No Reason Why Iowa State Football Fans Should Panic About The Future

Shortly after Iowa State's dismal 39-3 loss to No. 25 Arizona in Tucson went final on Saturday night, I decided to open X. 

It's probably a good thing that players stay away from social media, because what I discovered was a bunch of heated fans frustrated with the outcome of the game. Some of the reactions were completely valid considering the Cyclones were coming off a bye week and played decent football before the bye, but most of the vulgar tweets were directed towards head coach Jimmy Rogers and the future of the Iowa State football program. 

I'm not going to completely repeat what one user said, but here's the gist: he thinks the Cyclones should part ways with Jimmy Rogers if Iowa State loses the rest of their regular season games because of the lack of any sort of offensive creativity. 

Is the Cyclones' offense a problem right now? Absolutely. Jaylen Raynor didn't look horrible from a statistical standpoint in the first half (8/10, 106 yards) but a costly fumble ultimately resulted in Rogers starting Connor Moberly in the second half. The game was already over by that point, but posting just three points against an average defense like Arizona after a bye week certainly wasn't a positive note for Iowa State. 

It's pretty easy for opposing defenses to shut down the Cyclones because they have no threat in the passing game. That will definitely make it difficult for Iowa State to win many games from here on out, but what happened in the desert on Saturday was a perfect description of this 2026 season - a rebuilding one. 

No matter how strong of a setting you had your fan goggles to, this was never going to be a great year for the Cyclones. Rogers did the best he could trying to build a roster to compete in the Big 12, but considering the offensive struggles and later massive injury buildup, this was never going to be a year where Iowa State could just slide right back in to a classic 7-5 or 8-4 Matt Campbell season. This is a program that isn't used to winning very much and expecting this brand-new corps to magically put everything together in a transitional year was foolish. 

As we've said before on here, Rogers has these guys competing very hard. Saturday was simply one of those nights for this football team that flashed what this team ultimately was always going to be - a rebuilding team. 

The results probably aren't going to look very good for the rest of the year, but there's absolutely no reason to panic about the direction the Cyclones are going in under Rogers. Save those concerns for 2027.