Much of the criticism directed at the Iowa offense this year, besides the typical bashing of quarterback Spencer Petras, has been centered around offensive coordinator Brian Ferentz’s scheme and play calling.
Many see his offense lacking innovation and creativity, which is a completely fair assessment. In an age where we are seeing a mix of new, exciting offensive philosophies in football, Iowa’s offense has lagged behind in a bygone era.
While the rest of the college football landscape is a full menu of options, the Hawkeyes have been a scoop of vanilla ice cream in a styrofoam bowl.
Against Northwestern this past week, though, fans saw something new from the offense. More correctly, they saw the reintroduction of something that should’ve been used from game one.
Scott Dochterman of The Athletic wrote a feature on Iowa’s heavy usage of jet sweeps this past Saturday, and how it greatly impacted their best performance of the season.
On Saturday, the Hawkeyes (4-4 overall, 2-3 Big Ten) not only showed it was possible to do so; they proved it. Iowa blended motion on traditional zone runs and receiver sweeps with multiple passing plays. From the first offensive play to the last, Iowa used jet motion on nearly one-third of its plays. Of the Hawkeyes’ 65 snaps, they ran jet motion on 20. In a 33-13 win against Northwestern, Iowa totaled nearly half of its jet motions this season. – Dochterman, The Athletic.
Used very sparingly throughout the season, jet sweeps actually found success for the Hawkeyes this season. Per Dochterman’s research, in the Hawkeyes’ seven games prior to Northwestern, receivers ran four times for 27 yards and running backs had carried 11 times for 108 yards with jet motion. On passing plays accompanied by jet motion, Iowa had seven completions for 44 yards.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/ncaafb/finally-iowa-is-utilizing-another-layer-with-its-offense/ar-AA13FJ3a?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=U531&cvid=f59d200bf09a44519d3977d24e6880b5
