By Pat Harty

IOWA CITY, Iowa– With a 7-2 overall record, and with three games left in the regular season against opponents with a combined record of 14-13, and with two of those three games at Kinnick Stadium; the Iowa football team has worked its way into the playoff conversation.

That isn’t hyperbole or a delusion, just a fact.

Kirk Ferentz, at the age of 71, and in his 28th season as the Iowa head coach, is getting better with age if his current team is any indication.

Sure, Iowa caught a huge break with Northwestern starting quarterback Aidan Chiles having missed Saturday’s game in Evanston, Illinois due to an upper body injury.

But Iowa also took advantage of that break by defeating the Wildcats 24-10, and by holding Northwestern to just 286 yards and to just 1-of-11 on third-down conversions.

Northwestern also averaged just 4.1 yards per play, and 2.8 yards per rush.

In other words, Iowa exposed the situation at quarterback and then had enough offense with the rapidly improving Hank Brown leading the way at quarterback.

It just never felt as if Northwestern had any momentum in Saturday’s game despite having so much on the line and despite playing just its fourth game in the newly rebuilt Ryan Field.

The game actually didn’t seem as close as the final 14-point margin.

Iowa now has the distinction of being the first team to defeat Northwestern at its newly rebuilt stadium.

Up next for Iowa this coming Saturday at Kinnick Stadium is a struggling Purdue squad that fell to a struggling Maryland squad 34-29 in West Lafayette, Indiana on Saturday. Maryland had lost 13 straight Big Ten games before winning on Saturday.

Following the Purdue game, Iowa will play at surging Illinois (6-3) on Nov. 21 before concluding the regular season on Nov. 27 against a Nebraska team that has lost four straight games.

Win those three games and Iowa would almost certainly make the college playoff for the first time ever.

The current playoff format has 12 teams and Iowa was ranked 19th in the first playoff rankings that were released this past Tuesday.

And while this is meant as no disrespect to the three teams left on Iowa’s schedule, all three games are very winnable, especially the two at home.

So yes, it’s November and Iowa belongs in the playoff discussion.

As for the Iowa players, they will follow the lead of their one-game-at-a-time head coach when asked about the big picture.

Making the playoff, of course, is the ultimate goal, but it does no good for the players to talk about it publicly with so much work still left to do.

“We’ve got to stay hungry,” running back L.J. Phillips Jr. said after rushing for 128 yards against Northwestern. “I think we all know we’ve got a sour taste in our mouths. We’ve got to stay hungry. This is nice, but we’ve got more work to do.

“It’s November football. It’s going to be a lot tougher. We’re playing up against real good teams. And so we’ve got to keep going.”

Phillips hasn’t even been a Hawkeye for a full year yet after transferring from South Dakota. But he certainly understands and has embraced the mindset that Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz preaches so often about.

Ferentz’s approach seems to be working, considering Iowa has won 24 of its last 29 games played in the month of November.

“I’m just really happy for our football team, a really good way to start November,” Ferentz said in his post-game press conference on Saturday. “Going back to the beginning of the week, we asked our players to reset and refocus and turn their sights on this game and I thought they did a really good job all week long with their preparation, and really worked hard at that.

“And the coaches did a great job of giving them a great plan.”

On one hand, Iowa is so close to making history, but on the other hand, it isn’t easy winning any Big Ten game, let alone three in a row regardless of the opponents.

Illinois has won four straight games, and you know its head coach, former Iowa defensive lineman and assistant coach Bret Bielema, will pull out all stops to beat his alma mater because he’s a competitor, and because his team is also making a run.

However, Bielema has bigger concerns right now than facing his alma mater with undefeated UCLA up next on the Illinois schedule this coming Saturday in Los Angeles.

Since turning the ball over four times in a 13-10 loss at Minnesota on Oct. 24, Iowa has been locked in and performing at a high level on offense, defense, and special teams.

It now is looking more and more like the Minnesota loss was an outlier, or an aberration.

But maybe it’s also what this Iowa team needed to happen to get back on track and to reach a higher level.

Nobody is ready to call Braeden Jackson the second coming of Kaden Wetjen or Tim Dwight, but if Jackson keeps this up, they will be.

His 96-yard kick return for a touchdown against Northwestern with 4 minutes, 3 seconds left in the third quarter gave Iowa a 21-3 lead.

At that point, it felt as if the game was all but over.

Jackson also had a 99-yard kick return for a touchdown in the 20-19 win over Michigan on Sept. 26 in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

He is now poised to become Iowa’s next great return specialist if he isn’t already.

Perhaps the best word to describe Hank Brown’s performance against Northwestern is efficient as he completed 16-of-21 passes for 126 yards and one touchdown, which came on a 21-yard pass to wide receiver Tony Diaz early in the second quarter.

Brown has completed 36-of-45 passes for 348 yards and three touchdown over the last two games.

The yardage isn’t anything special, but Brown’s accuracy and his efficiency is certainly impressive.

His mindset moving forward is also just what Kirk Ferentz would want from his starting quarterback, and with so much on the line.

“Obviously, it’s exciting knowing what we’ve done in the past,” Brown said. “But at the same time, coach Ferentz always says it’s week to week.

“So after we watch this film and learn from it, just throw it in the trash and move on.”