By Pat Harty

IOWA CITY, Iowa – When you’ve covered the Iowa football program for as long as I have, which dates back to 1992, you’re bound to make some misreads and some inaccurate predictions.

Throughout last week I predicted that Iowa would win convincingly at Minnesota this past Saturday, finally settling on a score of 31-20.

I thought Iowa would dominate the line of scrimmage, would contain Minnesota’s offense and would make enough plays on offense to ultimately defeat the Gophers for the 11th time in 12 seasons.

Oops.

The defense certainly played well enough to keep Iowa in the game, holding Minnesota to just 209 yards and 2-of-15 on third-down plays; but the Iowa offense barely fired a shot and was borderline dysfunctional at times.

The 13-10 loss to Minnesota was reminiscent of the 2023 season when Iowa suffered from inadequate quarterback play, and yet still finished 10-4, thanks to its defense and special teams.

Deacon Hill started eight games at quarterback for Iowa in 2023, posting a 6-2 record in those starts, though his record was sort of misleading, considering Hill completed less than 50 percent of his passes – 122 of 251 passes for 1,152 yards – and threw more interceptions (eight) than touchdown passes (five).

And while this isn’t to suggest current Iowa quarterbacks Hank Brown and Jeremy Hecklinski deserve to be compared to Deacon Hill, they both under-performed against the Gophers and it proved costly while also wasting a great performance by the Iowa defense.

And in fairness to Deacon Hill, it isn’t his fault that he was Iowa’s best option at quarterback after Cade McNamara was injured in 2023. Hill also didn’t have a lot of playmakers to make his job easier.

The Iowa offense has been hit or miss this season.

The Hawkeyes shredded Northern Illinois and Northern Iowa for 507 and 640 yards, respectively, while winning both games by a combined score of 95-0. Iowa also finished with 465 yards in the 41-24 win at Washington with Hecklinski playing quarterback.

But on the other hand, Iowa was held to fewer than 100 rushing yards against Iowa State, Michigan, Ohio State and Minnesota. Iowa split those four games with the two wins coming by a combined four points.

The routs against Northern Illinois (40-0) and Northern Iowa (55-0) might have been two cases of fool’s gold in that they created some unrealistic expectations for an offense that still is very much a work in progress.

Perhaps the best thing about the Minnesota loss is that it only counts as one loss, and the pain from losing to a border rival would start to fade if Iowa were to beat Wisconsin on Saturday at Kinnick Stadium.

Before the season, the Wisconsin game looked very winnable for Iowa on paper.

But then again, so did the Minnesota game, though it was a road game, while Wisconsin has to play at Kinnick Stadium.

The Badgers also finished just 4-8 last season, putting head coach Luke Fickell on the hot seat. His seat has since cooled with the Badgers 3-1 in the Big Ten and 5-2 overall.

Wisconsin defeated USC 24-7 this past Saturday in Madison, Wisconsin, powered by a dominant defensive performance.

If the Iowa offense were to lay another egg, needless to say that beating the Badgers would be extremely difficult.

Wisconsin’s offense also leaves much to be desired, but Badger quarterback Colton Joseph is dangerous as a dual-threat, while neither Brown nor Hecklinski do much running.

They aren’t statues. They just aren’t dual threats, which puts more pressure on them to make passing plays.

This is probably a good time to remember not to get carried away with the gloom and doom following a loss because as we’ve seen over the years with Kirk Ferentz, his teams are usually resilient and have a history of bouncing back after a loss.

Nobody takes it one game at a time better than Kirk Ferentz does.

He moves on from losses just like he moves on from wins.

Part of moving on this week is figuring out the situation at quarterback and the best plan moving forward.

It would certainly help if the Iowa running game were to do its part against Wisconsin because few teams seem to unravel on offense more than Iowa does when the running game struggles.

Opponents load the box, daring Iowa to throw, and that strategy certainly worked for Minnesota, and look for the Badgers to do the same on defense.

Minnesota always seemed to have more defenders in the box than Iowa had blockers, and that’s never a good circumstance for running the football.

Making matters worse is that Kamari Moulton, Iowa’s leading rusher, is expected to miss the Wisconsin game due to an injury to his right arm.

And while Iowa has plenty of depth at running back, Moulton is without question the group’s leader.

Former Iowa offensive coordinator Don Patterson said Monday on the Hawk Fanatic radio show and podcast that Hecklinski telegraphed some of his passes against Minnesota, including the pass that was intercepted at the Gopher two-yard line and the pass that was nearly intercepted near the Minnesota end zone.

Patterson said Hecklinski didn’t do a good enough job of looking off the Minnesota safety to create some deception.

The good news as patterson pointed out is that breakdowns of that fashion can be worked on and corrected in practice.

I’m not ready to predict a winner for Saturday’s game, but I will predict that Hank Brown starts at quarterback. That’s hardly going out on  limb, considering Brown started the first five games this season, and since Hecklinski was benched in the second quarter against Minnesota.

Patterson said Monday that he thinks this week’s practices will determine who starts for Iowa at quarterback on Saturday.

That might be the case, though Kirk Ferentz announced last Tuesday at his weekly press conference that Hecklinski would start against Minnesota.

So perhaps Ferentz will make another announcement this coming Tuesday.

But regardless of who starts for Iowa at quarterback, it might not matter if the running game fails to rise to the occasion.