How incredibly frustrating.
That's really the only thing that I can think of after watching this game. I secretly hoped that it would be closer than it was and had some dim hope that we might even somehow pull out a win, especially after somehow finding away against Northwestern last weekend but I should have known better. We seemed to revert to that old Iowa problem: awesome defense and an offense that couldn't find the end zone with a GPS.
The first quarter looked really promising though. I was somewhat displeased when Stave's early interception didn't turn into points of some kind for us, but I shrugged it off. Wisconsin's defense is probably the best we've faced since Michigan State's- just moving the ball the way we were was good enough for me. But our inability to place the ball into the endzone proved problematic and eventually sealed the game for us. I've got nothing against kicking field goals but at some point, you have to stop playing by the Marquess of Queensbury rules and go for the damn jugular.
I keep hearing about Greg Davis and his seventy five page playbook- and granted, we've seen more variety than last year's dumpster fire of a season but when you show the rest of the conference six or seven different looks on offense by this point in the season they're undoubtedly quite familiar with them. Do something the other team doesn't expect. Don't even worry about doing it well. Just try that for the sheer novelty of it and see what happens.
Happily for me, the Arsenal v Liverpool match came on so I spent most of the second half watching that and tackling laundry. (Arsenal won 2-0 to go five points clear at the top of the EPL Table. Go Gunners!) Eventually, that old Iowa problem did what it always did... the defense, bless them for being so awesome and actually seeming to have a chip on their shoulders and flashes of dare I say, swagger at times, just got tired, plain and simple and the offense sputtered once Rudock went out with an injury of some kind.
So CJ 'Sunshine' Beathard took the reins and while it wasn't awful, it wasn't awesome either. It's obvious that if Rudock's knees implode, then with Beathard we might have a QB that could develop into something very interesting. He's got an arm, I'll give him that- but aside from the lack of a killer instinct, our offense couldn't seem to catch the ball. Which isn't really on the QB necessarily. I reckon if we would have cut the number of dropped balls in half this game would have been a lot more interesting than it turned out to be.
It is philosophically however, where this game gets a lot more depressing when you really think about it. Wisconsin under Barry Alvarez took Hayden Fry's coaching philosophy of power running and smash mouth football and ran with it. They took the flavor of Iowa football to Madison- and you know what? Right now, they're doing it better than we are. Now that's depressing to think about.
(Tangent time! There's also something floating around about a survey on the Kinnick 'stadium experience.' Let's break that down, shall we:
1. Wi-Fi and better cell service. No point in telling people to TXT when they have a problem when no one can get a fucking cell signal. (Plus, in a totally self-interested way, I want to be able to get Netflix on my tablet when I work overtime at the stadium. #justsaying)
2. Marching Band has been a little blah of late. I'm not saying we need to go all cray cray like Ohio State, but a little more oomph wouldn't hurt.
3. Overhaul the music, overhaul everything! Wisconsin has 'Jump Around.' We have the Burrito Lift. We don't need to rip them off, but we can do better than the damn Burrito Lift.
4. I'm all for honoring Veterans- really and truly, but maybe don't hand out a metric fuckton of red and white pom poms when we play Wisconsin? Kind of dilutes the Blackout a bit.)
The good news, if you can call it that is that we've probably faced our last really good defense for the year. We go to Purdue next week and while West Lafayette can be tricky sometimes, if we lose to Purdue I'll just go ahead and say it: we don't deserve to go to a bowl for one and for two, Gary Barta/Kirk Ferentz need to be placed firmly on the hot seat- because if we fire Ferentz, Barta should follow for sticking us with that obscene buyout! Michigan got pasted by Sparty today and we get them at home so that's doable. Nebraska's issues on defense this year are well known and if Minnesota can beat them, we can too. I can see us going 2-1 down the stretch or 1-2 down the stretch- I'd be very surprised if we go 3-0 down the stretch- but I won't be complaining about it either. I cannot right now, imagine us not winning at least one more game.
The blueprint for beating Wisconsin was there Saturday and it's there going forward for the rest of the season: cornibus taurum tibi sumere... you have to take the bull by the horns.
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