Iowa didn’t inspire much hope in its season opener that all of the offensive issues that plagued the program a season ago have magically been fixed. Instead, it felt and looked like the offense had gotten worse.
Sophomore wide receiver Arland Bruce IV isn’t hitting any panic buttons, though.
“Yeah, you know the first week everybody’s going to struggle at times. There’s times that you guys probably didn’t even notice where I messed up. It’s just about everybody doing their job. I just feel like with week one jitters, everybody sometimes messes up and doesn’t really complete their job like they’re supposed to and doesn’t get the task done. It’s not really about the coverage at times. It’s just a matter of us doing what we need to do first and not worrying about what the defense is doing, so it’s just figuring out what we need to do first,” Bruce said.
According to Bruce, therein lies the fix.
“Like I just said, just doing what we need to do. Getting the job done. Everybody doing their own job, not worrying about what the person next to you is and trusting that your brother’s going to do the right thing,” Bruce said.
It echoes some of the sentiments his quarterback Spencer Petras shared about the Hawkeyes’ struggles running the football and just the overall takeaways from a day where Iowa mustered just 166 yards of total offense and zero offensive touchdowns.
“Yeah, I think it was pretty representative of just the whole day offensively,” Petras said of the run game struggles. “Without having watched the tape yet, I bet all of our bad plays were probably one guy away from going. Run game that can be. It’s one guy in a run play, it’s one guy in a pass play. Whatever that may be, so the trick is just, you know, we’ve got our first game, we’ve got our first win. Now, let’s get back to who we are, because that wasn’t representative of who we are offensively.”
After a performance that brought out the boo birds on multiple occasions, Bruce had this to say in response to the fans voicing their displeasure.
“At the end of the day, it just matters what the people in this facility, in this building, on this team think, so I don’t really think too much of it. I mean, we all know that we left some on the field, but that’s why we’re going to get in the film room, get back at it tomorrow, look at what we could have done better and what we did good,” Bruce said.
Of course, plenty of those boos were directed squarely at Petras. Dating back to the mid-October loss last season versus Purdue, the San Rafael, Calif., quarterback now has just one touchdown pass against eight interceptions in his last six games of serious playing time.
Granted, seven of those eight interceptions came in two games against Purdue and Kentucky. Still, there was Bruce on Saturday afternoon to help swat away any criticism of his team’s starting signal-caller and to assign some of the blame on himself and the rest of his offensive teammates.
“Like I said, we all made mistakes today. I’m sure Spencer probably thought he left some stuff on the field, but there’s also some things that he probably did great. Same with me. I got a penalty. I caused a penalty. It’s just things where we leave on the field and it’s just procedural penalties and just not lining up where we’re supposed to be. Just little things like that. Like I said, it’s always the basics and the little things. We get those right and we’re going to be fine,” Bruce said.
As Iowa turns its attention to its arch rival in the Iowa State Cyclones, the Hawkeyes will once again be doing so minus two of their top three wide receivers. Neither Nico Ragaini or Keagan Johnson were listed on the two-deep.
It sets the stage for Bruce to be Iowa’s primary difference maker at wide receiver. Obviously, it would be great for the Hawkeyes to find some help from the fellow receivers on the two-deep: Alec Wick, Jack Johnson and Brody Brecht.
“Yeah, that’s the great thing with college football. I mean, we probably have 12, 13 games left. Those guys are obviously going to be back in the next few weeks. The guys that we had in today I think did a great job and it was their first time getting game experience, so I think moving forward we’re going to be just fine,” Bruce said.
[mm-video type=playlist id=01fvdcxf97xrgg1awc player_id=none image=https://hawkeyeswire.usatoday.com/wp-content/plugins/mm-video/images/playlist-icon.png]
[lawrence-related id=9383]
[lawrence-related id=9376]
[vertical-gallery id=9261]
[listicle id=9315]
Contact/Follow us @HawkeyesWire on Twitter, and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Iowa news, notes, and opinions.
Follow Josh on Twitter: @JoshOnREF
Let us know your thoughts, comment on this story below. Join the conversation today.