Roughly halfway through The Matrix, Morpheus and his group of rebels attempt to leave the Matrix and return to their ship in the real world after a visit to the Oracle. As they attempt to find their exit
point, Neo notices a cat on a staircase, then the same cat walks by a second time. The crew immediately realizes it’s a glitch, the Matrix has changed something, and they are about to be ambushed by Agents. They rush to find an exit to the now-sealed building and they find one with the help of Tank, but they go on without Morpheus, who sacrifices himself to allow Neo, Trinity, and the rest of the rebels to flee.
As they are about to leave through a second exit point, the phone goes dead. Trinity calls Tank in the real world, only for Cypher to answer and reveal he’s betrayed the team to the Agents in exchange for him returning to the ignorant bliss of the Matrix. Slowly, Cypher starts disconnecting everyone, killing them. Switch utters, “Not like this…not like this…” to Neo and Trinity right before Cypher disconnects her, killing her instantly.
Those six words are all I could think of with this Iowa team as yet another game slipped away under a deluge in southern California.
Not like this…not like this…
This is a good Iowa team. They have a great running game – 183 yards on USC, in the Coliseum, is a rarity. Iowa got whatever it wanted offensively in the first half, including in the pass game. The defense is good. Maybe not 2022 or 2023 good, but it’s better than last year’s defense. Leveling up on offense plus the defense returning to some semblance of form – it was a great recipe even with a difficult schedule. Iowa’s special teams have been up and down, but the ups have been amazing and outweighed the downs.
But sometimes it’s just not your year. Sometimes it does, in fact, end like this. Sometimes a guy that is 11-21 on kicks over 40 yards in his career belts a deep one (in consecutive years, no less) to win. Sometimes an injury at the most inopportune time occurs and a game slips away as a result. Sometimes another kicker makes three kicks in abhorrent conditions and the one time special teams really has to be on point, they aren’t. And then sometimes, a team is so great at one skill position that it doesn’t matter what you do defensively – so long as the quarterback gets the ball anywhere near the receiver, he’s catching it.
I guess this really is a “That’s football” type of season and those can end with a sudden, catastrophic disconnection. Whatever chances Iowa had to sneak back into playoff contention are now fully dead. Not mostly dead – really, truly dead. To make it happen, a bunch of bounces would have to go Iowa’s way over the course of the year. Instead, zero bounces have gone Iowa’s way. USC fumbles at a critical juncture in the game, and it bounces directly to a USC lineman for a recovery. The same happened in Ames in Week 2, deep in Iowa State territory. Iowa of course lost a crucial fumble last week, some truly heinous fumble luck. Iowa’s lone turnover is a pinball interception, but on a similar play later in the game that goes in Iowa’s favor, the ball hit the ground so it’s incomplete. The other team has that one skill guy Iowa can’t match. Iowa has a shot late but Kaden Wetjen’s toe slips out as he makes an insane catch along the sideline that would’ve had Iowa knocking on the door of a go-ahead score. Makai Lemon makes that catch.
A good team, but none of the luck that you sometimes need to get to great. None of the bounces you need.
Not like this…not like this…
Other thoughts:
- Look – Mark Gronowski’s been mostly good for Iowa. He’s obviously a monster in the run game. 13 rushing touchdowns is an amazing number. The players rally around him. Some of the passing though…Iowa has to do better in this area going forward. The passing game is just tough to watch week-to-week. I don’t know if missing so much time in the spring/summer knocked any semblance of timing off, if the injury itself impacted his mechanics – a lot of throws are low – or if he’s fine but up a level and he can’t get away with some of the throws he got away with at South Dakota State (personally I think it’s that) but the passing game has not been good enough for what Iowa spent at this position. The passing game just never took off in any meaningful way with Gronowski.
- We have to talk about Iowa’s end of half sequence. This is embarrassing. Jaz Patterson picks up a first down at the Iowa 47 with :18 left in the half and the Hawks carrying two timeouts. Iowa’s in a good position, they have done whatever they want offensively but the game felt like it was shifting toward the Trojans ever so slightly. Despite that, Iowa’s moving the ball and a field goal attempt looks possible. Instead of calling a timeout, Iowa doesn’t and rushes to the line for absolutely no reason whatsoever and botches a potential opportunity for points. Anyone that’s played NCAA Football or Madden knows you call the timeout as soon as Patterson secures the first down. You preserve the time, which you can’t get back, and you still have a timeout left. Instead, Iowa does none of that and mangles the situation. Kirk Ferentz is a great head coach but these end of half situations are blown all the time. I don’t know if you will find a worse coach in the country in those specific situations. Instead of pondering all of the positives, you know damn well Kirk was dwelling on that one time Penn State blocked a late-half field goal a month ago and scored off of it, as if that play happens with any sort of frequency in football.
- I hoped to rave about Iowa’s first half. It was nearly flawless on both sides. Gronowski missed a couple of throws but otherwise he was good. Iowa’s line moved USC all over the field. The defense more than held up. Instead we have these fun moments from the season – the huge drive to take the lead against Oregon, the Philly Special yesterday – that are going to be forgotten, lost to another 4+ loss season.
- I’ve seen better officiated games and I’ll leave it at that.
- Ferentz raved about Makai Lemon and he’s not wrong. That was insane. Anything Jayden Maiava threw up – some of those throws were good, others had more than a whiff of desperation to them – Lemon brought it down. You just have to tip your cap on some of those plays. That guy was unbelievable.
- This close…
- Last week I included a short list of the “what if?” teams at Iowa. 1996 was on there, as was 2008. 2010 deserves a shout but they lost in the margins all year and then, crucially, mailed it in the last week of the year to a putrid Minnesota team. 1996 somehow lost at Tulsa early in the season, by far the dumbest loss of the late Fry years (Iowa flew to Tulsa the morning of the game and it showed.) 2008 had similar bad luck to this team (horrendous turnover luck in three of their four losses), but also lost in some truly stupid games such as Jake Christensen getting one final ride over Ricky Stanzi at Pitt – late-half stuff in that game too – that ended in a 21-20 loss. This group’s had bad luck all damn year and none of the dumb losses/mailing it in that others on the list had, so I think there is a compelling argument for them being the new leader of the pack. 2008 at least had the payoff of the Penn State game, their end to the season, and a large chunk of that team returning in 2009.
- This sucks.
- Ben McCollum, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you…
