Hawkeyes Fly High in Opener

Iowa Takes Off in Second Half Saturday

Iowa's Jermari Harris (right) celebrates his interception with teammates. (Photo: Rob Howe/HN) /

Meet the new boss.

Not quite the same as the old boss.

Forget Iowa’s offense in the first half of Saturday’s season opener against Illinois State at Kinnick Stadium. It looked too much like last season and really, no one wants to remember that.

No, think about the second half, the five touchdowns — three by air, two on the ground — and the 345 yards of offense.

Think about the final score — Hawkeyes 40, Redbirds 0.

Put away the wisecracks and the sighs and the cacophony of the critics who were barking in the first half, put away the speculation about whether Cade McNamara should be the quarterback, and enjoy the thought that, at least for this game, the offense of new coordinator Tim Lester looked a lot more efficient than the last couple of seasons.

Yes, the Redbirds were an FCS team and there are bigger defensive challenges ahead. But this game built some optimism mixed in with a little internal criticism.

“We’re capable of so much,” said running back Kaleb Johnson, who rushed for 111 yards and two touchdowns while playing only the second half after being suspended for the first half for violation of team rules. “I just can’t wait for us to develop more and more and more. 

Lester’s offense was expected to be an improvement — really, it couldn’t go anywhere but up, considering the Hawkeyes have been at or near the bottom of the major offensive categories in Football Bowl Subdivision play the last two years — but Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz stressed that whatever intricacies there were to the offense wouldn’t matter if the Hawkeyes just didn’t simply execute.

The final numbers — 241 rushing yards, 251 passing yards, no fumbles lost, zero sacks — were all about the excellence of the Hawkeyes’ execution once the clunkiness of the first half was shaken away.

“We had some of what you would call the norms in the first game (in the first half), and just some things that I think we probably could have handled better a little bit,” said assistant head coach Seth Wallace, running the Hawkeyes in place of Ferentz. “However, I think the second half is probably a better indicator as to what type of team we are.”

By the way, let’s not forget the temporary boss. It was the first time Ferentz hadn’t been on the sideline in his 26 seasons as Iowa’s coach — he was home serving a university-imposed one-game suspension for a recruiting contact violation — putting Wallace in charge.

“I think he’ll be more than satisfied,” Wallace said of Ferentz. “I think we’re all thankful how the game played out.”

It played out exactly how McNamara had envisioned.

McNamara, who missed the last nine games of last season with a knee injury, pronounced himself “100 percent” healthy a couple of weeks ago, a big statement considering the injury problems he has dealt with in his career, first at Michigan and then with the Hawkeyes after transferring.

His final statistics for the day — 21-of-31 passing for 251 yards and three touchdowns, one rush for 12 yards and another 20-yard scramble that was erased by a penalty — backed up his statement.

“I think moments like these, and really like picturing myself having moments like this, is what got me through rehab,” McNamara said. “A lot of that motivation was being able to possibly go out there as 100 percent again, because I know last year I played and I wasn't 100 percent and I wasn't able to move around the pocket as much.”

McNamara was just 8-of-17 in the first half for 74 yards, but he opened the second half with eight consecutive completions. He threw two touchdown passes to true freshman Reece Vander Zee — a 7-yarder with 11:32 left in the third quarter and a 19-yarder into all kinds of traffic to start the fourth quarter — and a 31-yarder in the third quarter that perfectly dropped into the hands of a double-covered Jacob Gill.

Iowa’s defense was a constant menace to the Redbirds, holding them to 189 yards of offense and 12 first downs.

It’s a story Illinois State coach Brock Spack knew from the past against the Hawkeyes, whether it was with the Redbirds when they were here in 2015, or during his time as an assistant at Purdue.

Spack pointed to Iowa’s defensive line, which had four sacks — three by Aaron Graves and one by Brian Allen — and the linebacker duo of Jay Higgins and Nick Jackson, which produced 12 tackles and two pass breakups.

“It’s a nasty concoction to get blocked,” Spack said. “And they’ve been doing that for 26 years or so. The recipe hasn’t changed here.”

The recipe on the other side of the ball was different. And McNamara knows it can be better.

“Honestly, the points don’t really matter to me,” McNamara said. “I thought, overall, that wasn’t our best today.”