Iowa Football Was Never Truly A CFP-Caliber Team. The Loss To Minnesota Proved It

MINNEAPOLIS - Minutes after Iowa football was wrapped up its dominant 41-24 victory over Washington on Oct. 9, On3 podcasters Andy Staples and Ari Wasserman started to throw what they called the "P word" at the suddenly red-hot Hawkeyes. 

That "p word" alluded to none other than the College Football Playoff, an event Iowa has never participated in but has come very close to breaking through under longtime head coach Kirk Ferentz. 

The Washington win left the Hawkeyes at 5-1 overall and 2-1 in Big Ten play. The resume certainly wasn't perfect, but a quick glance at Iowa's remaining schedule revealed a six-game stretch featuring games against the old Big Ten West division - a division the Hawkeyes won in two of the final three years of its existence. 

Iowa's path to the CFP was clear: if it won its final six games, it would earn its first-ever bid. No one questioned that part of it, but here's the thing: were the Hawkeyes a playoff-caliber team in the first place? Their "best" win on the resume was probably a dramatic, last-second victory over an average at best Michigan team on Sept. 26 and the one marquee matchup Iowa had - a showdown with a top-five Ohio State team at Kinnick Stadium on Oct. 3 - ended in a lopsided Buckeye victory. 

Iowa easily could've lost to the Michigan had it not been for a miraculous sequence of plays that led to the game-winning touchdown, and the same can be said for the narrow escape over Iowa State on Sept. 12. 

But that was in the past. 

The Hawkeyes always play their best football at the end of the season under Ferentz, so that certainly helped fuel the playoff talk, but the reality is that this team had too many flaws to be considered a playoff-caliber team. 

Sure, the unpredictable results the 2026 season has produced so far opened the door for Iowa to navigate a quote-on-quote "comfortable" back end of the schedule to get in, but to be a playoff team, you have to play like it. 

One of the most popular sayings in the football world is this: "if you have two quarterbacks, you have none." The Hawkeyes have repeatedly expressed their confidence in both Hank Brown and Jeremy Hecklinski to win football games down this stretch run, but when it came time for them to actually make that happen, they failed in a big way at Minnesota on Saturday. 

The 15th-ranked Hawkeyes were heavily favored to keep Floyd of Rosedale in Iowa City, but they fell to the Gophers by three points on a game-winning field goal because of bad quarterback play. There's always going to be times when your quarterback isn't on, but it's how Iowa handled the situation that deserves criticism. 

Going with Hecklinski for this game made complete sense considering he was playing with a lot of confidence after a successful start in Seattle, but he clearly didn't have it in this one. But rather than let Hecklinski at least finish the first half and work out some of the kinks, Ferentz pulled him for Brown, who didn't fare much better and committed three turnovers (two interceptions, one fumble). 

Could Ferentz have opted to go back to Hecklinski to see if he had some magic in him, especially after he was groomed to be the No. 1 guy this weekend? He never considered it, but when your quarterback play is as bad as it was on Saturday, anything could be a positive. 

Inconsistency at the quarterback position was always going to cause some hiccups for Iowa down the stretch, but this team has other issues, too. The run game struggled again on Saturday, and the penalties continued to show up as well. The Hawkeyes were one of the most disciplined teams in the country last year, but they've already eclipsed last season's total by game seven. 

Is there time for Iowa to sort things out and salvage this season? Absolutely, but until that happens, this just isn't a playoff-caliber team. This loss to Minnesota proved it.