UNI Football Review

With the hard loss from Iowa State (31-7). Iowa State pretty much destroyed UNI. There just isn’t a good way to put it. Iowa State really came out in the second half and just did work. What hurt both teams the most was the penalties, UNI had ten penalties and Iowa State had 5 penalties. Throughout the game you can see each team having similar amount of total yards (UNI 302 and ISU 310.) Bailey rushing for a career high 22 carries and 85 yards, followed by Tryvis Smith’s 7 carries for 37 yards. Things just weren’t gelling for UNI.

Northern Iowa quickly bounced back to beat Eastern Washington. Looking over the game stats, you see Northern Iowa did not dominate the game so much. While passing Eastern Washington had 526 yards of total passing compared to UNI’s 194 yards in the air. When you look at the total offence you want to say Eastern Washington (552 yards) won the game and UNI lost (460yards). That’s the beauty of football, EWU beat them in everything, but rushing yards. UNI didn’t just have 15, 20, or even 30 more rushing yards than EWU. No they had over 240 more rushing yards. That just shows how dominant their running game was and still is.

Rushing yards was a whole different story for UNI. Eastern Washington had 26 total yards, not in the first half. No, in the entire game. I’m not going to sugar coat this, but that was piss poor pathetic. EWU just couldn’t find the right combination to run the ball, they were having more luck in the air than anything else. For UNI the longest run came from their backup quarterback Aaron Bailey with a 41 yard run. Again, Bailey also had 19 carries for 134 yards which is very surprising for a quarterback of his size.

Now for a quick Recap, UNI got a beat down from Iowa State, They quickly bounced back to beat EWU. UNI needs to start off strong. From what we saw in the Iowa State game, UNI had a terrible start. They have all the tools needed all they need to do is execute. What they need now is a steady passing game and a heavy run game to beat this Cal Poly team. Northern Iowa will be a tough team to beat in the Playoffs.