Anyone who has watched enough college football knows it only takes one catastrophic mistake to determine a game’s outcome. Unfortunately for No. 17 IU football, it committed three such errors in a 34-6 loss to No. 18 Iowa in its season opener Saturday.
Those gaffes resulted in 141 yards and 21 points for the Hawkeyes, who frankly didn’t do much else in what could have been a narrow, low-scoring skirmish.
IU’s first critical blunder was allowing Iowa junior running back Tyler Goodson to sprint 56 yards untouched into the end zone during the Hawkeye’s opening possession. Outside of that run, Goodson averaged 2.4 yards on 18 carries.
Then came the offense. Kinnick Stadium rocked with the cheers from what I can only assume was Iowa’s entire state population. The noise ostensibly got to the Hoosiers’ heads given the unmitigated sloppiness of IU’s first drive. This featured a botched handoff and culminated in a tipped interception returned by Iowa senior defensive back Riley Moss for a 30-yard touchdown.
Thanks to a defect in the live stats site I was consulting at the time, Penix was credited with a passer rating of -100, which seemed impossible yet nonetheless fitting.
Trailing 21-3 with just under two minutes in the first half, IU forced and recovered an Iowa football to take possession at its own 45 yard line. Just one play later, Moss was sprinting into the end zone with another Penix interception in hand.
Hoosier fans might be tempted to point out that this would have been a very close contest without those three plays, but that overlooks the other 59 minutes or so of mediocrity. When IU did barely too little, Iowa did just enough. The Hawkeyes constantly turned sure stops into four-yard gains, squeezing every last centimeter out of each snap.
Of course, it didn’t help that the Hoosiers committed seven penalties for 66 yards. Holding calls, false starts and the occasional unnecessary piledrive of Iowa junior quarterback Spencer Petras stymied the IU offense in the rare instances when Iowa couldn’t.
From the perspective of a neutral observer, perhaps the most exhilarating sight of the first half was the Panchero’s Mexican Grill burrito lift, in which fans on the video board were shown bouncing a digitally inserted burrito as high as possible. As I stared blankly at a man held belly-up above his friends’ heads, repeatedly thrusting the iconic Tex-Mex staple in and out of frame, I slowly went numb to the beatdown unfolding on the field.
The second half did little to alter the complexion of the afternoon. Penix continued to uncharacteristically force throws to heavily covered receivers while Petras managed to be the least disastrous of the two quarterbacks.
Penix, who sustained season-ending injuries in each of the last three years, didn’t necessarily appear hurt, but it’s easy to understand why viewers would question his health after his performance. Honestly, he behaved like most 21-year-old men in stressful situations, except instead of texting an ex late at night he threw three interceptions.
Was anything mechanically different with Penix, or do we simply think he looked different because we aren’t used to him tossing two back-breaking interceptions in the span of an hour? Either way, I only hope he can finish the season. Nobody likes seeing stellar athletes hampered by devastating injury.
While I refuse to make sweeping predictions about the Hoosiers’ future in 2021 after a single weird outing — I still believe this team is capable of playing excellent football — it’s admittedly hard to watch them lose so demonstrably after last season.
Even when IU stumbled in 2020, it kept the game interesting until the final whistle. Head coach Tom Allen would give a rousing locker room speech and the disgruntled Hoosier faithful would pick itself up and quickly regather its optimism.
Today was like being a seven-year-old again and watching your dad throw out his back while fixing the kitchen sink. Personally, I don’t need football games to bring me face-to-face with mortality and the fragility of man, but I suppose that’s the beautiful unpredictability of the sport.
