I wish I could agree. Iowa completely dominated the game.
Their offense isn’t great, so they went ultra-conservative once they got ahead by 2+ scores, but I’m not entirely convinced they couldn’t have moved the ball more if they had to be aggressive. Our defense also looked the worst it has in the CyHawk game since 2017 (obviously not blaming them, they’ve just been lights-out for the past four years, but really weren’t today).
The offense was non-existent until Iowa went prevent. Even when given the chance to nab some easy yards, ISU torched the clock that ultimately shrunk their margin of error to zero and even that was just the cherry on top of a TERRIBLE coaching performance.
In a game where the special teams had a field goal blocked and multiple negative yard punt returns, it was still probably the second-best special teams performance of the Campbell era (behind last year).
The Iowa-Iowa State game isn’t important because it’s a rivalry, it’s important because it’s a yardstick for Iowa State to measure program health against the team that arguably nearest meets its current environment, a very public yardstick that is seen by in-state recruits. I don’t think anyone that watched the game today would say that Iowa didn’t widen the current gap between the programs in the past twelve months.
On top of that, there’s not really a light at the end of the tunnel. I don’t see anything that Campbell and company are doing right now that’s going to raise our ceiling in the foreseeable future. I just am not sure how long you should let Campbell risk widening the gap even further before trying something new.