IOWA CITY — You’ve heard the sports phrase “They don’t ask how, they ask how many.”
Yes, go ahead and ask how many. Do not ask how. Not when it comes to Iowa’s 20-17 win over Michigan State in football Saturday at Kinnick Stadium.
Just get the final score, and move along. Enjoy the guaranteed winning season, exhale with relief over the Seniors Day ignominy that barely was dodged, look forward to the Black Friday game at Nebraska.
Iowa rallied from a 17-7 hole at the start of the fourth quarter and vanquished an MSU team that came here 0-7 in the Big Ten and went home 0-8. Barely.
Somebody buy Kaden Wetjen a bottle of Dom Pérignon. Somebody let Drew Stevens have a swig of it for his last-second 44-yard field goal. Somebody let Iowa’s defenders have pulls for forcing two three-and-outs in the game’s final 3:45, which began with the Hawkeyes down 17-10.
But start with Wetjen. In his last game at Kinnick, he saved his team’s bacon rather than letting it go out with egg on its face. His 40-yard punt return — his third return of at least 40 yards, including one that was his team’s only score for the first 56 minutes — got Iowa to the MSU 42 with 2:37 left while trailing 17-10.
Iowa’s offense, moribund to that point, went 42 yards in five plays and did what had looked highly unlikely throughout the game by completing a 13-yard touchdown pass. The game was tied with 1:29 left.
The Spartans were stopped, punted to Iowa’s 21, and voila! Iowa suddenly revealed a passing game. Nineteen yards, 6 yards, 29 yards, and field goal territory. Stevens, who has been so productive in his career here, danced around and off the Kinnick field for the last time after his walk-off kick.
It wouldn’t be Iowa this season, though, if it didn’t push a game to the final seconds. Unlike games against Iowa State and Indiana and Oregon, though, the Hawkeyes had the right stuff in the last minute.
As for Wetjen, just declare him the Wizard of Williamsburg and be done with it.
Michigan State came here with the nation’s leader in punting average, Ryan Eckley. If Eckley wants to take that craft to the NFL, he has to learn to do what Tory Taylor mastered at Iowa. Don’t let punts get returned, especially if the player at the other end of the punt already had five returns for touchdowns in his career.
Wetjen had a 45-yard punt return as a mere first-quarter appetizer after a 58-yard smash by Eckley in which the punter had to make the tackle.
That should have been a learning tool for MSU’s punt team. The Spartans’ special teams coach should have gotten out a hammer and lightly tapped his guys’ helmets to remind them not to kick to Wetjen again.
The Spartans intercepted Iowa’s first pass of the subsequent Iowa possession, but quickly faced a three-and-out at their 14. So Eckley again punted to Wetjen, he again made MSU non-tacklers look silly, and went 62 yards for the lone touchdown of the half by either club.
The lightning bolt again got the best of the thunderfoot.
Wetjen will be the Big Ten’s Return Specialist of the Year for a second time and ought to be a first-team All-America without the voters agonizing about their choice.
The guy has three punt returns for touchdowns in 11 games this season, and has returned a kickoff for a score just for a little variety. That isn’t just cray-cray, it’s cray-cray-cray-cray.
It also kept Iowa from having zero points in the first half against a club that 14th in the Big Ten in total defense before this game.
That offense remained comatose in the third quarter and through much of the fourth. But quarterback Mark Gronowski made the most important plays he faced, and he and his fellow seniors can forever look back at their last home game as something with a very happy ending.
Iowa scored the same number of points in the last 89 seconds as in the first 58 minutes. And, 10 + 10 = victory.
Don’t ask how. The Hawkeyes themselves probably don’t know, but they do know this: How many.
