Iowa Reaction

We lost by 46 points while allowing 62. We lost our third straight this season and eighth straight road loss. This is Danny Mac’s second 0-3 start in his NT tenure. We have lost 13-straight non-conference road games, including both this season.

This 46-point loss was worse than the 41-0 destruction at Alabama in 2011, when Danny Mac was playing with Dodge’s recruits and beginning his era in Denton. This one came with his players, his coaches, his staff, his philosophy.

North Texas was expected to lose big in this one but doubling up the spread isn’t what we wanted to see. We all like to pretend to dislike moral victories but there are a lot of North Texas fans who feel good about our little trip to Athens, Georgia in 2013. I count myself among those who feel good about that 42-21 loss. I would have felt much better after this game if we had performed like Southern Miss did at Nebraska. They managed an 8-point loss on Saturday.

Now I feel like our quarterback situations is godawful. I try my best to get behind the QB choice during the game. I try to notice each solid play. Each time QB #5 steps in in the pocket and avoids a pass rush, or fires a strike, or reads the defense and gets the ball out.

Then I look at the numbers and then I get angry at myself.

North Texas QBs

I’d normally look to give credit to the defense for holding our starting quarterback to under 50% passing but that’s kind of the norm for our man McNulty. Look for yourself. We hover right around 50% passing with him at the helm, so a few more incompletions against a good team (likely) drop his pass completion percentage a touch below the midway line.

That’s not good.

Really, it isn’t fair to complain about the quarterback position or the offense because they didn’t lose the game. Sure, the two pick-sixes led to 14 points, but the game was far more out of hand before that.

I mean, did anyone else see the Iowa offensive line blow holes as wide as University drive? The broadcast ran a stat that showed Iowa had ran 12 running plays up the middle for 80 yards and three touchdowns.

Beathard completed his first 15 passes. He tossed TD passes to wide-open receivers. Their offense looked like they were going against a practice squad.

I was demoralized at the end of the first quarter.

I’d like something to be done. But it can’t be the quarterback. It can’t be the coach. No it has to be higher up. Rick Villarreal has enjoyed a comfortable seat, presiding over the some great times in school history and some of the absolute worst. His profile boasts of his accomplishments but we know what has happened with the basketball and football programs. He presided over two of the better times in both program histories (Johnny Jones and Dan McCarney’s 2013) and some of the worst (the current basketball program and the Todd Dodge era).

While the non-revenue programs are doing well, the prestige programs are a consistent laughing stock. Any progress for football in the early 2000s was squandered by the Dodge hire. The 2014 bowl win looks increasingly distant.

Looking at those bowl pictures doesn’t bring the same joy as it did when you just lost to a rival, a conference foe, and a Big Ten school in increasingly awful fashion.