Hlas: Iowa Hawkeyes need to rumble past fumbles

Iowa's football team has three statistics pressing into its hip pads as it enters its game against Illinois Saturday.

The first is the most-basic and most-urgent. The Hawkeyes have a 2-game losing streak. If that doesn't get halted Saturday afternoon, we'll hear about area hardware stores that had sudden runs on torches and pitchforks.

The other two statistiques du jour

are primary reasons Iowa lost to Penn State and Michigan State — games decided by one score against teams that weren't exactly Illinois and Illinois.

One is yards per carry. The Hawkeyes are 107th of the nation's 130 teams in that department, with a mere 3.39 yards per rush. An exact five yards per carry would only be good for 40th.

The other is fumbles. Iowa has eight. Only three teams have more per game.

Last week's lost fumbles on two consecutive third-quarter drives did a lot to doom the Hawkeyes at Michigan State. So that is pretty topical.

Those two stats, however, don't always define an offense. Here are some things that may surprise you:

Iowa, with a reputation as a power football team, has been an average rushing club over the last decade. When it went 12-2 in 2015, it had its highest yards-per carry average since 2008 with 4.48. But that was only 59th-best in the nation.

The Hawkeyes went to and won the Orange Bowl in the 2009 season. Yet, they had a paltry 3.27 yards per rush that season, 106th nationally.

Between 2009 and 2016, the best Iowa did in yards per rush was 58th in 2010.

None of that tells a full story. Iowa's best offenses often wore down defenses over four quarters. That has meant some first-half rushes that were probably designed to start to take physical tolls on foes as much as gain yardage.

Against Penn State and Michigan State, however, no such tolls weren't taken. Iowa had just 22 first downs and 48 rushes over those two games. The opposition had 48 and 91.

Iowa averaged but 2.10 yards per rush in that stretch, a beet-red flag. Yet, they somehow were one-score games, and the Hawkeyes were one play from ecstasy against Penn State.

The fumbles thing isn't good, of course. But Illinois has yet to lose a fumble in 2017. Would you trade Iowa's offense for the Illini's? The correct answer is 'No way, babe.'

Iowa's fumbles last week were very damaging, for sure. We've all known fumbling was bad since Herky came out of his egg. Yet ...

Last year, Iowa led the nation in fewest lost fumbles with just two over 13 games. That's abnormally good. Still, the Hawkeyes lost five games.

Alabama lost 10 fumbles a season ago, Clemson 11, and the latter beat the former in the national championship game.

Louisville had a national-high 22 lost fumbles, four more than any other FBS team. It also had the Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback, Lamar Jackson. Its offense was what you would call aggressive.

In 2015, Iowa fumbled the ball away 11 times and won a dozen times. Meanwhile, no team had fewer lost fumbles that year than South Carolina. No one cared, because the Gamecocks went 3-9.

'Ironically,' Iowa Coach Kirk Ferentz said this week, 'we've probably worked harder on ball security, like going back to spring, than we ever have, so maybe that's where we're screwing this whole thing up. Maybe I'll just say 'Hey, the hell with it and throw it out there, have some fun.' '

It's highly unlikely he used those words to his guys, but maybe he should have. As long as that also included 'Blockers, block. Runners, follow the holes and run hard. Receivers, get open and catch the ball. Quarterback, throw good passes.'

If the Hawkeyes do all that, they can say the same thing a frustrated Charlie Brown would say when Schroeder recited unflattering numbers to him about their hopeless baseball team.

'Tell your statistics to shut up!'