Chizik has said you need to run the ball and stop the run to win games, and that philosophy was clearly on display Thursday night. After seeing the Kent State game, lets hope that Chizik waits another year or two before he turns
ISU into a rushing powerhouse.
ISU does not and has not had the right personnel on the offensive line to run the ball 39 times per game like it did against Kent State. JJ Bass had his moments, but he also had a lot of two yard gains that resulted in way too many 3 and outs by our offense.
Against Kent State,
ISU ran the ball 39 times for 158 yards and passed the ball 23 times for 148 yards. And that's in a game that
ISU trailed for almost the entire game! That's the kind of run/pass ratio you might expect when a team is protecting a lead.
By comparison, let's look at last year's UNI game.
ISU's running game was inconsistent in the first half and we trailed UNI 21-7 at halftime. After that point,
ISU abandoned the running game and it came back to win 28-27. For the game,
ISU had 28 rushing attempts for 81 yards compared to 29 pass attempts for 323 yards. Clearly Meyer is more effective when he is given a chance to get in a passing rhythm... something we didn't see against Kent St.
Who else wants to see Meyer put the ball in the air more than 23 times next week against UNI?
