Iowa State mailbag: How can an offense fail to get two yards five times?
AMES – There's a universe in which the 2022 Iowa State football team wins four games, including just one against Big 12 competition, and it doesn’t feel like an incredibly major moment for the program.
After building toward a Big 12 championship game appearance and Fiesta Bowl title in 2020, followed by a preseason top-10 ranking and a school-record fifth-straight bowl appearance, a step back for coach Matt Campbell’s program wouldn’t just be understandable, it was probably inevitable.
Take your licks, earn your experience and dust yourself off to begin that climb once again in 2023, just a year older and a year wiser. A run-of-the-mill rebuilding year.
This, though, is not that universe.
By virtue of an offense that looks completely lost, ineffective and unable to meet the most basic benchmarks for success, Iowa State heads into its regular-season finale next week at No. 4 TCU with what feels like a massive choice looming:
Double down on the status quo that helped you to the success of the last five years or overhaul the offense.
It seems to be an inescapable conclusion after Iowa State’s 14-10 loss Saturday to TCU that dropped the Cyclones to 4-7 overall and 1-7 in league play. The Cyclones scored just a single touchdown and went 1-of-5 in the red zone, including a pair of turnovers on downs inside the 5-yard line.
More:Iowa State's punchless offense proves costly in senior day loss to Texas Tech
An overhaul could take on a number of different forms – from coaching shakeups, with offensive coordinator Tom Manning drawing much of the ire from Iowa State fans, to a change in scheme, ala the move to the 3-3-5 defense in 2017.
Or Iowa State could stand pat, believing an alchemy of injuries, inexperience and bad luck was the source of trouble for the Big 12’s worst offense.
There’s one game left on the schedule, but, at this point, the most intriguing thing ahead for Iowa State lies once the time winds down in Fort Worth next week and Campbell is on the clock to choose a direction.
Let’s go to your questions.
Explain the consecutive failures to gain 1-2 yards in the red zone
Honestly, the two sequences inside the 5-yard line for Iowa State’s offense were some of the most inexplicable things I have ever seen.
Let’s break it down.
Failure 1
1st-and-10 from the Texas Tech 11: Eli Sanders 9 rush
2nd-and-1 from the TTU2: Sanders 0 rush middle
3rd-and-1 from the TTU2: Sanders 0 rush left
4th-and-1 from the TTU2: Sanders –3 rush middle
Failure 2
1st-and-goal from the TTU 10: Sanders –2 rush middle
2nd-and-goal from the TTU12: Sanders 10 pass from Hunter Dekkers
3rd-and-goal from the TTU2: Sanders 0 rush right
4th-and-goal from the TTU2: Dekkers –3 sack
To see it in black and white like that, man alive is it bad.
What really gets me is on the first attempt inside the 5-yard line, Iowa State could have gotten a first down. They were two yards from a touchdown, but only one yard from a new set of downs. And they couldn’t get it.
To me, the problem looks to be twofold – an inability for the Iowa State offensive line to generate enough push to gain a small amount of yardage (or protect Dekkers in the final instance), and an inability from Iowa State’s decision-makers to recognize what was going on.
Another word for that last one might be stubbornness.
More:Peterson: Not just once, but twice Iowa State showed its offensive inconsistency
Maybe there’s more to it – like backs missing holes or Dekkers missing a read – but it’s hard to overcomplicate this – pick up a couple yards. That’s it. That’s all you’ve got to do.
And at a critical juncture in the game, on five attempts, Iowa State couldn’t do it.
“I don’t know exactly what’s going on there,” Campbell said after the game. “I thought they were good play calls. There was a lack of execution, and why that happened, I don’t know.
“Obviously, it’s frustrating. The inconsistency, as I’ve talked about multiple times, it’s more into the theme of that. It’s very inconsistent. You’re an offense that drives up and down the field, and then you get into some of those moments, and you picked up a lot of those throughout the game today.
“The inability to do it there, in that moment, it’s critical and it’s what cost you the football game – or at least a huge piece of the football game.”
SPECIAL TEAMS!?!?
Yikes. Again.
Jace Gilbert has had his issues this year, obviously, but even after missing three hugely important attempts at Kansas, Campbell never really seemed close to making a change at kicker.
That changed Saturday when Drake Nettles got the nod over the true freshman.
He, though, had a rough day.
Nettles connected from 36 yards, but missed from 30 and 34, though Texas Tech was credited with a block on his final kick.
They were Nettles' first field goal attempts of the season.
“(Nettles) Had a better week (in practice) this week,” Campbell said of Nettles vs. Gilbert. “Drake has split time a little bit with PATs the last couple weeks, and just kind of felt was the maybe the best situation because of the (weather) elements and obviously what happened in practice. Right, wrong or indifferent, we believe in Drake.
“He really earned the right to be out there today through what he did in practice.”
Iowa State’s special teams have certainly gotten better throughout the year, but they obviously have been a glaring issue this season. Now, with the late-season switch, it seems like the future of the kicking position might be more unsettled than previously believed.
While the offseason evaluation of the offense is going to generate the most interest and attention, the special teams need a hard look from Campbell as well. You can’t get consistently beat in the third phase of the game if your plan is to “win in the margins” of close games.
Iowa State has far too often ceded those margins with shoddy special teams play.
Travis Hines covers Iowa State University sports for the Des Moines Register and Ames Tribune. Contact him at thines@amestrib.com or (515) 284-8000. Follow him at @TravisHines21.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Mailbag: Your questions after Iowa State's loss to Texas Tech
