There are two ways to look at Iowa’s last two games.

On the one hand, Iowa lost to the current No. 7 and No. 16 ranked teams in the country by a total of 12 points. You could say Iowa is clearly in the same neighborhood as Penn State and Michigan and was a play or two away from winning those.

On the other hand, those games reaffirmed what many long-time supporters already know: Iowa’s offense is lagging behind. No team, no matter how good its defense, can win in 2019 by scoring 15 points in two weeks. It’s a testament to how good the Hawkeyes are on defense that they were even in those games.

Even with one of the best offensive lines in the country, Iowa is one of the least productive offensive teams, and this is with a three-year starter at quarterback in Nate Stanley. Against non-Rutgers Power Five teams, Iowa is averaging just 11 points per game. Even including Rutgers, Iowa is averaging 15.8 points per game against Power Five teams, which is 93rd in the country. Something clearly isn’t working. Iowa’s defense, on the other hand, ranks in the top 10 nationally in most statistical categories.

Iowa has actually moved the ball OK in these games against Michigan and Penn State, but it ultimately settles for field goals too often. The best college offenses don’t rely on grinding out drives; they get big plays, and Iowa is lacking in this area. It is tied for 99th in the country in plays of 40 yards or more as it has just four. The Hawkeyes are also one of 28 teams in the country without a play of 60 yards or more. Florida, not exactly a widely admired offense, has six of them.

Just for fun, let’s do a blind resume test and see if you can guess who these teams are.

— Team A ranks 94th in the country at 24.5 points per game, ranks 65th in the country at 412.8 total yards per game and ranks 53rd in the country at 256 passing yards per game.
— Team B ranks 38th in the country at 32.4 points per game, ranks 69th in the country at 402.1 total yards per game and ranks 67th in the country at 228.5 passing yards per game.

Just looking at this, these teams seem pretty even, right? Team B scores a little more, Team A moves the ball a little better. But statistically speaking, both are mediocre offenses that are reliant on their defense to win games.

OK, OK, the suspense is killing you, right? Team A is the 2019 Iowa Hawkeyes (duh, you knew they had to be involved in this exercise). Team B is… the 2018 LSU Tigers.

Why is that noteworthy? Well, look at what LSU is doing this year. The Tigers are lighting the college football world on fire, scoring points at a clip we’ve rarely seen in college football. Florida State owns the FBS record for points in a season with 723, an average of 51.6 per game. LSU is averaging 52.5 per game this season.

LSU was a very good team last season, going 10-3 and winning the Fiesta Bowl with a below-average offense (take away the 41 points it scored in the seven overtimes against Texas A&M and it only averaged 29.2, which would have been 65th in the country). But the Tigers wanted more than that. This is a program that never finished higher than 34th in the country in total offense in the last five years. It finished as low as 80. Ultimately, LSU looked at the way Alabama transformed over the last few years and decided it needed to be much better on offense or it couldn’t compete (Alabama beat LSU 29-0 last year). So, LSU hired 29-year-old Joe Brady, a Joe Moorhead disciple who at the time was on staff with the New Orleans Saints, to be its passing game coordinator and run the spread. And the results have been, well, incredible.

It’s all relative, but Iowa is in a similar place. Why can’t the Hawkeyes make the choice to change? Or at least modernize? Iowa may not have access to 5-star recruits like LSU, but so what? Mike Leach doesn’t work with 5-star QBs at Washington State, and he didn’t at Texas Tech. But he figures out how to churn out top-flight offenses year after year. I’m not advocating for Iowa to go to the Air Raid or anything like that, but it’s worth considering opening it up, even if its vaunted defense suffers a bit. LSU’s defense is not as strong this year, sure, but you could argue LSU has as good of a chance as any to beat Alabama and win a national championship as any in recent years.

Most years, Iowa’s top recruits are going to be linemen as that’s the nature of being in the Midwest. LSU, meanwhile, can run a boring offense and still get Odell Beckham Jr. and Jarvis Landry to commit, so I get the differences between the programs. But don’t you think that by making this a more spread-out offense, the athletes will come? Four-star wideout David Bell had Iowa in his top five, but ultimately he chose to go to pass-happy Purdue, and now he is leading them in receiving yards as a true freshman. Can you imagine if Iowa got a kid like Bell every year? With how good the Hawkeyes already are in other phases, it could really take this thing to the next level.

There are growing pains, risks and drawbacks, of course. This is what Michigan wanted to do too by bring in Josh Gattis, and that has gone very poorly so far. The Wolverines still are 5-1, though, so are they that much worse off? Regardless of how this season goes, Michigan still made the right decision to modernize their offense. As previously mentioned, maybe Iowa’s defense suffers some, but scoring more points increases your margin for error. LSU won’t have to play a perfect game defensively against Alabama because it knows it can put up some points.

You may look at a team like Wisconsin and the success it is having, but the Badgers are the exception, not the rule. Jonathan Taylor is having a Christian McCaffrey-like impact on that offense. If you don’t have someone like Taylor, though, where does that leave you?
Well, it leaves you averaging 342 yards per game (79th in the country) against Power Five teams, as Iowa is. When you have two offensive linemen that are projected to go in the first few rounds of the draft, that doesn’t add up.

Take a look at the other teams that still run a more traditional offense: Boston College is 45th in points (after opening up the passing attack this season), Kansas State is 54th, Michigan State is 98th and Stanford is 112th. Even Wisconsin is only 39th in total offense this season, and that will presumably dip when Taylor moves on to the NFL.

The politics of it all may be challenging, as the offensive coordinator is Brian Ferentz – son of head coach Kirk Ferentz. I’m not saying to fire either; Kirk has certainly built a great program. But look at the way Ed Orgeron adapted at LSU, bringing in a young, fresh face to modernize the offense. Maybe there is someone out there who can work with Brian Ferentz on the offense.

While Iowa has its identity, it may benefit by modernizing. Going 8-4 every year is nothing to scoff at, but like LSU realized, the ceiling may be higher.