Four games into the 2023 football season, Iowa is a team at a crossroads. The Hawkeyes’ 31-0 loss to Penn State last week, one of the program’s worst defeats of the Kirk Ferentz era, proved that Iowa is far from being able to compete with the best of the Big Ten East. With pessimism swirling and Iowa once again making headlines for all the wrong reasons, it is up to the Hawkeyes to determine whether they will let their loss to Penn State snowball or if they can bounce back to save their season.
Remarkably, Iowa will find an opponent in a far worse situation than they are in Michigan State.