IOWA CITY -- Cade McNamara and Tim Lester weren't good enough.
After Iowa took a 13-0 lead into halftime and Kaleb Johnson ran for two touchdowns and nearly 200 yards on the ground, the Hawkeyes lost to Iowa State, 20-19 on a last-second field goal. They led for 51:23 of the 60-minute contest.
It wasn't all bad for McNamara, who started the game completing 8-of-11 passes for 72 yards. He and the offense as a whole were bolstered by the play of Johnson, who, in the first half, continued his hot streak running the football, taking nine carries for 105 yards, including a 27-yard scamper that gave the Hawkeyes a 7-0 lead.
"He's worked hard to get better," Kirk Ferentz said postgame. "It's showing out there on the field. He made some really nice plays today."
Then things went sideways -- even though they couldn't have been more favorably laid out for the Hawkeyes.
Thanks to an interception by Jay Higgins a couple Iowa State possessions later, the offense had a golden opportunity to score, taking over on ISU's 12-yard line.
After a finding LeShon Williams on a dump down pass for 11 yards, the Hawkeyes had first and goal from the one. After a loss of three yards by Kamari Moulton on first down and two incomplete passes from the four, Iowa had to settle for a field goal.
On Iowa's next scoring drive, the offense travelled 77 yards in ten plays. Johnson accounted for 63 of them on two plays. After a 26-yard burst from Johnson from the 40 to the 14-yard line, he didn't touch the ball again.
On that same drive, McNamara completed one-of-four passes for nine yards.
The drive culminated in a third-and-goal from the three-yard line where McNamara threw an incomplete pass to Addison Ostrenga.
"They were playing drop-eight coverage," McNamara said. "They had eight guys in the redzone. When you're down that low, there's not a lot of room. That's what they did, and it obviously worked for them."
All the more reason to run the ball. Once again, the Iowa offense had to settle for a Drew Stevens field goal, taking the 13-0 lead into the half.
Had Tim Lester and the Hawkeyes continued to feed Johnson, things could have looked significantly different. Instead of that measly two-possession lead, the Hawkeyes could have taken it to three possessions, with a 21-0 lead.
With an opportunity for them to put their foot on the metaphorical throat of the Cyclones, the Hawkeye offense got cute. Passing in a situation where your bell-cow running back is having a huge day isn't creative or smart -- it's unnecessary and unproductive.
The second half somehow got demonstrably worse.
Though Johnson carried the offense with another 54-yard run en route to their only score of the final thirty minutes, McNamara really struggled. Not only did the touted Michigan transfer complete just one pass for six yards in the third quarter, he threw a completely ill-advised ball on Iowa's first drive of the second half to Luke Lachey across his body that was picked off by Iowa State.
There's struggling as an athlete to make throws, there's bad play-calling, and then there's bad decision-making. That play was a bad decision by Iowa's starter -- and he admitted as much after the game.
"We were planning on taking a shot," McNamara said. "I just made a dumb decision. I should've thrown it away. I just can't force a ball in that situation."
Iowa State's offense scored on its next two possessions.
Though Iowa got in the end zone between ISU's two touchdowns, it largely came on the back of Johnson and Moulton. The Hawkeyes traveled 79 yards and seven plays for the score. McNamara completed just one pass to Jacob Gill for six yards on the entire drive.
And the three-yard touchdown run by Johnson would be the last time Iowa scored. On the throw to the end zone for the two-point conversion, McNamara's toss to Vander Zee fell incomplete.
The next three drives by the Iowa offense went three-and-out. Over those possessions, Iowa gained a total of one yard, and McNamara completed one pass for three yards.
Overall, Iowa's starter completed 5-of-18 passes for 27 yards and two interceptions over the second, third and fourth quarters.
At the end of the game, Ferentz blamed McNamara's lwngthy return from injury.
"We probably missed some plays, maybe some misreads or missed some plays where maybe we could have averted that," he said. "But as I said last week, too, I've been saying for a while now, he's working his way back. He's still trying to get back in game shape, if you will, or game mode."
If McNamara is to lead Iowa to the promised land of the expanded, 12-team College Football Playoff in a year with a favorable schedule, he can't be afforded time to get back into game shape.
If McNamara is the guy, he needs to be the guy now -- against FCS Illinois State, Group of 5 Troy, and especially against in-state rival, ISU. There can't be a game where he completes 13-of-29 passes for 99 yards and two picks, let alone a game where his last-second heave from mid-field falls ten yards short of the end zone.
Nonetheless, Ferentz remains adamant that McNamara is the starter, and it sounds increasingly unlikely that Northwestern transfer Brendan Sullivan will be given a shot to take QB1 reps.
"I think we expect him to be our quarterback," Ferentz said of McNamara postgame. "I've been saying it pretty consistently. He's still working his way back into shape, as is our whole team with the offense and whatever. But we'll get better. We'll improve. Our guys have a great attitude, he's got a great attitude, and we'll work through this."
