Theory: Iowa's defense contributes to their offense being so bad

Harbaugh would say "iron sharpens iron" 

It could also be that they lack talent, coaching, and schematic advantage.

Iowa's defence is so good because they get lots of practice. 

I would uber from the airport but order a car service at an arranged location for after the game.

I don't know how these things work, but I imagine their 1s don't always go against their 1s ...

I've thought about this, too.

There are way more teams that have offenses at the extreme range of good but defense that isn't great (and vice versa in the case of Iowa) than with both extreme offense and extreme defense. Of course you would expect way more of that than both are great.

Is there a linkage?  A resource thing? That to have an offense doing such takes more of your team's resources, leaving less to develop the defense.  Or, like the OP is wondering, that it is a practice thing -- the defense spends way more time seeing the weird stuff the extreme offense is doing, and thus isn't as well practiced in what it will get from opponents.

If it's a resource or practice issue, P(defense great | offense great) would be lower than P(defense great | offense not great).  Maybe it goes the other way though, P(defense great | offense great) is greater than P(defense great | offense not great), because a great offense means your team has more resources, better recruiting, better stressing of your defense, etc.

This makes sense. If the defense is so good and the offensive is bad, then the positive feedback is so sparse that the offensive doesn't know which incremental changes will help it get better. 

In AlphaZero https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaZero they developed an unbeatable chess program by having two AIs of similar level practice against each other and improve simultaneously for this reason. If the two sides are too imbalanced, then the weaker side has no clue how to improve because every one of its actions lead to no gain.

Perhaps it is more psycho-emotional: the offense knows the defense is great enough to bail them out and so the offense becomes entirely dependent on the defense and fails to improve. Then the defense realizes how important it is that they rescue the offense and thus works harder to save the team and therefore becomes even better.

Maybe the Iowa offense just needs a good 12-step program to overcome their dependency.

Sick and can't sleep so this seems like a good thing to talk about.

There is some logic in that thought but it's much lower on the list than a few other things, in my opinion. I've mentioned before how some things are just common knowledge among programs and I think a major issue at Iowa lately is the (seeming) lack of steroids. It's been a bit of a shock hearing Iowa fans I know very recently go from kind, decent folk to talk football with to angrily railing about Michigan being cheaters. Why? Because it was a poorly kept secret across the sport that Iowa was near the top when it came to steroid use. It wasn't a few guys sneaking it on the side but an all-but-sanctioned activity within their football program. Really, go back and look at Iowa just a decade ago. Shoot, not even that long ago. 

Two major events happened in their program to (seemingly) get them to cut back on that use and I'm not even referring to the one where a bunch of players starting pissing brown sludge that many attributed to steroids. Sincerely, if it wasn't Iowa but any blue blood program it would have been a major story. Iowa and MSU under Dantonio were by far the biggest steroid users in the Big Ten for a long stretch there. There is a reason many Iowa OL would smaller, slower and weaker in The NFL than college. There was a reason Bullough went from an All-American caliber LB at MSU only to drop 30lbs, lose .4 seconds on his 40 yard dash and see his max bench fall off a cliff in the few month between his last game and the combine. 

Their racist S&C coach kind of falls into the above but not totally. Their entire department is much worse without him and a few that left around thr same time. It's not awful but it's worse, leading to worse performance (even in those not clearly juicing).

Finally, it cannot be overstated how bad Brian Ferentz is at the job of leading the entire offense. Oddly, he has a solid track record with certain positions at his young age (TE, OL) but when tasked with leading the entire offense he proved to be terrible and at no point was his job in jeopardy. He was allowed to keep sucking while the talent coming in kept getting worse, they weren't getting coached-up, their S&C fell off a bit and it all began to compound upon itself. In my view, anyway.

There was a long time where Iowa wasn't awful on offense. The very early Ferentz teams almost always had a great OL and a dynamic player or 3. They were also a JuCo destination in those very early years so they'd fill holes in their recruiting classes quite well. They ran that stretch zone to near perfection (the fad at the time) and it was hard to defend that and the bootleg off of the stretch zone they used as a basis of their offense for many years. They then did a decent job of morphing into a bit more open concepts to suit whatever their strengths were from year to year. We have Drew Tate? Ok, we'll show more spread passing concepts this year. We have 3 NFL OL and a solid duo of HBs? Get ready for power and stretch zone all day. Etc. They made it work. 

So when you try to figure out what happened I think you have to go back to the last time they were vaguely dangerous and see what changed. The things I listed above stand out to me but that's just my take. 

For this to be true you'd be saying their scout team which is likely 3rd stringers and walk ons are so good that they're kicking the first team offense's ass in practice, which is highly unlikely. If anything if the scout team defense is pretty good it's even more puzzling why the offense is so bad - they should be able to pick out the good plays (or least bad plays) and run them. An ineffective scout team has the opposite effect, sometimes through no fault of their own. The best example of this is attempting to have the scout team run a triple option offense. None of the players or coaches are probably that familiar with it so the defense likely dominates more than usual in practice. Then you face the service academy and you get gashed.

Anyways you're likely not even wasting the 2nd team D on this, they're getting about 25% of the snaps against the scout O and watching the first team on their own reps. The Iowa offense is likely going against freshmen and walk ons on Scout D and probably looking ok.

Brian Ferentz is not very good good at his job relative to most other offensive college football coaches. That's not the same as being a complete moron.

Ever heard of scout team? 

Also what about when the offense plays the #2s on defense? 1 v 2 / 2 v 1 sessions?

No team only practices 1 v 1 with the offense trying to run their offense and the defense trying to run their defense.

This logic would presumably mean spread offenses would destroy Iowa's defense because they never see it in practice. 

So instead of the Broyles Award Kirk should have fired Phil Parker? Would have made Xmas more fun,

No one, no team, is too smart, too strong, too good to succeed.  Find drills that help you get better.  Hell, run the any drill or the 2-minute drill without the defense on the field until you puke.  Practice CATCHING the ball.

Iowa should run an academy offense. 

Iowa has an elite defense, better than most of the defenses the Iowa offense goes on to face.  If anything, going up against that D in practice should have them well prepared for games.  

They're probably just poorly coached.

While I agree that there’s definitely symbiotic relationship between offense and defense, I don’t think it explains Iowa’s deal. 
 

Schematically, their offense is quite similar to ours in that it’s highly contingent on execution and largely devoid of creativity. The key differences over the last few years are1) They’ve failed to recruit and develop a competent game manager QB, and 2) they’ve failed massively in the execution department.
 

It’s fair to pin most of the blame on the o-line coaches because again, like us, their philosophy is to win games in the trenches. Conversely from Iowa, our o-line has only gotten stronger as the d-line has emerged as the tip of our team’s spear. So no - it doesn’t feel inevitable that their offense should suck so bad because their defense is all world.

It doesn't *really* work that way. 

To some degree, it IS hard to execute your concepts if they keep getting blown up. Like, say you are trying to work on a 7 step drop, but you can't because your OL is so bad that it keeps getting blown up in 11 v 11 periods, and your QB never has time to throw and work on the timing

But in reality, offenses practice on air a lot of the time, or in 7 v 7. And mostly they go against a scout team

Iowa's two main issues are skill and scheme. Their scheme is horrendous. It doesn't get receivers open, it is predictable and unimaginative. There's very little misdirection. There's very little attempt to build in constraints to their main plays.

And their talent is abysmal. For example, their WRs are maybe the worst I have ever seen at a P5 level. They rarely get open, and they have a 15-20% drop rate. Literally. That's just insane. 

Their QB play is horrendous. They don't see the field well. Even when clean in the pocket they have been very inaccurate. 

They used to scrape by with good OL and TE play, and competent if workmanlike QB play. Now all they have left is TEs and average RBs, but the OL and QB play hold back anything else, and even if they do by some miracle get open WRs, they drop it way too much

I think it's largely incompetent coaching. Brian Ferentz really is just that bad. Did you know he was the QB coach for the last couple years? The position coaches probably make no sense.

The same with the USC defense. Riley finally fired his longtime DC. I bet USC gets magically better on defense next year...especially going against Big Ten offenses.

I don’t want to believe it but then I’m old enough to remember Rich Rods Offense not helping the Defensive side of the ball at all. It was Pac 12/Big 12 football before it was

OP's theory is that to get a better offense, you need to practice against a worse defense?  This is incredibly stupid.

To answer your question, Iowa's offense is as bad as it is because they lack talent in certain critical positions and creativity in play calling to make up for that lack of talent. 

In most cases, the scout team runs the other teams plays so the offense can recognize the formations, coverages blitzes and stunts. Since the scout team is likely not as good as the first team defense, I'm sure the offense has some wins in practice. With that being said, I'm sure that they also take their fair share of losses, since the scout team knows the offense's plays. Obviously it can be speculated that taking losses in practice affects their psyche, but if the offense let's that affect their confidence, they're in the wrong sport!

To answer your question, Iowa's offense is as bad as it is because they lack talent in certain critical positions and creativity in play calling to make up for that lack of talent. 

In most cases, the scout team runs the other teams plays so the offense can recognize the formations, coverages blitzes and stunts. Since the scout team is likely not as good as the first team defense, I'm sure the offense has some wins in practice. With that being said, I'm sure that they also take their fair share of losses, since the scout team knows the offense's plays. Obviously it can be speculated that taking losses in practice affects their psyche, but if the offense let's that affect their confidence, they're in the wrong sport!

So this is why Ohio State’s defense was better this year?  Their offense regressed, so the defense had more success in practice and was more confident?  Or maybe it was better coaching and not taking absurd chances ghat made a difference?  If Iowa hires a decent OC next year, I’d wager their offense improves considerably, even if the defense remains superior.

Others have pointed out already that a scout team of 3rd and 4th stringers typically are the ones facing the starting defense so I won't go into that. Still others lay the blame squarely at the feet of the coaching staff.

The OP's notion that the very strong excellent defense has affected the development of the Iowa offense is a good observation but perhaps not for the precise reason: this concept of complementary football.

That term was bandied about a lot during the season for Iowa, that their stout defense, and excellent special teams needed a complementary offense and didn't need a dynamic aggressive offense. Rather the team needed a safe offense that didn't make turnovers.

It maybe this philosophical approach rather than being physically pounded down in practice that is the root of the problems. An ideal offense for this Iowa offense is a safe ball control running offense with short passing - such an offense keeps the ball for bursts of 5-7 plays and allows the defense to stay fresh. It uses up the clock to shorten the game - and usually doesn't turn the ball over. The bulk of their playbook seen in the past three games seem to fit this description.

We've seen that such an approach, however, can have a major problem when it is used to excuse shortcomings in recruiting, development and preparation. "It is ok not to have a decent QB because we are playing complementary football - so long as he doesn't turn the ball over", "It is ok not to have an offense that can create chunk plays - because we are playing complementary football. We'll win the position battle with our great punter". The team had a NFL caliber wideout in Charlie Jones (who transferred out to become Chuck Sizzle at Purdue) - why wasn't he used more?

The weak Big Ten west just made the situation worse because the Hawkeye record on paper looks good and the excuses just pile up "we play complementary football that is successful - look at our record!"

So, yes, the great Iowa defense did influence the whole of the Hawkeye team but mostly it served as a way of excusing failures in recruiting, development and preparation on the offense.