops to 6.1.

The most obvious exception was 2002, when Iowa blew a 24-7 halftime lead against the Seneca Wallace-led Cyclones at Kinnick Stadium. The Hawkeyes went on to win their nine remaining regular-season games, including road trips to No. 12 Penn State and No. 8 Michigan, and go to the Orange Bowl.

It helped that Iowa had Brad Banks that year. The Heisman runner-up had 26 touchdown passes versus five interceptions and rushed for another five touchdowns.

McNamara has not been competing at that level so far. After a strong first quarter against Iowa State, the sixth-year quarterback completed only 5 of 18 passes for 27 yards in the remaining three quarters.

Ferentz said after the game Saturday that he still expected McNamara “to be our quarterback” despite the poor performance, and the 26th-year head coach reiterated that confidence on Tuesday.

“I think he just needs to play,” Ferentz said on Tuesday. “He needs to learn from those experiences. The faster you learn, the better, obviously. He's missed a lot of time. I think he needs that. It is a new offense for him. ... He can play better, and I think he will play better. It's just a matter of working at it. There's nothing magic we can do.”

McNamara was not available to media on Tuesday because of an academic conflict, but Gill said the key to improving the passing game is “staying consistent and working on the little details.”

“We’ve got potential, amazing potential,” Gill said.

Comments: john.steppe@thegazette.com

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