As the headline of this post alludes to, I have posted some of the more interesting moments to Bill Lynch's weekly press conference.
Thoughts on Minnesota:
Well we obviously lost a tough one up at Minnesota on Saturday. I thought the defense played very solid. One area we talked about was the third down possessions, they were close to 50 percent, and as well as we played we needed to get them off the field. A few times Minnesota was able to control the ball.The other side of it - offensively, we did not play well enough. I think that was really from start to finish. And I think possession downs were a big factor there and I think we were 10 percent. So if you take what they did on third down versus what we did on third down, I think that was probably the most revealing statistic.
Iowa is a very good football team. They are within a few plays of being 6-0. They have gotten beat by three very good football teams - Pitt on the road, Northwestern, who is undefeated, in a very close game and then lost a tough one to Michigan State at Michigan State on Saturday.It is interesting, we both come into it having lost three games. And the combined records of the teams that beat us are 16-2 and the records of the teams that beat them are 16-2. I don't know what that tells you, but we both are in need of bouncing back and having a good week.
We came out of (the Minnesota game) relatively healthy. Nick Polk and Austin Thomas in particular, are in good shape. They practiced hard yesterday so we feel like we're in good shape there.Will Patterson was back practicing yesterday after not being able to finish the game, so I think from a health standpoint we got through it in good shape.
I think that's every football team in America (who is searching for offensive consistency). I think we could look back to last year's football team and I think we could say the same thing about different games.Some of it is how the other team plays. I think we were ready to play Saturday, we didn't get them off the field on the first drive, although we hold them to a missed field goal and then all of the sudden we didn't get a first down. We came up third and two and didn't get it and came up to punt and all of the sudden the quarter is over.
So it was a strange game and to say one side of the ball wasn't ready to play - I don't think that was the case. Each game has it's own personality as well.
We have got to get better, but I'm certainly not down on this football team. And I think we have done some things well. We are just not sitting with a record that we had hoped to have at this point.
But I said this too, there are a whole lot of football teams sitting around the country saying this right now. And there is a whole lot of football left and we have seven games left, as do most teams.
It's all about improving and going back to work and playing on Saturdays.
I think what we have to do is keep seeing improvement. I think you get to the point after five games that you are going to get better or fall backward. I think improvement is the No. 1 thing we have to see.And let's go back a little bit, I thought we saw great improvement from the Ball State game to the Michigan State game. I saw the same kind of improvement defensively from the Michigan State game to the Minnesota game. I didn't see it offensively. So where does that put us? That's that consistency and having that whole package.
