My takeaways from Iowa State:
-They exposed some of their tendencies against Kansas State, which is exactly what we wanted them to do. Whether or not our defense will be good enough and disciplined enough to not fall for their schemes, like they did last year, will essentially be the difference in the ball game. That's the god's honest truth.
I said make a note of the double move on the last TD pass by ISU. That was from around the 35 to 25 yd line (not gonna look up exact numbers, because I'm lazy). That area of the field is where ISU will look to catch Iowa in single coverage and Becht will run a fade for the corner of the endzone. May not be the same kind of route, but the shot taken is what matters. Iowa has to be ready to defend that, especially if Parker lets his corners go man in those situations.
Some of the run/blocking designs were unique, and it'll be up to our veteran DL to not get caught up in the wash and leave our below average and inexperienced linebackers out to dry.
Basically, this game will boil down to Phil not letting the inexperience of his side of the ball get burned by the scheming of ISU's idiot savant of offensive football they have for an offensive coordinator.
I think it's safe to say at this point in Campbell's career at ISU, that they are a system school. I particularly have noticed this with their defense. And by system I mean they've established some consistent success playing a certain style that is meant to overcome the lack of stars/talent in a given college roster, and that system is only elevated if they ever do get a star player (think Baylor all those years, and then when they had RGIII, or Wisconsin being a run-heavy, ball control scheme with a no-name, yet hard-nose defense prior to the Fickell era).
ISU under Heathcliff their DC, has typically been this stingy no-name defense that has essentially been overachieving given their perceived talent over the past several years, and this past Saturday's game was the perfect encapsulation of that idea. They did enough to hang around against Iowa last year, until our offense decided to go back to being dog sh** in the 2nd half and ISU's offense could hit a couple big plays on rare Iowa defensive breakdowns, and they steal another win from Iowa.
In their game against Kansas State, yeah they had some breakdowns in the 2nd half that led to quick scores for K-State, but outside of that, the Wildcats just could not do much to control the game when they had the ball, and it wasn't because of any one player in particular on ISU's side, but rather just better execution of their scheme on the Cyclones' part.
And again, much like the Iowa game last year, the defense kept them in the game, until the offense and Rocco Becht could catch up and hit on some plays in the 2nd half, and eventually overtake the Wildcats.
ISU under Campbell's system has become a plug-and-play style on both sides. They have bums at RB that wouldn't start for any legitimate top 12 team in the country, and yet they find ways to run the ball effectively. Their receivers will remain the big question over the course of the season, as more film gets put out there, but Iowa unfortunately won't have that luxury with just 2 weeks to prepare. They have solid TEs, but nothing that should cause earth-shattering mismatches, and yet they still produce. The biggest difference maker, though is the fact that Rocco Becht is proving to be a gamer at QB and we have to admit at this point is a top 30-40 QB in CFB, and many will probably argue he should be much higher than that (and I'll talk more on that point in a sec). Becht is a very good college QB, and that's really all you need to succeed at this level (gee........wouldn't that be nice, as Iowa fans, to see that again............). And that's really what this ISU team has. A bunch of serviceable to above average college level players in an (at this point) established system and they have figured out how to make it work against comparable opponents. And that same measure applies even moreso for their defense under Heathcliff, their DC, that ISU fans jumped to anoint and canonize to rival all the hype that Phil Parker was getting, because they couldn't stand that a rival coordinator was getting all this shine nationally, and needed to feel included.
- And the last thing I'll say, as I alluded to earlier, is that with Becht, ISU over the past season or two, has figured out how to flip the script on the Brock Purdy era of clutch turnovers and mistakes late in games. With Becht, ISU is winning close games and getting what I call "clutch offense" in the 4th Qtr. Rick Stanzi had that with Iowa. And that's where regardless of how the first 3 qtrs went, plays get made in the 4th qtr. The offense doesn't disappear....it comes up clutch. And that pisses me off as an Iowa fan, because we haven't seen that out of the QB position, let alone our garbage offense, on a consistent basis since the 2015 season (and just one damn year at that, out of the 2010s too).
So that's what Iowa will have to overcome in two weeks.
- avoid the defensive breakdowns when ISU looks to take their shots, which we got tipped off on in this game against K-State, and can go back to what they did last year against us as well.
- and find a way to not let ISU get clutch offense in the 4th qtr..........which is exactly what they f***ing did against us last year, and they did this past Saturday.
If we can take care of those two things, and maybe just maybe the offense is a little better than the garbage sh** show that was the 2022 team and the second half of the 2024 game, then we could come away with the ""upset"" win in Ames.
