Non Conference Season over 2-2

 Hi all I'm back again with another blog about the Iowa Hawkeyes football team. Well things didn't go the way most of us expected in the Non Conference portion of the schedule going 2-2 with losses to ISU 9-6 and CMU 32-31. Now we start Big Ten play and a lot of people are ready to jump off the bandwagon just go on any of the Hawkeye message boards to see all the negativity surrounding the Iowa Football Team. I have watched every game this season including the Central Michigan debacle where we messed up the second onside kick but that play was very confusing as a referee blew the whistle after the CMU kicker was already moving to kick the ball. I have no idea why the kicker can start before the Referee blows his whistle but I guess you can. That was a very tough loss but once again the defense made good adjustments at halftime getting more pressure on Central Michigan's QB but it just wasn't enough. Honestly if we get that onside kick we win the game and have a 3-1 record on the season it just didn't work out that way.

 The outlook on the rest of the season, I get that people may be discouraged because of the tough non conference losses to Iowa State and Central Michigan. I believe this team has improved from week one the offense is getting better we have a strong running back in Mark Weisman who just has that look of a physical bone crushing running back. This guy refuses to go down on the first hit and has been a real spark for this team over the last couple weeks. When you look at most of Iowa's good teams they have always been based around the running game more so than the passing game. Honestly I think we are very close to putting a full game together the offense has improved since week 1 as the passing game has been better lately and we have seen Keenan Davis really step up as well as Martin Manley getting involved in the offense, plus even Jordan Cotton has come on strong over the last couple of weeks. The offense seems to be a lot closer to breaking out this weekend vs Minnesota and they really look a lot better plus they are way more in sync then they were as the start of the season. I really think the new system took a little longer then most expected to learn but now that they have I believe the offense is ready to take off.

 Defensively this team for some reason has come out of the gates slow in every game. We have played to soft in the first series against teams and they have marched down to get points. The good thing though is we have been able to make a lot of in game adjustment at halftime that have really turned a lot of the games for us. We even did a nice job last week but at the end we went away from the aggressive defense we were playing which caused us to lose the game. I'm still confident in this defense they didn't have a good day on Saturday but that was really the first game of the year they didn't play well. We have played 4 games and only given up over 18 points once so I think we will be in a lot of games because of the defense but we have to figure out how to get things started faster.

 On to the big ten this game we have coming up on Saturday is going to tell us a lot about this team. I'm not saying it's a must win but its as close as it can be without it being for a championship. The Big Ten is down this year so I think every team in the conference could struggle. Right now if we can beat Minnesota this weekend and get Floyd back it should give us a big boost going in the the rest of the season. I think the momentum we will get from a big win should help us and all of the fans that are discouraged right now this is when the team needs us the most. We need a raucous crowd on Saturday to really get this team going to a huge victory and recapture the Floyd of Rosedale. Now Minnesota is not going to be an easy game I expect a close drag it out slug fest but I truly believe that we will bounce back and get a nice W over Minnesota I'm going with 24 to 14. The Gophers like to pass the ball a lot and we won't have to worry about Shortell running, if we play some tighter coverage plus run our nickle and dime coverages we should win this game.

 So Season 1 is over the Non Conference didn't got our way but we can still get things cleaned up in the conference season and have a good team. It all starts Saturday against the Gophers we need this one on Saturday if we can win this weekend we have 2 weeks to prepare for a game at Michigan State which looks winnable. My point is don't give up on the season there is still time to get this thing turned around so don't jump off the ship yet.

GO Hawks