Without its usual dominant defense, Iowa football has a season that feels like it’s over

With two games left, the story of Iowa’s 2024 football season already has been written.

Missed opportunity.

Las Vegas set the number right in the summer when it had Iowa’s over/under win total at 7.5 or 8 depending on where one shopped. But that overwhelming defense, many of us back in Iowa said. That underwhelming schedule, we said.

Not before had the Hawkeyes featured as much returning experience on defense, and with certified studs starting with superman linebacker Jay Higgins. Linebacker Nick Jackson and defensive backs Sebastian Castro, Jermari Harris and Quinn Schulte took the option of a sixth college season to run it again.

They had come off a 10-win season that shouldn’t have been a 10-win season, but they were a Phil Parker defense. Meaning, they were fourth in the nation in fewest points allowed per game, fifth in fewest yards allowed.

If the offense were just adequate this season, I and many others believed, it should be a potent team. Instead, it’s 6-4.

In the two games immediately before Friday’s 20-17 loss at UCLA, the Hawkeye defense was dominant in home games against Northwestern and Wisconsin. However, it’s been a unit of hothouse flowers that flourish in Kinnick Stadium, but wilt away from home.

Iowa had held opponents under 400 yards for 32 straight games, and 400 yards isn’t an uncommon total. That streak was broken at Ohio State in a 35-7 loss. No Greek tragedy, that. However, giving up 468 at Michigan State and 415 at UCLA are bright red flags.

Entering Saturday’s games, the Spartans and Bruins were 13th and 16th, respectively, in Big Ten total offense.

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In those two games, it was strange to see Hawkeye defenders be so outplayed by ordinary opposition. The missed tackles, the poor angles, the way the Hawkeyes couldn’t get opposing offenses off the field — that wasn’t Iowa. Yet it was.

Look, the UCLA team was a team loss. Having questionable quarterback depth and talent feels like Iowa’s never-ending story. So, fairly or not, it’s on the defense and special teams to carry the weight in games like Friday’s. They couldn’t.

Let’s not forget to credit the Hawkeye ‘D’ for intercepting a short pass in the end zone and recovering a Bruins fumble in the end zone. UCLA could have won handily.

Bigger picture, however, Iowa led the nation in fewest yards allowed per play in 2022 and 2023. Given the Hawkeyes were 107th in time of possession in both of those seasons, what the defense did was extraordinary.

Maybe you can’t expect similar results every year even if Iowa’s defense hasn’t allowed as much as 20 points per game in a season since 2015.

As of Saturday morning, the Hawkeyes were 38th in fewest yards per play. That’s still in the top one-third of the nation. But it’s over a full yard more than the two years before, and it’s mid-pack in the Big Ten.

Were Iowa’s defenders at the zenith of their powers last year? Who’s to say? All sports teams are delicate ecosystems, none more than college teams composed of, yes, college kids.

We’ve just been so spoiled by the consistent excellence of that defense that it makes a performance like Friday’s look even uglier. For the Big Ten’s 18th-ranked rushing offense to almost triple its season average with 211 yards against Iowa was a jolt-and-a-half.

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For all the ridicule Iowa absorbed for its offense last season, it won 10 games. It was badly outclassed by Penn State, Michigan and Tennessee, but had answers for every Big Ten mediocrity other than Minnesota, and could deflect blame for that loss to the officiating.

With games left at Maryland and at home against Nebraska, the Hawkeyes are playing for themselves. Because nothing glamorous awaits in the postseason. They’ll go to the Opt-Out Bowl in Charlotte, or the Opt-Out Bowl in New York, or the Opt-Out Bowl in Phoenix, or the Opt-Out Bowl in Nashville.

This was a season in which Iowa didn’t have to play Oregon, Penn State or, yes, Indiana. In August, imagining at an Iowa candidacy for the College Football Playoff didn’t seem like a crazy dreamer’s dream.

Now it’s November. As the poet said:

For all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these, ‘It might have been.’

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