I agree with that, however, I also wonder how many one score games we're in compared to most teams?
We seem to be in a ton of them, and I think that goes to CMC's coaching style. When we get up a little, we get SUPER conservative and try to just hold on it seems. That's no way to win games IMO. Our defense seems to do a great job of keeping opponents scoring pretty low, so the game will always be close unless our offense happens to play really well and can score quite a few points. But that's hard to do when you try to take the air out of the ball when you get up a little.
Every game that goes by it's crazy how eerily similar CMC is to KF at Iowa... and that's not necessarily a good thing. Sometimes I wonder which one of those two is more conservative actually. It's easy to just say KF is.... but CMC is very close.
I can't think of many blown leads recently. Are there games you are thinking of? In the last 2.5 seasons, the only one that comes to mind is WVU last year. Then Louisiana there was a 4 point lead at halftime.
In all the other losses, ISU has been playing from behind and made the score closer at the end:
Baylor this year
Iowa, Baylor, TTU, OU, and Clemson in '21
OSU and OU in '20
Personally, I think conservative play calling to start and lack of adjustments until halftime has been much more of an issue than playing conservative with a lead.