It wasn't always pretty, but Iowa's offense was opportunistic in the 2019 Outback Bowl.
On the positive side, Iowa scored 27 points, which was the second highest total this season against a strong Mississippi State defense.
On the negative side, the Hawkeyes could only generate 199 yards of total offense and were held to -15 yards rushing on the day.
The Hawkeye offense was led by Nate Stanley, who had a solid day and made the big plays when they were available. He finished the day with completing 21 of 31 passes for 214 yards and three touchdowns. The star of the day was Nick Easley, who had an MVP performance with 8 receptions for 104 yards, including a huge 75 yard touchdown reception.
We take a look at how the graders at Pro Football Focus saw things and dive into the snap counts for the skill position players. Iowa had 52 offensive snaps in the game.
QB GRADE THOUGHTS
As mentioned earlier, Stanley was 21-31 for 214 yards and three touchdown passes. He completed his first eight passes of the day and came up big when he needed to on several occasions. The TV announcers mentioned that Stanley's thumb was still bothering him, so that injury has lingered longer than we had thought.
On the negative side of the equation, he had an interception that was nearly returned for a score. That pass qualified as a poor decision for sure and he was also sacked three times, but really only one of them was a result of holding on to the ball too long.
With the Hawkeye ground game completely stopped by the Bulldog defense, Iowa needed Stanley to make plays and he did just that.
RB GRADE THOUGHTS
It was an ugly day for the Iowa running game and the running backs in general. The only back to finish with positive yardage was Toren Young with 7 yards rushing. Ivory Kelly-Martin had zero yards on four attempts and Mekhi Sargent was held to -3 yards on 7 carries.
The holes were there and the Iowa backs had almost no chance to break into the second level of the Bulldog defense.
WR/TE GRADE THOUGHTS
Not a bad day for this group. It was kind of surprising to see Nick Easley as the second overall receiver given his strong overall performance. However, what put Brandon Smith on top was his excellent blocking grade. Smith has been good pretty much all season on the blocking front and that continued in the bowl game. We should give a shout out to Kyle Groeneweg for his blocking grade. He has a really nice pancake block that he delivered on Easley's second touchdown reception.
Smith and Easley had a heavy workload and as expected, T.J. Hockenson stayed on the field for basically the entire game. Hockenson also had the highest pass receiving grade on the day.
OL GRADE THOUGHTS
As far as the offensive side of the ball Tristan Wirfs and Alaric Jackson were the two highest graded players for the Hawkeyes. In fact, four of the top graded players for Iowa were along the offensive line.
Given Iowa's lack of success running the football, it was kind of surprising to see the Iowa offensive line grade fairly well in the run game. The grades weren't great, but I expected them to be more in line with Cole Banwart's grade in the 50's. Instead they were all in the mid 60's or as high as 73.6 for Keegan Render.
Iowa's tackles have been excellent all season in pass protection and that continued in the Outback Bowl. Both Jackson and Wirfs were in the high 70's which is outstanding against a very good Mississippi State defensive line.
