Harty: This is the up-and-down life of a 7-win program
IOWA CITY, Iowa – When you look at the Iowa football program, what do you see?
And please, no jokes about the offense because C.J. Beathard and his cohorts already are hurting enough in the wake of Saturday’s 17-9 loss to Wisconsin at Kinnick Stadium.
But what do you really see in the big picture?
How would you describe the Iowa program in just one or two sentences from a perception, competitive and expectation standpoint?
Every team is unique and defines itself. But when you lump all the teams together, what do you have as the whole?
With the Iowa football team, you have ever since Hayden Fry first rebuilt the program, followed then by Kirk Ferentz, a 7-5 or 6-6 product from a talent standpoint that with a few breaks and the right conversion of talent and circumstances could soar to elite status.
We saw it happen last season when Iowa really came out of nowhere to win 12 games and finish undefeated in the regular season. Last year’s team had a knack for finding ways to win under difficult circumstances.
The ball also bounced favorably for last year’s team more times than it didn’t.
But that was last year’s team.
And despite all the returning players, this year’s team is different. It has a different pulse and is being shaped by different circumstances and different leaders.
But from a talent standpoint, it really isn’t much different.
Most of the Iowa football teams over the past four decades have been similar in talent. Fry built the program into a seven-win product during his 20 seasons as head coach from 1979 to 1998, while Ferentz has sustained that level after having to do some early repairs.
There have been some expectations like the 2002 squad, which was loaded with talented players. But Iowa’s talent level mostly stays the same, making each team vulnerable and unpredictable.
Ferentz entered his 18th season as head coach with Iowa averaging 7.47 victories per season under his watch.
Iowa averaged 7.15 victories during Fry’s 20-year reign, finishing 143-89-6 overall.
Ferentz often talks about the thin line that exists between success and failure in sports and how easy it is to be taken in either direction. That is especially true for a developmental football program like Iowa, where sometimes there isn’t enough talent and good fortune to keep the ball rolling.
Iowa has been playing football since 1889 when a team with no head coach lost its only game of the season to Grinnell by a score of, 24-0.
The program has flirted with elite status at times, but also has been lousy for long stretches of times where the thought of winning seven games in a season was preposterous.
That doesn’t make the present feel any better because this is yet another season in which Iowa has crumbled under the weight of expectations.
It sort of is similar to 2010 when Iowa last had high preseason expectations. But that team collapsed down the stretch, losing its final three Big Ten games by a combined 10 points, whereas the current team hasn’t really built anything that could collapse.
The two lopsided victories over Miami of Ohio and Iowa State to start the season were fool’s gold rather than a sign of things to come.
Iowa now has two weeks for the players and coaches to heal, to soul search and to fix the problems if it is physically possible.
Iowa’s next game is against Penn State on Nov. 5 at Beaver Stadium in State College, Pa., the same place where second-ranked Ohio State lost on Saturday.
The challenge for Ferentz and the coaches is to keep the feeling of hopelessness that fans and the media now feel away from the players.
This season already is a failure in the opinion of many fans and media members who had big plans for Iowa this fall.
“I think we can get better,” Ferentz said Saturday. “That’s how I look at it. That’s really what our goal is the next two weeks, see how much we can keep pushing forward. We’ve gotten better in a lot of areas, in my opinion, over the last three weeks. We’ve made progress as a football team this last three weeks. We came up short today. But I think we were a much better team than we were three weeks ago. We’ll keep pushing.”
Ferentz then compared the current situation to the 2008 season when Iowa also was 5-3 heading into a two week break. That team lost to Illinois in its next game, but then closed the season with four consecutive victories to finish 9-4.
“I’m not saying it’s the same as, but we were sitting at the break of 2008 at 5-3, 3-3 at one point,” Ferentz said. “The one thing I always loved about that team is the way they improved. It’s all about your attitude, your work ethic, little detail things.”
The little details certainly matter, but it also helped that the 2008 squad had Shonn Greene leading the way at running back. Greene won the Doak Award as the nation’s top collegiate running back that season.
He rushed for at least 100 yards in every game in 2008, whereas the current Iowa team already has failed to rush for 100 yards in three games this season.
The 2008 squad also gained momentum and confidence when Ricky Stanzi finally replaced Jake Christensen as the starting quarterback after four games.
Iowa offensive coordinator Greg Davis, after a quiet 2015 season, is now being ripped again for his schemes and play calling, which fans say are predictable and have no creativity.
Wisconsin, on the other hand, is being praised for its creativity and unpredictability on offense, even though many of its plays on Saturday seemed easy to identify. I remember guessing right a few times before the Badgers threw to the running back out of the backfield.
The outcome of Saturday’s game had more to do with execution than schemes.
This isn’t to suggest that Davis called a great game on Saturday. But some fans keep clamoring for more imagination and for Iowa to change its approach on offense as if change is the only solution.
There might not be a solution on offense.
Iowa is suffering from receivers not getting open and from the failure to run against quality opponents. The inability to run eliminates play action, making Beathard an average quarterback at best.
Injuries have certainly hindered Iowa’s development on offense.
But something just hasn’t been right on offense, almost since the beginning.
Beathard isn’t the same quarterback who often put the team on his shoulders last season and carried it to victory. He seems more indecisive and less mobile this season compared to a year ago.
He also has an average group of receivers, even with a healthy VandeBerg.
And that can be traced back to the big picture where Iowa is slightly above average in terms of talent.
The program has a solid fan base and new facilities that compare favorably with most other programs. Iowa also has a proven track record for identifying overlooked talent and then developing it over time, evidenced by the NFL pipeline under Ferentz.
But at its core, the Iowa football program is slightly above average when you put everything together and judge it over time.
The current team seems destined to be average unless something changes in a hurry.
“We’re not too worried about the big picture and we weren’t before this game, either,” Beathard said after Saturday’s loss. “We’re just trying to take it week by week and all we can do from here on out is try to take each game as it is and try to win from here on out.”
The players shouldn’t be worried about the big picture because that’ll take care of itself. This season already is a disappointment, but it’s not a lost cause.
This is life for a seven-win program where things rarely are as good or as bad as they seem.