The Iowa football team had its worst showing of the season Saturday against Purdue, seemingly running out of steam late against the Boilermakers in a 24-7 loss.

Now, whether the Hawkeyes like it or not, they won’t suit up again until Oct. 30 against Wisconsin. It’s bye week time.

Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz’s season-long mantra about reflection and preparation has revolved around a 24-hour rule. His players and coaches get 24 hours to celebrate a victory or dwell on a defeat. Then it’s on to the next.

But following this year’s first defeat to a now 4-2 Boilermaker team, the 6-1 Hawkeyes have more time on their hands.

“It was a tough locker room in there and it should be,” Ferentz said postgame. “You know, everybody’s invested … so this is how it’s supposed to feel when you go down. It’s not fun and there’s no way to really make it go away other than time, you know, time and usually going back to work helps you a little bit too.

“And one bad thing about the bye, you know, we can’t just flip our sights to the next opponent here on Monday morning, so we’ll have to deal with that. But there’s a lot of good things in front of us right now.  We’ve got a five-game schedule [remaining in the regular season], and we’ll regroup. We need to rest right now and come a week from now, hopefully ready to roll.”

Iowa is dealing with injuries at multiple positions right now, both on offense and defense.

Backup tight end Luke Lachey and guard Cody Ince were both out for the game for the Hawkeyes’ offense, and cornerback Riley Moss and backup linebacker Deontae Craig were both out for the defense.

The other starting cornerback, Matt Hankins, was also injured Saturday, appearing to land awkwardly on his shoulder after attempting to tackle Purdue receiver David Bell. But, after a short trip to the locker room, Hankins returned to the game.

Ferentz said the bye week could be used to “recharge” his injured players.

Hawkeye linebacker Seth Benson, who recorded 12 total tackles against Purdue, said that he and his teammates will use the extra time to improve individually to help the team.

“I think anytime we can, you know, regroup, refresh and improve on us, we just have to focus on ourselves and individually,” Benson said.” We just got to see what we can do better and push this thing forward and help out the team.”

Iowa quarterback Spencer Petras stressed the importance of staying in the moment.

While the team will look at the film from Saturday’s loss, the second-year starter noted that his team can’t waste energy dwelling on the defeat.

“You can waste a lot of time and energy, thinking about the past,” Petras said postgame. “Right now, the focus is still, until we watch this film and put it to bed, the focus is on this game, or at least on what went wrong and what we can do better. But then, once you’re done with that, you’re moving on.”