West Virginia vs. Iowa State football: Five takeaways from loss to Mountaineers

Iowa State still can’t win even when they don’t have a slow start, the defense is worse than abysmal, and box scores don’t tell us the truth in the five things we learned in another Cyclones loss against West Virginia.

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1. Avoiding a slow start doesn’t mean success.

Iowa State was able to actually take a lead in the first quarter instead of getting down by two or more touchdowns, but it didn’t matter. The Cyclones blew a 21-7 lead and West Virginia went on a 30-3 run to end the game.

2. Iowa State clearly only thrives on momentum.

This means that Paul Rhoads should gamble on every opportunity. Punting the ball on fourth and short late in the first half was a bad move. It could have jumpstarted the offense again and possibly led to a better third quarter.

3. The Cyclones will give up over 6,000 yards of offense this season.

Want the biggest knock on Paul Rhoads’ tenure at Iowa State? Take away 2010, and his squads have given up over 5,400 yards of offense in each season. This year is destined to be his worse, as TCU needs just 375 yards of total offense for the ISU defense to give up over 6,000 yards.

4. Wally Burnham is out.

If Rhoads’ head doesn’t roll at the end of the year, then the defensive coordinator will. Again, they will definitely give up over 6,000 yards of offense, and that could equally be divided up as over 3,000 yards on rush and pass defense depending on what TCU does on Saturday. That defense can’t stop a thing.

5. Box scores lie to us.

On the official box score, it ells us that the total attendance for the game was 50,059. Right. I wasn’t even at the game and just by looking at the broadcast’s minimal shots at the stadium crowd, there was nowhere near that number with the corners of the top level and nearly the entire student section empty.

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