Iowa absolutely must pass to set up the run. Until Robinson can figure it out, or Brinson gets healthy and lives up to (likely unreasonable) expectations, Iowa simply cannot run first. Obviously, Stanzi still has not moved past his STANZIBALL days, and he may never get over his love of throwing into triple coverage at least once a week, but, as the Hawkeyes showed on their most impressive drive of the day, if he gets a little time this offense can move the ball, and quickly.

the outstanding play of Amari Spivey. Thank God he was there to break up several passes, not to mention the sideline-to-sideline coverage he provided in chasing down guys in the flat. I think this might be the last season for us to watch him in black and gold, unless he goes to the Steelers….

But it was a close win all the same, and that’s a good thing; before the PSU win last year, Iowa had, what, nine straight losses in games decided by 3 points or fewer?

It was also a come-from-behind victory, which have been fairly rare under KF.

We still feel like they’re one or two bodies short of the 2001-2003 era of defensive lining.

No love for the 04 line? Or is that comment referring to available depth? The 04 line didn’t have a great deal of depth, but the starting four were fantastic.

The bottom line on the defense is this: they held UNI to 16 points. UNI has a relatively good offense. But Iowa’s probably going to face—conservatively—5 or 6 better offenses over the course of the season. Since the offense hasn’t yet demonstrated the ability to get involved in a shootout, this season could turn long and painful without the defense getting back to near-2008 levels.

The defense definitely needs to tackle much better and it would be nice to generate a bit more consistent pass rush, but in terms of PPG, I think the onus is decidedly on the offense to produce more rather than the defense to prevent more. There’s room for improvement there, but 16 PPG is not that bad, all things considered. Scoring 17 PPG is pretty bad, though; they definitely need to bump that by at least 7-10 PPG or we’re going to put a lot of pressure on the defense to perform at a very, very high level and reduce our margin of error even further.

and enduring their heartbreaking playoff loss, I hope UNI just goes effing postal on the rest of their schedule and rampages to the 1-AA championship. If they can play every game like they played Saturday, this is likely. Elijah Hodge leading the defense helps.

…other than Greenwood.

I have given Greenwood the benefit of the doubt for nearly 2 years. But when your defense is predicated on not getting beat over the top (it only happened once all last year) and you get burned for 60 yards on a weak play fake, among other transgressions on Saturday, I start to get grouchy.

Hopefully they continue to play Speivey on the same half of the field, and he just shuts it down by himself.

from most of the writers on the various blogs. While most writers find Iowa to be a terrible disappointment this week, there are a few who still have hope in us. While the Big Ten did underperform this week, 10 of the 11 teams escaped with wins.

This is the ding Iowa needed to get it’s ass in gear, and hopefully KF can see that DJK is a game changer. That said, DJK needs to get his ass in gear, and quit pissing off the coaching staff. Lames doesn’t scare me quite as much as it did last week, but I’m still going to lay low when it comes to arguing with my Clown friends until we see the score on Saturday afternoon.

Oline looked decent, but disorganized. Missed a couple assignments on stunts and blitzes which led directly to TFL’s and/or sacks. UNI was run blitzing a lot. I think I even saw LBs down in a stance a few plays. They were absolutely determined to not give us the run. Until we can either a) pass all over teams when they try to do this, or b) run all over them anyway (like Shonn did, or 2002 OL did) our offense is going to look a bit more anemic than we’d expect.

Stanzi was solid. Apart from the egregious YAC we gifted UNI’s offense, his stat line was nearly identical to UNI’s quarterback’s.

Moeaki almost cleared that guy. Don’t know what inspired him to try to jump over him rather than just lowering a shoulder… I’m sure that play will get a few rewinds in the film room.

WR looked very good. Apart from a drop or two, we looked like we had a very capable and deep corps.

RB… Paki was a starter because he’s paid his dues and will probably never get to start again. This season is starting out like 2004. I hope the RB issue is resolved, instead of getting worse as it did 5 years ago. We still have a shot at a serviceable run game, and I’m hoping our young backs can develop quickly. However, if there’s any position you can start a freshman and still be successful it’s at RB.

Dline looked good, but UNI held a lot (for every holding call they got pegged with – and there were many – there were about two more where they didn’t get called). Very athletic, but lost contain on a few too many plays.

LBs looked okay, DBs looked mediocre save Super Spuh-VAY.

Okay, why did we leave the wheel/flat/outlet receiver wide swearwording open all day? I mean, I can stomach letting him get a catch for an easy 7 yards, bend-don’t-break. But allowing him another 8 YAC?? What’s up with that, Norman Q. Parkerstein? And where was our D on all those crossing routes? We need a BOB who can flatten anyone trying to catch across the middle, so they start hearing footsteps.

Oy. UNI found something in our base defense that hasn’t been exploited before or something. That was ridiculous.

are we that bad, or is UNI surprisingly that good. I will say this, from a pure passing standpoint, Pat Grace is the best QB we will face all year.

… had a lower completion percentage than Ricky Stanzi. 60.5% vs. 64.7%

From a pure passing standpoint.

I’m pretty sure Juice Williams’ gigantic head has an arm growing out of it that has a better arm than Pat Grace’s.

But isn’t it still fun to make fun of anything to do with Illinois, Zook, Juice Williams’ gargantuan head, or the colors blue and orange?

Cornshoe Hammaker shared a quote from a mutual friend, an ISU Alum: “I really wish that Iowa had killed UNI so that we could catch them asleep in Ames.”

I seem to remember that it usually took one good hit to wake me up and remind me that I was playing football. I’m going to believe that this is the shot to the head that wakes up the Hawks…and not the one that leads to a string of concussions which ultimately ends a player’s career.