By Pat Harty

IOWA CITY, Iowa – Maybe Spencer Petras wasn’t as bad a quarterback as it seemed during most of his three seasons as the starter for the Iowa football team.

Maybe he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time because Petras has moved on, and yet, the Iowa offense still leaves so much to be desired from an execution and from an imagination standpoint.

Maybe it doesn’t matter who plays quarterback since Cade McNamara has gone from leading Michigan to the 2021 Big Ten title to leading an Iowa offense that produced just 76 yards in Saturday’s 31-0 loss at Penn State.

Iowa’s performance on offense against Penn State was embarrassing and inexcusable because nothing worked.

The running game was a disaster, and just completing a pass to a wide receiver seemed close to impossible.

And while Penn State is a formidable opponent, that still doesn’t excuse how poorly the Iowa offense performed.

The addition of McNamara was supposed to help fix things on offense, but based on Saturday’s performance against Penn State, the offense might actually be getting worse under Brian Ferentz.

There still are eight games left on the schedule, and the Big Ten West Division appears to be a collection of average to below average teams.

So, all was not lost with Saturday’s meltdown in Happy Valley, but this storyline is getting old and tiresome.

Fans are fed up with the dysfunction on offense and they’re beyond frustrated with what they believe is Brian Ferentz receiving preferential treatment from his father, Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz.

But fans are also being unrealistic if they truly believe that Kirk Ferentz in his 25th season as the Iowa head coach would make a coaching change during the season, or if they believe he would be forced to make a change during the season.

At some point, however, Kirk Ferentz will have to realize that what he’s doing on offense isn’t working.

He wants to be a power-running team that stays ahead of the chains and that uses play action for balance on offense.

But more times than not, his teams have failed to sustain a successful rushing attack, especially against elite opponents, and that causes the offense to unravel because there is no Plan B.

The answer is always to just keep working and to just keep doing what we do only better.

That was Kirk Ferentz’s response to Saturday’s beat-down, and that will probably always be Kirk Ferentz’s response.

“We’re not going create a new playbook, is that what you’re suggesting?” Kirk Ferentz said when asked about the offense after Saturday’s game. “I’m not a wholesale believer in changing just because you had a bad game. It was not a good game tonight. I think we made progress in three weeks. Tonight was disappointing. We played a really good football team.

“We’ll keep it in perspective. We’ll evaluate things over the course of 12 games. We’ve got eight to play. We’re not just going to start over again in any phase.”

Kirk Ferentz, who turned 68 on Aug. 1, believes that offense should be played a certain way, and he’s made it this far with that belief.

The problem is that Kirk Ferentz’s way isn’t working anymore, and it hasn’t worked for a while.

Iowa has had three offensive coordinators under Kirk Ferentz with Ken O’Keefe and Greg Davis having preceded Brian Ferentz, and what all three have in common is that the offense struggled under their watch.

It’s hard to think of a season, besides the 2002 campaign, in which the Iowa offense was the strength of the team.

The offense has hit rock bottom under Brian Ferentz, and as Kirk Ferentz’s son, that causes more resentment as some fans believe that Kirk Ferentz is putting his family above the football program, because they keep seeing the offense under-perform, but with no accountability.

Kirk Ferentz is a master at moving on from big wins and from sobering defeats, and as bad as things seem right now, all that’s standing in the way of Iowa being 4-1 is a struggling Michigan State team whose problems go far beyond any issues on the field.

The Iowa program is strong and sturdy in so many ways under Kirk Ferentz, but is also being hamstrung by the problems on offense.

The Iowa defense struggled in the second half against Penn State, but that’s mostly because the players wore down from being on the field so much.

Iowa only ran 33 plays on offense, while Penn State ran 97.

That is just a stunning statistic that speaks volumes about the problems on offense.

Senior punter Tory Taylor was sensational yet again at flipping field position against Penn State, but his performance was wasted.

The drive to 325 is an embarrassing storyline that will persist throughout the season because of the silly performance incentives that former Iowa athletic Director Gary Barta added to Brian Ferentz’s contract just a few months before Barta retired in August.

The performance incentives have only made a bad situation worse.

As for Cade McNamara, his soft-tissue injury, which happened way back on Aug. 12 at the Kid’s Day practice, has created yet another obstacle to overcome, while Iowa also played without three of its best offensive players against Penn State.

But that still doesn’t excuse the level of dysfunction that occurred on offense against Penn State.

Kirk Ferentz acknowledged the problems on offense by turning to the transfer portal for help in the offseason.

But now it seems that the problems on offense go beyond just changing personnel as Saturday’s listless performance against Penn State would suggest.

Kirk Ferentz has a mess on offense that has festered for years, but he doesn’t seem able or willing to do what it takes to fix it.