IOWA CITY — The 69,250 fans at sold-out Kinnick Stadium must’ve felt like they had been taken back to the 2023 season, back when it felt like the best hope for Iowa football to score was on special teams or defense.
A jarring three-point second-half deficit and then a listless three-and-out midway through the third quarter Nov. 22 against Michigan State drew resounding boos.
And the boos were more than justified.
The Hawkeyes’ offense was stinking up the joint, with no signs of life.
And the defense had started to crack, its early-game fuel tank starting to run low.
A three-point deficit quickly became 10, and suddenly Iowa was facing the real possibility of losing as a 17-point home favorite to an opponent that had lost eight straight Big Ten Conference games.
And yet … Iowa found a way.
Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz stuck with Gronowski through three quarters of struggles and was rewarded with the South Dakota State transfer’s second double-deficit comeback of the season. The Hawkeyes inexplicably walked off with a 20-17 win over Michigan State, scoring 13 fourth-quarter points in a furious finish.
“Our players stayed the course. They didn’t flinch,” Ferentz said. “They kept pushing and playing and encouraging each other. Then they continued to compete, which is the most important thing, and the coaches kept coaching.
“It’s a 60-minute thing. If you quit, you have no chance. Certainly our players did a great job there. Really proud of them and very happy for them because we’ve had some tough losses.”
Reece Vander Zee’s unbelievable 29-yard catch set up Drew Stevens’ 44-yard field goal as time expired, an incredible finish as Iowa snatched an improbable victory that was certainly entrenched in the jaws of defeat.
Vander Zee’s grab was reminiscent of the way that Oregon’s Malik Benson broke Iowa hearts two weekends earlier at Kinnick Stadium, his 24-yard catch setting up the Ducks’ walk-off field goal in an 18-16 final. This time, it was Vander Zee on the receiving end along the visitor’s sideline. Gronowski’s throw brought Iowa from its own 46 to Michigan State’s 25 with 15 seconds to go.
“They hadn’t shown press (coverage) all game, and then they pressed on that one,” Vander Zee said. “I kind of had an idea the ball would be coming my way. You trust Mark, you trust he’s going to put it on me and make a play for the team.”
After a handoff to Kamari Moulton lost a yard, Stevens lined up in the same area of the field where he had missed a 53-yarder to end the first half. This time, his kick was pure, through the north end zone uprights.
Iowa, which has lost four close games to ranked opponents, this time was on the winning end of a nail-biter.
Stevens had no doubt he would make the final kick, his last ever in Kinnick Stadium.
“I’ve hit a few other game-winners since being here,” said Stevens, who walked off a 13-10 win over Nebraska last year on senior day. “So, I mean, you get used to moments eventually.
“I almost knew there’s absolutely zero chance this is not going through the uprights. There’s just no way.”
The Hawkeyes seemed fortunate to even tie the score and have a chance at Stevens’ winning points.
Kaden Wetjen’s 40-yard punt return exemplified his electric day, giving Iowa the ball at Michigan State’s 42, down seven, with 2:37 to play.
Gronowski rushed 16 yards on a scramble, and Moulton rushed for 12 to set up Gronowski’s best throw of the day, a 13-yard fade pass to Jacob Gill for a tying touchdown with 1:29 to play, which was probably a surprise to the fans who had already gone to the exits.
Then the Iowa defense got an enormous third-down stop, and Iowa got the ball back on its own 21 with 41 seconds left. The defense’s fourth-quarter lockdown — holding Michigan State to 28 yards on 13 snaps — deserves credit in this comeback, too.
“Coach (Phil) Parker says it all the time, you’ve got to want the pressure,” defensive back Koen Entringer said. “You’ve got to like when pressure’s on you. And I’m happy we were able to finish the job.”
This win erased what could have been a senior-day loss that would’ve gone down in Ferentz-era infamy with a 2007 loss to Western Michigan and 2017 versus Purdue.
But Gronowski and the Hawkeyes had other ideas.
“When it gets to that fourth quarter, it’s kind of do-or-die time,” Gronowski said. “You know, your backs are against the wall. It’s whether you’re going to keep taking them or keep fighting back.”
Now they head to Nebraska on Black Friday with a 7-4 record, 5-3 in Big Ten play. Michigan State dropped to 3-8, 0-8. Nebraska, by the way, got throttled by Penn State, 37-10, on Saturday to fall to 7-4, 4-4.
Mark Gronowski struggles, thrills in home finale for Hawkeyes
Gronowski got some of the biggest pregame cheers in the senior-day ceremony, a signal for the positive direction in which he had helped take the offense this season.
But by the middle of the third quarter, it was a justifiable question whether he should stay in the game or not.
Gronowski committed two costly turnovers and had 30 passing yards through three quarters. In the first quarter, after Iowa started a possession at Michigan State’s 44, Gronowski threw an ill-fated deep ball into double coverage that was intercepted at the Iowa 6-yard line by Malik Spencer.
Then in the third quarter, with Iowa still leading 7-3 despite the offense’s woes, Gronowski made a foolish play in trying to shovel a third-and-long pass forward to Xavier Williams. But before he released the pass, it was jostled free for a fumble and Michigan State recovery at Iowa’s 38 with 10:11 remaining in the third quarter.
That looked like a rookie play, not a play made by someone in his 66th career college start with 55 career wins. Gronowski was just not himself in this game, and Iowa was paying the price.
Michigan State capitalized with a Chrishon McCray 45-yard touchdown pass as he beat the coverage of Deshaun Lee — who had taken over Iowa’s No. 1 cornerback role from an injured TJ Hall — for a 10-7 Spartans lead. (Entringer, in a postgame interview, took the blame himself, saying he should have been deeper in Iowa’s cover-2 defense.)
Down 17-7, Gronowski got the ball three times with a chance to bring Iowa back as he did against Penn State from two scores down in a 25-24 win on Oct. 18. But in three straight drives, Iowa went field goal, punt and fourth-down incompletion. Gronowski did take Iowa into the red zone after completions of 17 yards to Vander Zee and 33 yards to Sam Phillips but his third-and-goal pass went off the goalposts cross-bar.
That seemed symbolic for the clunker of a day that Gronowski was experiencing.
But that’s why they play 60 minutes. Gronowski’s fourth-quarter line: 6-for-10 for 117 yards and two clutch drives in the final moments. Gronowski’s 19-yarder to DJ Vonnahme kicked off the final-gasp drive on which it would’ve been justified if Ferentz just opted for overtime.
Instead, Gronowski improved to 56-10 as a college starter and walked out of Kinnick Stadium as a hero on senior day. He finished 12-for-22 for 147 yards and rushed 11 times for 57 yards … but for the first time this season, he didn’t score a touchdown himself.
“We didn’t play great in the first three quarters. … But you’ve got to continue to stay in the present moment the entire time,” Gronowski said. “No matter what happened in the past. You can’t think about the future. You’ve got to stay with your process.
“We keep telling our guys, one play at a time, stay in the present moment, and eventually it’ll go through. And that’s what happened in the fourth quarter. We just continued to go one play at a time, go 1-0 on each play and then we just finished.”
Michigan State continues to pay for punting to Iowa
For the third straight trip to Iowa City under a third different coach, the Spartans were burned by an electric Hawkeye punt returner.
Wetjen, who earlier in the week told Iowa reporters he expected to get some opportunities in the punt-return game, put together one of the most skillful returns of his impressive special-teams career late in the first quarter.
Wetjen caught the Ryan Eckley punt at his own 38 with two Spartans defenders within three yards of him. He took one step right, then deftly split the pair. He quickly evaded a third Spartan at the 43 and found a crease. The 5-foot-9 speedster and former junior-college walk-on from Williamsburg found open space from there, but still needed to make one final move to get to the end zone. He eluded the punter, then warded off one final diving Spartan near the 15-yard line before trotting into the south end zone for a 62-yard touchdown.
The runback gave Iowa a 7-0 lead with 3:38 left in the first quarter and broke Tim Dwight’s program record of five career return touchdowns. That was No. 6 for Wetjen, all in the past two seasons, including four this year. He previously had a kick-return touchdown at Rutgers and punt-return scores inside Kinnick Stadium against UMass and Minnesota.
Wetjen said Dwight texted him before the game and told him: “Go break it.”
“I know he’s proud of me,” Wetjen said. “It’s just been awesome to have a guy like that behind you.”
Wetjen had 107 punt-return yards in the first half alone, having galloped 45 yards on his first attempt. By comparison, Iowa had 101 yards of total offense in the first 30 minutes.
Wetjen’s runbacks had to be scarring for the Spartans, who saw Charlie Jones run back a 2020 punt for a 54-yard touchdown during a 49-7 Iowa rout. Then of course in 2023, we all remember the heroics of Cooper DeJean, whose 70-yard return in the final minutes snapped a 16-16 tie and boosted the Hawkeyes to a 26-16 win.
Finishing up on Wetjen, in a smart and amusing play, Michigan State did find a way to take Wetjen out of the picture by having quarterback Alessio Milivojevic drop back and punt on fourth-and-8 from Iowa’s 39. The kick only went for 25 yards, but what was much better for Michigan State than a Wetjen touchdown.
Milivojevic did it again on fourth-and-1 early in the third quarter, this time dropping back and booming one over Iowa’s defense for a 49-yard kick with no return.
But then Wetjen struck again, uncorking an impressive 40-yard return to give Iowa the ball (and a chance) with 2:37 to go at Michigan State’s 42, down 17-10. That led to the tying touchdown toss to Gill.
No doubt, Wetjen was the Hawkeyes’ MVP on this senior night with an unforgettable performance.
“It just shows you what kind of team we are and the response we have,” Wetjen said. “And I had complete faith that this team would do the right things this week and put it all together to win, and that’s what we did tonight.”
Karson Sharar delivers for Iowa’s defense on senior night
For all the attention Iowa’s offense gets in these comebacks, the defense deserves a shout-out.
And specifically, weak-side linebacker Karson Sharar deserves to be proud of his best game as a Hawkeye. Even he agreed with that assessment afterward.
Sharar was a menace with three first-half tackles for loss, including an 11-yard sack of Milivojevic.
The Iowa Falls native waited four years for his opportunity. He’s been gradually getting better each week, and this game was his finest work.
“To begin the year, I was really nervous, just scared of making mistakes,” Sharar said. “Just continuing to grow throughout the season and each game and learning from my mistakes.”
Ferentz had watched Sharar wait and learn behind Seth Benson and Nick Jackson for four years. He needed every bit of Sharar’s decisiveness to help get the Hawkeyes to the finish line Saturday.
“I told the NFL guys, this guy is an NFL player, in my opinion,” Ferentz said. “But he wasn’t playing (at that level) yet, because he hadn’t played enough to really see things and hit it.
“That’s the beauty of experience. Once you get on the field and you’re doing it at game speed, you just start to kind of know when to go and how to go. I think that’s what we saw tonight. He’s playing with some confidence now. Boy, it’s fun to watch him play.”
Why Kirk Ferentz was upset in the first half
Iowa’s sideline, including Kirk Ferentz, was livid late in the second quarter. The game hadn’t been going well, but on top of that Michigan State ran what looked like an illegal play to generate a first-and-goal at Iowa’s 5.
Ferentz angrily called timeout and spent much of the 3-minute break “explaining” to officials that Michael Masuna was moving forward at the time of the snap before being the recipient of a 20-yard catch behind Iowa’s defense. Masuna clearly was moving forward, which should’ve been a five-yard penalty and no play, but officials missed it.
The break wound up being a needed thing for a Hawkeyes defense that had been on the field far too long with the offense stuck in 2023. The break also allowed Zach Lutmer to return from an injury he sustained earlier in the drive.
Iowa forced two no-chance incompletions sandwiched around a 4-yard tackle-for-loss by Sharar, to force a short field goal and preserve Iowa’s lead at 7-3.
The way things devolved early in the third quarter, even the usually steady Ferentz started to get worried about his team’s chances.
“Quite frankly, there’s a couple things that happened right at the end of the first half and into the third quarter where I started getting concerned,” Ferentz said, “in terms of you miss opportunities, leaving stuff out there, and then are you going to be able to make that up?”
Turns out, Iowa did make it up on the scoreboard. Barely. But just in time.
“We were talking about it on the sideline (that) we’re not losing this game,” safety Xavier Nwankpa said. “Like, there’s no way. We’re coming out with a W, and at the end of the day we did.”
Hawkeyes columnist Chad Leistikow has served for 31 years with The Des Moines Register and USA TODAY Sports Network. Chad is the 2023 INA Iowa Sports Columnist of the Year and NSMA Co-Sportswriter of the Year in Iowa. Join Chad’s text-message group at HawkCentral.com/HawkeyesTexts. Follow @ChadLeistikow on X.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Leistikow’s thoughts on Iowa football’s comeback win vs Michigan State
Reporting by Chad Leistikow, Des Moines Register / Des Moines Register
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
