Now, the season begins for the Iowa football team.

Maine and Florida International? Those were scrimmages, games everyone had penciled in as wins. Iowa State? Sure, a challenge from a BCS conference school, but the game was at home, and, let’s face it, the Cyclones aren’t exactly USC (though with the new uniforms, it was a little confusing).

This weekend’s game at Pittsburgh will be the first real test for the Hawkeyes, the first real gauge of where they are at entering the Big Ten season.

“The first two games, we were definitely favored,” junior linebacker A.J. Edds said Tuesday. “We knew Florida International had some athletes but if we just played our defense, we’d be fine. Iowa State, the records kind of get thrown out the window, but it seems like the home team always wins. Pitt is a top 25 team. They’ve got great athletes. We knew this would be a big game for us, our first road game, our last nonconference game.

“Some of the stuff we did in the first three weeks against lesser offenses will be capitalized on when we play better offenses starting this week. If we give up some of the lanes we did against Maine, this Pitt team is going to run the ball down our throats.

“I think it’s a perfect test for us. We’re going out to an environment similar to a Big Ten environment and going against an offense that is similar to a Big Ten offense. It will be a tune-up, really, almost like we’re playing a 12th Big Ten team.”

That’s a long quote (too long for a conventional article, which is why it’s here in my blog), but it hits it right on the head.

This was a game that the preseason magazines were split on. The ones that had the Hawkeyes finishing 5-7 had it as a loss. The ones that had the Hawkeyes closer to 8-4 had it as a win.

A win would be huge.

It would be momentum coming back to Kinnick Stadium for the Big Ten opener against what has been an underwhelming Northwestern team. And that could lead to a 5-0 start to the season before what is expected to be a tough road trip to Michigan State, the start of a brutal stretch of games — at MSU, at Indiana, vs. Wisconsin, bye week, at Illinois and vs. Penn State — that could turn the season southward in a hurry.

While a loss wouldn’t be devastating or totally surprising, it would be a letdown, because the Hawkeyes, while dominant in those wins over Maine and FIU, weren’t hitting on all cylinders on offense against Iowa State. At times, it almost looked like the 2007 Iowa team on the field — dominant defense and an offense incapable of moving the ball consistently. If the offense comes out and struggles again Saturday, all we’ll really know about the unit is that it can move the ball and score points against really bad competition. Nothing more.

And with that tough stretch of games in the meat of the Big Ten schedule, the Hawkeyes need all the wins they can get here in the pre-conference season if they’re going to get back to a bowl game after missing out last year.

This is an important game. This is where the season really begins.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 16th, 2008 at 6:00 pm and is filed under Hawkeyes Football. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.