The Iowa Hawkeyes suffered one of their most disappointing results of the 2024 season in a 32-20 loss on Saturday night in East Lansing.
Despite Iowa entering after one of its best performances in a 40-16 home win over Washington, the Hawkeyes couldn’t replicate that effort against the Spartans.
Instead, a Michigan State team that had lost three straight coming into its matchup versus the Hawkeyes was the team that controlled the action for the majority of the night.
That included a first half where Iowa simply couldn’t get anything going offensively. Iowa mustered just 17 yards of offense in the first quarter and only 58 yards of offense by halftime.
The Hawkeyes punted on four of their five first-half possessions and failed to move the football after redshirt sophomore Koen Entringer set Iowa up at the Michigan State 45-yard line with an interception off MSU sophomore quarterback Aidan Chiles.
Iowa graduate quarterback Cade McNamara misfiring on open targets was one of the common denominators in the Hawkeyes’ poor start offensively.
Afterwards, Iowa head football coach Kirk Ferentz said the Hawkeyes didn’t think seriously about benching McNamara for junior quarterback Brendan Sullivan.
“No, no real discussion on making a switch. But, I mean, basically we didn’t do anything well enough to win tonight. That would be included, Cade missing throws. So, we’re going to have to do better in a lot of areas. We’ll go back to work tomorrow, look at the film, see what it looks like and then just try to proceed forward,” Ferentz said.
Iowa did put together three touchdown drives after halftime with McNamara as its starting quarterback. Sullivan ran in a 2-yard score to cap the second scoring drive, though.
Ferentz discussed what the differences were between Iowa’s first-half offensive shortcomings and its ability to find some scoring drives after halftime.
“We made a couple adjustments in terms of what we wanted to do, but sometimes it just goes that way I think. We couldn’t get any traction and then they’re an aggressive group. They’re well-coached and they did a good job.
“So, yeah, we really couldn’t get much started. I think we just had one drive where we moved the ball a little bit and then ended up coming up with nothing there. I think we punted the ball into the end zone after that one or maybe it was a field goal. But anyway, there wasn’t much that looked really good.
“Second half we started getting a little traction and made a couple adjustments like I said, but even when we were getting within striking distance, they always had a response and an answer. They had it tough for us,” Ferentz said.
Iowa (4-3, 2-2 Big Ten) returns to action on Saturday as it hosts Northwestern (3-4, 1-3 Big Ten) for a 2:30 p.m. CT kickoff on Big Ten Network.
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