Iowa Hawkeyes - Room for Improvement

With all but a couple of the college football week one games in the books it’s time to break one of the games down. The game I was most excited for was most certainly the Iowa Hawkeyes playing the team with the NCAA longest active win streak, the Northern Illinois Huskies. I was excited for this game for a couple of reasons. Reason one being they are my favorite college team and reason two begin the amount of uncertainty that was swirling around the Hawkeyes.

                The biggest question mark for the hawks was by far their running game. With Marcus Coker leaving the team, Mika’il McCall breaking his ankle and leaving the team, De’andre Johnson being dismissed from the team, Jordan Canzeri tearing his ACL, and the same with Barkley hill this left Iowa with just about one option: Sophomore Damon Bullock. As just a sophomore no one really knew if he could carry the weight to the team on his back, but boy did he ever. With 150 rushing yards including a game winning touchdown, Bulllock was a huge relief. However some other areas of the team are still a concern. With a new offensive line coach, it was clear from the get go that the Hawkeyes do not seem as strong as we have been in the past. Often times senior Quarterback James Vandenberg made mental mistakes that could have been corrected but he was given little to no time to throw. Beyond that, Iowa’s new offensive coordinator Greg Davis did an alright job. It was nice to see the Hawkeyes a bit more aggressive in 4^th down situations as well as at the end of the half. I would have like to have seen more passing by Vandenberg, but that is hard to do with what seemed to be a poor effort by the offensive line.

                Some positives that came out of the game would be the Hawkeye defense. With analysts saying their defense wouldn’t be too great under the new management of Phil Parker, they did a fine job given it being the first game of the year. With only a few miscues on pass coverage and a few missed blocks, the defense held to their roots and held the huskies to just enough points, and made big stops when the team needed them the most. It is also good to see junior kicker Mike Meyers start to improve. He made 4 of his 5 field goals during the game and each one holding a large amount of importance, he did a fine job and was the team leading scorer. Of course the biggest positive was that Iowa came through late in the fourth quarter with about 2 minutes left to score their only touchdown of the game. A win is a win in my books, may have been ugly, but at least there is plenty of room to improve. (WC 487)