Every game matters, especially when you are a team that IS not superior to others.
I remember a while back when we had Gregory, we called him an eraser (he could erase mistakes by other people on the field or his own because of his God given genetics). We don't have many of those on this team, which means we have to play close to perfect to give us a chance. Iowa certainly has a few more "erasers" than we do and has a STRONG, CONSISTENT, AND DEFINED, culture which has taken a substantial amount of time to build.
Special teams have been tough this year, and you can scheme all you want, but we can't scheme depth (which we have little of). I am extremely impressed with what they've done with our soccer kicker, they gave him time to develop and it's been awesome. It took nearly 8 weeks for him to figure out how to do one thing well. (Not a knock on him or our coaches...but realistic for fans to recognize that acquiring skills take time). Mills, Waldoch, Jurgens are all good examples of taking time to figure things out.
It obviously would be much better to not ask these guys to contribute until they've been in any system for 2-3 years... but here we are.
Back to the original point, we had to play incredibly disciplined and perfect to keep ourselves in games and it was compounded by some crazy circumstances severely affecting our special teams (which put even more pressure on the other two phases). I saw huge growth in all 3 areas as the season went on. We haven't turned the corner yet, but I believe things are being set up to build things correctly.
Just my opinion.