By Pat Harty

IOWA CITY, Iowa – There is no defending the Iowa football team’s offense right now.

It’s horrible, dead last amongst 131 FBS teams and it’s not even close.

Iowa is only averaging 158.0 yards per game and is the only FBS team averaging fewer than 200 yards per game.

Iowa scored just seven points in each of its first two games – a 7-3 win over South Dakota State in the season opener and a 10-7 loss to Iowa State last Saturday at Kinnick Stadium.

Fifth-year senior quarterback Spencer Petras appears to be regressing with him having thrown just one touchdown pass and nine interceptions in the last 10 games.

Iowa offensive coordinator Brian Ferentz appears to be overmatched, considering that since 2020 his offense has been mediocre some of the time, bad some of the time, and really bad some of the time, including right now.

From a statistical standpoint, Iowa has finished no higher than 88th in total offense under Brian Ferentz, and has finished outside of the top 100 three times in the last five seasons.

The fact that he is Kirk Ferentz’s son makes a bad situation even worse.

Frustrated fans are screaming about nepotism on social media, ripping Kirk Ferentz for not getting rid of his son, and the Iowa offense is the laughingstock of college football.

This is as bad as it’s ever been under Kirk Ferentz from a fan frustration standpoint.

“We’re not trying to drive this train off the road,” Ferentz said at his weekly press conference on Tuesday.

Iowa should defeat lowly Nevada on Saturday, but as far as the nine Big Ten games on the schedule, it’s hard to say with any confidence that Iowa will win any of them based on how poorly the offense is performing.

Injuries and attrition at receiver have been a factor.

But it’ll probably take a lot more than a healthy Nico Ragaini and Keagan Johnson to fix the offense.

Kirk Ferentz’s refusal to make a quarterback change has fueled the discontent because some fans, maybe a lot of them, have given up hope that Petras will ever be the answer at quarterback.

So, yes, fans have a right to be angry and frustrated because there is no excuse for the dysfunction on offense.

But fans don’t have a right to say that Kirk Ferentz should be fired.

Bitch and moan all you want about his son’s poor performance as offensive coordinator, and about Petras failing to deliver on game day, but to say that Kirk Ferentz should be fired, which some are saying on social media, is just ridiculous.

It’s easy to get caught up in the emotional tidal wave on social media, and that seems to be happening right now as fans continue to vent.

Having his son as the offensive coordinator could ultimately lead to Kirk Ferentz’s demise, but it’s nowhere near that point right now.

Ferentz fatigue has been a factor for a while, and understandably so with this being Kirk Ferentz’s 24^th season as the Iowa head coach.

Some fans are now saying that the 67-year old Kirk Ferentz has worn out his welcome and they’re bored with Hawkeye football.

Fans fear that Kirk Ferentz will never fix the offense because that would involve getting rid of his son, and some fans also assume that Iowa Athletic Director Gary Barta never would have the guts to force Kirk Ferentz to take any action.

Those are legitimate concerns, but it still doesn’t mean that Kirk Ferentz should be fired.

For one thing, his contract runs through the 2029 season, and it’s easy to forget when the offense struggles just to complete routine passes that Iowa has a 27-10 record since the start of the 2019 season, has won 10 games in two of the last three seasons and is the reigning Big Ten West Division champion.

Some fans don’t want to be bothered with those numbers right now with the offense performing at a historically low level, but those numbers can’t be ignored.

Iowa’s offense performed poorly for parts of last season, and some like to say that Iowa won the West Division and 10 games despite the offense.

But Iowa still won the West and 10 games last season no matter how you slice it.

One narrative that has surface in the wake of the offense performally so poorly in the first two games is that these problems have festered for far too long without Kirk Ferentz taking action.

And while that might be true, it still didn’t stop all seven home games from being sold out this season.

Kirk Ferentz’s refusal to give backup quarterback Alex Padilla a chance to play in the first two games has also fueled fan rage, because to them, it makes no sense to just keep sending Petras out there to fail.

Some fans accuse Kirk Ferentz of being too stubborn and detached from reality in his handling of the quarterbacks.

So again, Kirk Ferentz has a mess to clean up on offense because the bucks stops with him.

But does he have what it takes to clean up the mess?

More and more fans are starting to think the answer to that question is no.

Iowa has a rock-solid defense and one of the best punters in college football, but that can only carry a team so far.

The offense has to get better ASAP, and so does Petras.

Kirk Ferentz was questioned about Petras’s body of work at the Tuesday press conference, and Ferentz didn’t really have a good answer for why he continues to stick with Petras.

“There’s a lot of factors at play right now, a lot of factors at play,” Kirk Ferentz said.

The problem is that Kirk Ferentz doesn’t seem comfortable talking about all the factors at play, but it seems pretty apparent that Petras performs better in practice than Padilla does, and that carries a lot of weight with Kirk Ferentz.

Padilla also didn’t exactly light it up last season when he started three games when Petras was injured.

But frustrated fans would counter by saying why not just give Padilla a chance to see if he could provide a spark?

And that’s a fair and legitimate question.

The only thing that isn’t fair right now is to say that Kirk Ferentz should be fired because that’s just nonsense.