By Blake Dowson
To be blunt, the Iowa offense had not looked good for more than a month.
Look at the box score from the 40-10 dismantling of No. 17 Nebraska, however, and it’s clear that C.J. Beathard and the other 10 players who line up on the field with him figured something out.
It seems about once each year this happens with Iowa — the team must find something on film a certain week and realize that big plays will be had. Last year, it was a 40-10 beatdown of Northwestern in Evanston. In 2014, it was a 45-29 win against Indiana.
The Hawkeyes hung 38 points on Nebraska in 2013.
The funny thing is, after the performance the Hawkeyes threw on the field against Penn State, it didn’t seem possible to explode against anybody.
There were flashes against Michigan (Akrum Wadley, mostly), and big steps were made with LeShun Daniels and Wadley against Illinois.
What occurred against Nebraska had been in the making since Iowa got on the plane to leave Happy Valley.
“It’s been a really good month of November for our football team,” head coach Kirk Ferentz said after the Nebraska game. “Extremely proud of them, extremely happy for them … You know, to me it’s really fitting that they would turn in a dominant performance like this because it’s just to me a culmination of a lot of good efforts and a lot of good attitudes, so I’m just extremely pleased for our football team tonight.”
There had been a number of things that had slowly been accumulating for the Iowa offense before it broke out against Nebraska.
For this Iowa team, as the offensive line goes, so goes the team. It’s been that way since Ferentz has roamed the sidelines.
In these past three weeks, the line has gelled. It’s found some chemistry that wasn’t there earlier in the season, and the running game has benefited from it.
Iowa has averaged 230 yards per game on the ground over its last three games. That would be good for second in the conference had the Hawkeyes averaged that all year.
The offensive line saved its best performance for last, however, racking up 264 yards against the Huskers.
“They did a great job today and really did a great job the last three weeks,” Beathard said. “They’ve battled, because we’ve had injuries. A lot of guys moving around, a lot of guys who haven’t played, but they’ve stepped up.”
With the line clicking at the right time, it’s made the mostly ineffective receiving corps a mostly non-issue.
Daniels went over 1,000 yards on the year against Nebraska, and Wadley ended just 35 shy of that mark. Daniels is the bulldozer, Wadley is the jitterbug.
When/if Wadley goes over 1,000 yards in Iowa’s bowl game, they will be the first Hawkeye duo ever to achieve that.
An offense that looked helpless against Penn State will now look scary to whatever team draws Iowa for a bowl game.
With four or so weeks to get healthy in between now and then, there’s no reason to think the running game will regress in December.
“We’ve got a lot of great guys [on the line],” lineman Boone Myers said. “We’ve got a lot of great guys who are playing banged up. It just goes to show we’re a family. We’re taking shots for each other, we’re playing hurt, it’s unreal. We’re coming together.”
