Iowa Rushing Attack Returning to Form
IOWA CITY — With all due respect to Ben Franklin, there's only two inevitable things in an Iowa Hawkeye football game: The Wave and complaints about the offense. Both have earned their reputations, too — Iowa remains on pace for its third-straight season in the bottom 10 nationally in yards per game, at 249.2; among Power 5 programs, only Utah (297.6) is within 50 yards per game of the Hawkeyes this year.
Grim stuff, and no surprise to any Iowa fans. But if there's a green shoot of optimism in Iowa City, it's a run game that looked downright competent Saturday in the 20-14 victory over Purdue, with 35 rushes for 181 yards — and crucially, 6.8 yards per rush for non-quarterbacks.
"Saturday was probably our best day [rushing] out there," head coach Kirk Ferentz said Tuesday. "In a perfect world, you want to be balanced. At least that's our goal, to try to have the threat to run and pass."
Offensive lineman Connor Colby remained guarded in his praise of the team's performance.
"I'd say it was a step in the right direction," Colby said Tuesday. "We probably left a lot of yards out there, either falling off our block or missing our assignments, and that's stuff that we need to keep eradicating from our play."
Some credit is due to Kaleb Johnson, who returned to the starting lineup Saturday and rushed for 134 yards in the 20-14 victory over Purdue; teammate Leshon Williams, who shouldered most of the rushing load in Johnson's absence, also logged 13 rushes and 74 yards in the victory.
Johnson's return to the starting lineup is obviously a boon to the Iowa offense, which had been relying heavily on a pair of true freshmen for depth behind Williams. Yet in an ironic twist, Johnson's absence might have been the best thing for Iowa's rushing productivity as well, as he revealed after the Purdue game that he hadn't been healthy when the season started (35 combined rushes for 91 yards and one TD).
"My ankle's been hurting me since fall camp," Johnson said Saturday. "Yahya [Black] fell on me by accident when I was going through the hole, and it really just affected me and my game. Now I'm back to the healing process and it feels great."
The challenge of rushing the ball, especially in a physical conference like the Big Ten, starts with the offensive line, and Iowa's front five had been an uncharacteristically weak point in 2021 and 2022, especially with players moving around the line as injuries decimated the unit's depth.
"It's kind of hard to compare success levels from last season to this season," said Colby, who has been entrenched at right guard in 2023. "Last season I was at right tackle, left guard; there was a lot of moving around. Being at that consistent position has helped me out a lot."
The injury bug has affected this season's line as well; Nick DeJong exited the Michigan State game with an upper-body injury and has yet to return to the two-deeps, and left tackle Mason Richman was listed as questionable for the Purdue game with a "pretty gnarly" leg bruise suffered in practice*, with significant pessimism that he'd be able to go Saturday.
*According to Richman, Beau Stephens caught Richman with his knee during a play in practice; Richman said "if it was anybody else's knee" he'd have been fine. Richman is expected to be good to go for Saturday's game.
Iowa's running game still isn't consistent enough to put up standout numbers; even in an increasingly pass-happy sport, Iowa is 12th in the conference in rushing yards per game at 119.3, a smidge behind Michigan State at 120 even and prohibitively far back from Big Ten leader Wisconsin (204.0).
With a trip to Camp Randall to see those Badgers next on the docket, the Hawkeyes will need one of their best performances of the season on the ground to keep pace with their chief Big Ten West rival.
"It's a bigger game for sure," Richman said Tuesday. "Going into a tough environment, they're obviously a really good team. But for us, it's really just another step towards our goals and what we're trying to achieve here. So it'll be a great test for our team."
"We both have one loss now," Ferentz said. "They have a good team. We're trying to become a good team."
On the whole, Wisconsin has been more productive both rushing the ball and defending the rush this season. The potential is there for Iowa to hang with such a tough opponent between the tackles, though.
Indeed, for an offense still adjusting to a backup quarterback and desperately seeking a better identity in the passing game than "wide receiver black hole," a competent ground game might be just what Iowa needs to push to 6-1 — and into the driver's seat for a division title and trip to Indianapolis.
But the Wisconsin game comes before any of that talk.
"Any worry about rankings and pennant races, all that stuff, that in my mind comes in November," Ferentz said. "Right now we're just trying to move forward here and see if we can find a way to win."