I'm so sick of this "we beat ourselves" nonsense. One of the worst offenses, not in the Big Ten, but in the entire country averaged more than 5 yards per carry. Our defensive line couldn't fight off their offensive line in the second half. Inside zone was their bread and butter and we never stopped it consistently. Our turnovers don't help but this Iowa offense is a complete zero. Iowa has rarely been an offensive juggernaut but this offense is even bad by their standards.
Tyler Goodson is a good back but every Big Ten team with a pulse figured out how to bottle him up. Against Minnesota he ran for 59, against Wisconsin 27, against Penn State 88. Purdue held him to 68, even Maryland held him to 66 yards. He only had 100+ yard games against NW and ILL. He had 150 against us - his best total of the season.
He was already over a hundred yards on 20 carries when he had his 55 yard run. Our defense played well for the most part but we didn't have a good answer for the inside zone the second half. Again, all the other decent teams mentioned above figured out how to do this. It ain't a surprise what Ferentz is going to try to do.
When Iowa put in Petras we should have blitzed him 60-70% of the time. This is what Purdue and Wisconsin did to him. Petras has horrible time with pressure because he is Bernie Kosar level immobile.
Our defensive stats don't look too bad but this is deceiving because the Iowa offense is horrid.
