Iowa State football mailbag: Just how bad are the special teams for Cyclones?
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
LAWRENCE, Kan. — It was just eight days ago that an Iowa State fan could look at the schedule and reasonably chart out a path to a 6-0 start ahead of back-to-back games against the Big 12’s premier brand’s Texas and Oklahoma.
After a 3-0 start, the first since 2012 and featuring coach Matt Campbell’s first win over Iowa, the possibilities looked promising.
Now, though, things look considerably bleaker.
Iowa State is now 0-2 in the Big 12 after Saturday’s loss to Kansas while Kansas State, next week’s opponent, suddenly looks formidable after following up a loss to Tulane with convincing victories over Oklahoma and Texas Tech.
The sky is certainly not falling for a team that had modest expectations before the season started, but it defintely looks a little lower.
“Our top dogs are doing everything that they can to continue to help this young team in a lot of ways move itself forward,” Iowa State coach Matt Campbell said after the Cyclones stumbled to a 14-11 loss to surging Kansas. “As the head coach, that’s where it’s really irritating.
“Not that you didn’t get the result you want but these older, vet guys are doing everything in their power to help this team win football games.”
After a day where Iowa State lost its top running back to injury and just about everything else on special teams, let’s go to your questions in our postgame mailbag.
Do you think Matt Campbell can talk more about special teams with less returns on the field or do you think there’s a chance it could get worse?
If there’s anything I’ve learned covering sports for over a decade, the answer is things can always get worse.
But Iowa State is certainly near the bottom of the barrel on special teams right now.
Let’s recap Saturday’s miscues:
Jace Gilbert puts a 38-yard field goal off the right upright
Beau Freyler gets tagged with a 15-yard catch interference penalty on a punt
An extra point nearly gets scuttled after a high snap, but holder Blake Clark makes lemonade by turning it into two points with a rush into the end zone (that's a fail, though, for the process-oriented)
Sevion Morris returns a kickoff 37 yards to the 45 for Kansas.
Jaylin Noel fumbles a punt
Gilbert puts another one off the right upright, this one from 45
Gilbert misses game-tying attempt from 37 yards with 32 seconds left
That is just too much to handle.
It’s also four different units (or five if you want to differentiate between field goals and PATs). That’s just a system-wide failure for special teams.
Obviously, Gilbert’s three misses are going to draw the most attention, and while acknowledging he missed all of those himself, it’s probably worth noting that Iowa State put itself in a position with a freshman kicker and put him on the field after he looked shaky.
Campbell went for it on fourth-and-7 from the 28 early in the game. That doesn’t scream confidence in your kicker’s ability to connect past 40 yards.
Also, you won't miss field goals if you score touchdowns.
So there’s a lot at play here. Bottom line, though, is that Iowa State’s special teams is a multi-year problem that looks to be getting worse, not better.
Does Hunter Dekkers target Xavier Hutchinson too much?
This is a difficult one to assess from the outside, where we don’t have access to Iowa State’s play calling or progression chart.
And from the outside, it’s hard to look at Hutchinson’s production — he had 13 catches for 101 yards on 19 targets against Kansas — and fault Dekkers and Iowa State for doing all it can to get him the ball.
Dekkers absolutely locks in to Hutchinson, and he probably forces balls to him he shouldn’t, but Hutchinson can bail him out with his talent and skill.
When you lose your top running back — Jirehl Brock — on the first drive, I don’t think you kill the quarterback for leaning on his best wide receiver.
Was Kansas really the better team?
Iowa State’s entire blueprint is predicated on winning close games “in the margins.”
When you do that, you put yourself in jeopardy of losing games when your special teams goes haywire and your offense can’t find the end zone.
That’s just who Iowa State is as a program. So when they lose close games, sometimes that’s easy to assign to luck or chance, but when the whole idea is to be in games like that, at some point you just have to accept the results.
You can’t play with fire and then be surprised you get burned.
Are you surprised Campbell didn’t go for it at the end of the game?
The better way to look at this is does Matt Campbell have a consistent fourth-down philosophy?
Having covered him now into his seventh season at Iowa State, my inclination would be to answer that question with a solid ‘no.’
He evaluates each situation on its own merits — usually attributing that to his feeling of game flow, as he did that final play against Kansas.
“My gut said, 'win the game in overtime,'” Campbell said.
On one hand, you can say that evaluating each situation on its own makes sense, but, on the other when the criteria considered is gut feeling, it’s fair to wonder if something more concrete would be a better way to approach it.
All of that is to say, I’m not surprised Campbell didn’t go for it there because I’m rarely surprised about his decisions. Not because I know what he’s going to do, but because I’ve realized there’s not a consistency or pattern there to really do any sort of prediction.
Where will three more wins come from to get bowl eligible?
With the results we’re seeing all over the Big 12 — Hello, TCU vs. Oklahoma — it's probably folly to try to chart the path ahead for Iowa State.
The thing worth considering is not where, but how?
And the answer to that is a cleaned up special teams and a more consistent offense. It’s that simple — but also, as Saturday proved, that challenging.
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: Iowa State football mailbag: Why are the special teams units so shaky?
