Iowa State’s rushing attack failed to reach 100 yards in any of its five-straight Big 12 losses coming into Saturday’s game.
However, when the unit was able to perform as it did in Saturday’s 31-14 win for the Cyclones, it gave the home team a boost it hadn’t seen since Iowa City.
“I don’t know if it was opening the playbook as much as I thought we executed. I thought that was one thing that was really rewarding to see the growth that internally we have felt we were close to becoming.”
Iowa State’s Cartevious Norton and Deon Silas combined to rush for 152 yards on the day. Jaylin Noel took a reverse for another 27 yards down the field and Jirehl Brock added 13 on the ground before an injury took him out of the game.
Aside from the injury to Brock, it served as a reminder for how quickly this offense can strike – even if fans hadn’t seen that in a month.
Iowa State got bailed out by a roughing-the-kicker penalty on the second play of the fourth quarter which turned a failed drive into a new chance, and this time it took advantage.
In the fourth quarter, Iowa State made a trip to the end zone on three-straight drives.
Deon Silas broke away for a 38-yard rush on the first drive, which sparked the offense to an extent. It was the longest rush Iowa State has had in conference play this year.
Xavier Hutchinson, who set the program’s single-season record for receptions Saturday, found the end zone and Iowa State’s defense forced a 3-and-out.
Rinse and repeat on the second drive, for Silas, as he used a 33-yard run to put Iowa State into the red zone.
Norton was there a few plays later to run it in for the touchdown. It was his first score in a Cyclone uniform and his second came on the ensuing drive – the one that put the game out of reach for the Mountaineers with “31-7” lighting up the scoreboard.
“The running game was huge today,” quarterback Hunter Dekkers said. “Our run-game was big time. I think we had something like 170 yards today. I thought the young guys did a really good job of running today. They had a couple of huge, big runs that were big for our offense. It really sparked us.”
Dekkers finished the game with a 24-36 mark through the air, finishing with 219 yards, two touchdowns and zero interceptions.
The Iowa State quarterback was sacked three times during the game, but avoided turning the ball over.
It’s no secret that the offense in the form it was in during the losing streak is not going to set the world on fire.
However, the importance of playing a largely mistake-free game on the day where the rushing attack came to life might be the biggest key to victory.
“Some of the growth and development in some areas that needed to grow and develop started to really show forward,” Campbell said. “I thought the execution in all phases of the game were really efficient and those are things I felt like we were really close to doing.”
There’s a case that with a game like Iowa State played Saturday could have flipped the result of any one-possession game this season.
I won’t make that case here – as linebacker Colby Reeder said after the game, “We’ve not arrived or anything. We just played a really good football game.”
That’s just what it needed to do, though.
Just wait and see if this group, which was already tasked with working together in the wake of losses, can build further off of this win.
Just see if it performs in all three phases next week.
“We just needed to get over the hump of doing that with consistency for 60 minutes,” Campbell said. “That was the best we have done in all three phases.”
