Desert Swarmed

If the 2009 Iowa football season was "special" the 2010 season could be deemed "un-special". Kirk Ferentz prides himself on building teams with strong offensive and defensive lines and amazing special teams. Iowa's special teams struggled with kickoff coverage against Iowa St and the special teams struggled again at Arizona.

I was sitting at the south Des Moines Bennigans on Saturday night waiting for the Iowa game to start. Clemson and Auburn couldn't figure out who wanted to win their game so they wanted to play a little extra. Thankfully Auburn made their FG and Clemson missed theirs. Then came the epic ESPN failure of not switching to the game that was in progress. Instead they interviewed Auburn coaches and players. Oh wait, I forgot that ESPN loves the SEC. I have no idea if they would have interviewed Clemson people if Clemson won but I doubt they would have.

As the Iowa game was going on, but not televised, I was checking my Twitter feed and I saw that Iowa went 3-and-out (with a missed pass that would have been a touch down) and then had a punt blocked and recovered by Arizona at the Iowa 8. Soon enough it was 7-0 Arizona. A short time later my feed blew up with a Rick Stanzi pick-6. Looking at the replay Marvin McNutt tipped a pass and it went right to an Arizona defender. McNutt should have come up with the catch; if your hands are on the ball it's catchable. Just like that Arizona had scored 14 points before Auburn and Clemson could score 3, combined.

Iowa was able to start coming back with some offense and put the ball in the endzone just to be deflated by an Arizona kick return TD. Arizona added 2 field goals and led 27-7 at half. During halftime I switched chairs at the table hoping some good luck would finally come to the Hawks.

Iowa started to get it going in the 2nd half, thanks in part to Arizona self-destructing with penalties. After a bad punt and an Arizona personal foul Iowa was able to put another 7 on the board, putting the score at 27-14. It stayed that way until the 4th quarter. Iowa capitalized off a muffed punt and got the ball back on the Arizona 18. Stanzi hit McNutt on a beautiful fly route for the TD, 27-21. The three or four of us left at Bennigan's started celebrating and we agreed something good was about to happen. Two plays into Arizona's drive, Broderick Binns intercepted a pass and returned it 20 yards for an Iowa TD (PAT was blocked) to tie the score at 27. This had us celebrating even more, so much to the point that the words "I think one of the high-fives hurt my wrist" were said.

Sadly Iowa couldn't muster any 2009 magic this time as Arizona marched down the field for the game-winning TD with just under 4 minutes left. Iowa got the ball back and then quickly gave up 4 sacks in 4 plays and Arizona pretty much ran out the clock. Iowa had one shot left with 3 seconds to go but didn't make it. Final score 34-27 Arizona.

A blocked punt, kick return for a TD, blocked PAT. Not too good on special teams. At least Iowa recovered a muffed punt and made Arizona pay. There were a lot of problems in other areas for Iowa too. The receivers were dropping passes, the defense left a lot of holes in their zone, the offensive line was porous, and the defensive line didn't get much pressure (this may have been by design for containment but it's hard to say). On top of that, Jewell Hampton hurt his left knee and was unable to return; an MRI was done on Sunday and the results aren't known right now.

After that performance I'm glad that Ball St comes to Iowa City this weekend rather than Iowa starting Big 10 play. The national championship may be a lost cause now but the Rose Bowl is still in play.

On a side note, there was also a radio show being broadcast from Bennigans during part of the game. The Saturday Night Sports Special on 98.3 WOW FM was on location. I have been in contact with the show's hosts, the Des Monies Sports Freaks (Joseph Earp and Blake DeRouchey), on Twitter and we were able to meet in person. If you are into sports you should really check out their work.