In 2018 Brian Ferentz was elevated to offensive coordinator.

Let’s be blunt, Iowa has rarely been an offensive juggernaut. No, let’s rephrase that. Iowa has rarely been above average in offense. I'm going to use team offensive yards as a stand-in for overall offense. Using that as a metric, Iowa hasn't ranked even near the top half of offenses for essentially a decade, coming in at 2015 ranked 69th (not exactly nice), 2014 ranked 62nd. Going back further, 2010 ranked 58th is possibly the last time the team was truly above the 50th percentile. Going back further, 2008 was 51st, 2006 was 34th, and 2005 was 28th. It has happened with Kirk at the helm. But it's been a long time. A very long time.

As a fan of this team, long ago we were conditioned to expect a solid defense, good special teams, and an offense that does the job, if barely. Over the last several years that "barely" has been strained to the extreme, and when it breaks, it collapses.

The role of the offense for a normal team is to score as many points as possible. Kirk is typically cagey as to his view on the offense, but occasionally he or Brian will slip and tell the truth, that score isn’t really that important. One example of that was from this article, Leistikow: Iowa football's offensive approach, as explained by Brian Ferentz

"The role of the offense is very simple," he said. "We need to do whatever it takes for our football team to win."

OK, that's mainly coach-speak.

Fortunately, Ferentz quickly transitioned into specifics.

"No. 1, we need to stop the run. That’s not our department.

"No. 2, we need to run the ball. That is our department.

"No. 3, we’ve got to play great special teams. We’ve got to cover kicks. Again, not our department."

"But the interesting thing about offense," Ferentz said, "is what you do offensively directly affects the other two phases; more so than the other two phases can affect what we do."

In other words …

"We need to protect our defense and keep them out of bad positions. That means we need to protect the football. We need to change field position," Ferentz said. "And we need to score as many points as we can with the opportunities we have."

Now we're getting to an understanding. Over the years Kirk and now Brian have talked about ball control, running the ball, and limiting possessions. Which would be fine if that’s what they were doing.

For those of us who are Iowa fans, or even for the casual observer, we see the defense being on the field for what seems like an eternity while the offense has 3 and outs followed by punts. After getting blown out by PSU at seeing the absurd time of possession disadvantage (14:33!), I started really wondering how bad they are at those stated goals.

I’m not interested in points scored, since neither is Kirk.

Luckily, the good people at Team Rankings provide this information.

First, let's look at TOP. All data is category (time, yards, plays) and national ranking since 2018 against the rest of the Big Ten through 10/1. 2023 is sorted by team best to worst, the rest of the years are simply listed with the same team order if you care to look at your team and/or laugh at other teams in addition to Iowa.

Oof. But we can already see something. Even just within Brian's tenure, the TOP ranking has only been truly bad in the last 2 years, and 2018 and 2019 are honestly in line with what they want for controlling the clock.

As always, TOP isn’t always meaningful. Rapid strike offenses (Hi, Maryland) can be and regularly are on the losing side of TOP. It is indicative of how much stress you're placing on the defense to be on the field.

For "fun", let's look at the offensive offense just to completely eliminate the possibility that Iowa is secretly some sort of quick strike offense. Again, using yardage as an offensive stand in, the answer is an emphatic LOLNO. We all knew that, but ye gods, it's ugly. As I said at the start, nowhere even near average, and in fact one of the worst in the league over the last several years.

Maybe they're at least running the ball somewhat, since that's a stated goal?

Hey! Not the worst. I suppose that's progress. Still, if the question is if this is a successful rushing attack?

What about limiting possessions? Looking at plays per game, if they meant that they wanted to limit the possessions by their own team, they're doing a great job.

None of this is new, but the numbers are stark. There is nothing redeeming about the offensive side of the ball over the last year and a half, nor anything that suggests improvement. In fact, the numbers have started bad and become far worse over Brian's tenure.

But it's not like Kirk acknowledges this. After PSU;

One thing we always talk about, it’s always a team loss. Anytime you come off the field without a victory, that’s certainly the case. And everybody’s got ownership. Coaches, players, everybody’s got ownership. It’s always been that way. Always will be.

Looking at the defense (via S&P), it's no surprise that's not the case it's a team loss, but not everyone has ownership. Top 10 defense 4 of the 5 years. Bottom 10 offense. it's good enough for an overall ranking around the top 25 when special teams are factored in.

As an Iowa fan, we're trapped in this unsolvable puzzle; there's a head coach who is unwilling to fix a broken system, a coordinator that is the face of that system who doesn't have full control of it and likely isn't competent regardless, a recent history of stable "success" around 8 wins but a hard ceiling on actual success, and a realization that regardless of coach or system that likely is the cap on success. Are you content that 2 out of 3 ain't bad, or do you wish to chase success that likely doesn't exists beyond what already is?

"... That means we need to protect the football. We need to change field position," Ferentz said. "And we need to score as many points as we can with the opportunities we have."

I'd argue at this point it's irrelevant. They have a stated goal and they're not accomplishing it. Worse than that, they refuse to admit it. In any other job if you miss your goals this spectacularly, there are consequences.

The only answer is to cut the knot.