Iowa vs. Minnesota postgame notebook: Hawkeyes explain QB swap

For the first time since 2014, Iowa didn’t leave Minneapolis with the Floyd of Rosedale.

No. 14 Iowa (5-2, 2-2 Big Ten) suffered its second loss of the season in an ugly 13-10 setback against rival Minnesota (5-2, 3-1 Big Ten). The Hawkeyes‘ rough offensive day morphed into the game’s top takeaway for Iowa.

After naming Jeremy Hecklinski as its starting quarterback heading into the matchup, Iowa swapped quarterbacks and inserted Hank Brown on its sixth offensive series. Hecklinski was benched after a bad interception in the red zone, a miss on a pass to Tony Diaz that would have been a touchdown, and general ineffectiveness.

Brown also struggled, though he did direct a game-tying, fourth-quarter drive that was highlighted by throws to Diaz and his 37-yard touchdown pass to Reece Vander Zee.

Hecklinski ended his day 9 of 16 passing for 62 yards with an interception. Brown was 11 of 21 through the air for 136 yards with one touchdown and two interceptions.

After the disappointing loss, Iowa head football coach Kirk Ferentz met with the media and shared some of his immediate postgame thoughts.

Kirk Ferentz’s opening postgame statement

“Certainly a disappointing outcome for us. I thought both teams really played hard and competed hard, expectedly, and I think that’s what we saw. Realistically, you got a blocked punt right off the bat and end up with four turnovers, it’s really unrealistic to think we were going to win a conference game doing that. So, that’s not good. And then also to compound it, we had four loose balls today, which is I think very uncharacteristic of us and that’s something we’ll look have to look at and try to get that cleaned up real fast and see what we can do there. Penalties weren’t critical necessarily, but they certainly always come at an inopportune time. Same thing again today there. And then a couple of things that were obvious, especially on the offensive side. Couldn’t establish the run game the way we wanted to or hoped to and we had some near-misses on some execution plays that I think make a real difference if we can do it. But, close doesn’t count and we’re going to have to do what we can to address that.

“And then defensively, gave ourselves (a chance). Did a lot of good things out there, a lot of good efforts. From the sidelines—I’ll have to see the film—but it doesn’t seem like we tackled as well as we can either, so something else to just look on. That’s about the summary of the game. Obviously, it hurts. Hurts everybody involved. Players, coaches. Team loss. We’ll go back tomorrow, look at it, and see what we can learn as a staff, what we can learn as players, and then we’ll have to move on as fast as possible because you’ve got five more games coming, conference games, and certainly going to have to play better than we did tonight. That’s not to discredit our opponent. They had something to do with that. The key thing will be moving forward. First things first, we’ve got to see what we can do to learn and improve some things,” Ferentz said.

If they considered going back to Jeremy Hecklinski in the second half

“Not strongly. You consider everything, but, no, not strongly,” Ferentz said.

Why the Iowa run game struggled against Minnesota

“Yeah, they’re a veteran team. They’ve got nine seniors out there. That’s probably a factor and they’ve got pride, too, and they work just like we do. They played hard, did a good job, and they were active with the blitzes, which was not a surprise to us. I thought we were prepared for that, but we really never could get any consistency going quite frankly. We’ll have to look at the film and figure that out, but, needless to say, we couldn’t come up with the answers we wanted today. That’s something we’re going to have to get better at. We need to run the ball better than that,” Ferentz said.

On Kamari Moulton’s injury

“Came out. I’ll know more here Tuesday when we see each other, but I don’t have anything yet,” Ferentz said.

What went into Iowa’s decision to bench Jeremy Hecklinski, insert Hank Brown

“Well, yeah, probably a combination of both (Jeremy’s performance and looking for a spark). You know, it just wasn’t going well, so we figured that was the best thing to give us a chance to win. And we went with it. We’ll reassess everything tomorrow,” Ferentz said.

Why Iowa had an uncharacteristic amount of mistakes

“No, I don’t (know why that was the case). If I did, I’d tell you, and probably would have tried to correct it during the game. I mean, we’re +2 turnover, takeaway margin on the year, which is not bad, but you’d like to be a little bit better in that. Today was a big step backwards obviously. Four loose balls and a couple picks, so you’re not going to win in this conference turning the ball over. As you guys know, at least the hometown guys know, I’m not a big stat guy. But, that’s one stat over 27-plus years. Believe me, it’s a lot and a lot longer than that quite frankly. I don’t know if it was concentration. I’m not sure what it was, but we’ve got to do a better job,” Ferentz said.

On Jaylen Watson’s costly offsides that negated a goal line stand

“Yeah, I mean, things happen in football. We had a lot of things happen today, but you’ve got to keep pushing forward. That didn’t decide the game. The things we just talked about I think were bigger factors quite frankly. A lot of good efforts down there on that goal line stand, and it was unfortunate certainly. I think the turnovers and the punt block, you’re just not going to win games (doing that). It’s hard to win a game when you get a punt blocked period if you look at the stats on that. That’s another stat that has some meaning, but we were able to move forward. But, the turnovers and loose balls that could have easily also have been turnovers, that’s the stuff we’ve got to get addressed immediately,” Ferentz said.

Contact/Follow us @HawkeyesWire on X (formerly Twitter) and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Iowa news, notes and opinions. Follow Josh on X: @JoshOnHawks

This article originally appeared on Hawkeyes Wire: Iowa vs. Minnesota postgame notebook: Hawkeyes explain QB swap