Expectations, boy can they bite you in the rear.
After the bowl win against Minnesota, I really thought we'd turned a corner. That we'd come into the fall with energy and poise and win some games. After the win over Northern Illinois I thought some good things were coming our way. After the last two weeks, it's a bit hard to face reality.
Everyone's heard the phrase that Golf is a mental game. That you win or lose in your own head. That's absolutely true, but the dirty little secret about life is that everything is a mental game. From dating, to work and, yes, even to football. The last two weeks I've seen no fire, no determination in our players. We've gone out onto the field like we're walking down main street window shopping. Maintaining your cool is one thing, but you need some kind of drive or there's no point in even playing the game.
I've heard a lot of people calling for Arnaud's head. After all, they say, if he was a better quarterback we wouldn't have lost to Kansas State. While there's an argument for Arnaud having screwed up in the final minutes of the KSU game, there's significantly more reasons for why we lost than to pin it entirely on him. Our defense, for instance. The run defense is as bad as I've ever seen it. It's brutal to say and even more brutal to hear, but we can't stop the run. And if you can't stop the run, your DB's are going to have a heck of a time defending the pass. Bottom line, Wally Burnham's defense has taken a significant step backward this year.
David Ubben, of ESPN, and even Paul Rhoads have said that the Cyclones might be a better team this year but have a worse record. I'm starting to see the worse record, but I've yet to see the better team. I'm curious why the offense hasn't been giving more touches to Alexander Robinson, he was all but benched the 2nd half of the KSU game and had limited playing time against Iowa. Why rely so heavily on an Arnaud who doesn't seem as improved as we were led to believe? I'm not a football coach, just a fan, but I just don't understand the big picture. ISU getting embarrassed two weeks in a row on national television isn't exactly helping our image. As far as I know, this weeks game against UNI isn't televised, and I haven't heard anything about Texas Tech or Utah. Let's hope for a good performance with what's sure to be a sell-out crowd at Jack Trice. The team needs some confidence and some drive.
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