Hawkeyes Cry Foul on Critical Late Call

Punt Return TD Wiped Out After Review in Iowa Loss to Minnesota

Iowa's Cooper DeJean waits for the play call from the during a game against Minnesota on Oct. 21, 2023 at Kinnick Stadium in Iowa City, Iowa. (Rob Howe/HN)

Cooper DeJean’s 54-yard punt return in the final two minutes gave Iowa…

No. No it didn’t.

There were moments, as the sun set on a long, frustrating day at Kinnick Stadium, when it looked like Iowa had pulled out a win it shouldn’t have had, kept the trophy it has had for a long time, and was still in control of its own fate in the Big Ten West Division.

Nope. Such hopes were gone as soon as referee Tim O’Dey said that DeJean, who had been pointing with his right hand and waving with his left hand as the punt from Minnesota’s Mark Crawford landed near the east sideline, had made an invalid fair-catch signal.

Gone was the touchdown, and soon, the Hawkeyes were done as well.

The 12-10 loss to the Gophers cost Iowa Floyd of Rosedale, the beloved bronze pig trophy that has resided in Iowa City for the last eight years of this rivalry.

Floyd was being paraded at midfield by a huddle of happy Gophers as Kinnick emptied, the Hawkeyes to a disconsolate locker room and the fans to wonder what kind of ugliness they had just witnessed.

And it left coach Kirk Ferentz stewing over what had happened.

Steamed as he entered the post-game press conference, Ferentz figured the words that came next were going to cost him a few dollars from a conference fine for criticizing the officials.

“Hopefully they’ll find it in their hearts to send it to a good cause,” Ferentz said.

Ferentz might not need to get out his checkbook, because he didn’t launch into any sort of tirade.

He questioned how, on a day where there had been six replay reviews, the officials could come to such a ruling.

Referee Tim O’Dey’s explanation, via a pool reporter, tried to sort that out.

“The receiver makes a pointing gesture with his right hand and he makes multiple waving gestures with his left hand. If you look at the video you’ll see that,” O’Dey said. “That waving motion of the left hand constitutes an invalid fair catch signal. So when the receiving team recovers the ball, by rule it becomes dead. So that is a reviewable element of the game. We let the play run out and then when we went to review, review shows with indisputable evidence that there is a waving motion with the left hand. And that is when these rules are applied.

“It's legal to point but any waving motion of the hands during a kick play is considered an invalid signal.”

That was similar to the explanation Ferentz got, but he wasn’t buying.

Ferentz originally thought the review was for whether DeJean had stepped out of bounds when he had fielded the ball.

“I thought it started was the in-bounds, out of bounds, and we went from there to pointing, which is illegal, because you know, errant punt,” Ferentz said. “Then I was told that he was waving, and what they tell us in pregame is the wave is up here above the head.

“Most people when they run, their arms do wave. If you look at the video, it looked like he was naturally running to the football and he just made a great play, one of the best ones I've ever seen. That part is the hardest part. An unbelievable effort gets taken off the board.”

DeJean said he thought, too, it was about whether he had stayed in bounds.

“I assumed they would blow the whistle if it was a fair catch,” he said. “I didn’t hear a whistle, though, so I just kept going.”

DeJean said he thought he didn't make a fair-catch signal, saying he held out his left hand to balance himself.

“I didn't think I got it over my head for a fair-catch signal, I don't think anybody on the field thought that,” DeJean said. “It's tough to lose like that, yeah.”

Minnesota coach P.J. Fleck wasn’t about to argue the call.

“(The official) thought it was a fair-catch signal,” Fleck said. “I’m not an official, right? But there was something. We’ve been called for that before, when we’ve made any time of movement before the catch, and the ball was dead right there. If it wasn’t, that was a heck of a play by the kid. That guy can play.”

From that point, the Hawkeyes (6-2 overall, 3-2 Big Ten) were doomed. They hadn’t moved the ball all day — they had 127 yards of offense on 56 plays — and when quarterback Deacon Hill threw an interception three plays into that final possession, the game was over.

The Hawkeyes lost without giving up a touchdown. Dragan Kesich made four field goals as Minnesota (4-3, 2-2) won at Kinnick for the first time since 1999 to snap an eight-game losing streak in the series.

The Gophers held Iowa (6-2, 3-2) to minus-2 yards in the third quarter after trailing 10-3 at halftime.

“We knew we were going to have to play the long game today,” Fleck said. “You’ve got to play the long game with them.”

Ferentz is playing a long game with his offense, but some questions will have to be answered soon. Hill, making just his third start, fumbled twice in Iowa territory and then added the interception at the end. And Iowa’s running game, so good the last two weeks, had just 11 yards.

Getting Hill going will be the main focus.

“They did a really nice job, but we have to find answers,” Ferentz said. “We're going to have to find answers moving forward. They clearly made Deacon uncomfortable and that led to some bad things for us. We have to find a way to protect him a little bit better and get the ball out of his hands a little quicker, and he's got some ownership in that, too.

“Those are some of the things I think we saw maybe back in August and I thought he moved past it, and there was a little bit of revert on it. We have to get him back on his feet and get him playing a little bit more decisively, and we have to find a way to get the running game going because that's obviously going to take some pressure off of him.”

“This was not the way we wanted things to go, not the way I wanted things to go,” Hill said. “This really stings, and we have to move forward. I don’t think they changed much; we just didn’t execute. I didn’t execute. Simple as that. They outnumbered us in the box (against the run), they brought their safeties down in the run fit. We knew that coming into the game. Hats off to them.”

The lament was there about a game, and the hopes that went with it, that got away.

“Coach Ferentz said there was nothing he could say to make us feel better,” Hill said. “We still have a four-week season after the bye week, so we have to get ready for that. Back to the drawing board next week.”

“We are just trying to win games,” Ferentz said. “That's all we're trying to do. We have been doing a pretty good job up until today. That's what we are trying to do. You know, if we had gotten a little different interpretation on that last one, the call, we would have won today.”

They didn’t win.