Iowa State Football: Report Card Against Texas

It's hard to find good things for the Iowa State Cyclones, who were beat down on the road by the Texas Longhorns, 33-7. They looked awful on both sides of the ball and have lost their second game away from Jack Trice Stadium. Since the upset over TCU, Iowa State has dropped four of its last five games.

Here are this week's grades on all three phases of the team as well as the coaching staff. One of them receives the dreaded failure ranking.

For the first half, the Cyclones did generally well. They put up a balanced attack with over 100 yards on the ground and from Steele Jantz's arm. The team would eventually finish with 277 total yards; they would only have five drives in the second half that added up to a total of 64 yards.

It's finally time to put some serious blame on the defense. The defense gave up 609 total yards and 389 yards in the air; it was almost their fourth consecutive game of giving up over 400 passing yards. The tackling was completely nonexistent, letting the running duo of Joe Bergeron and Johnathan Gray do whatever they wanted and two receivers rake in over 100 yards each.

Similar to the Kansas State game, the defense didn't do enough to put Iowa State back on the field giving up eight of 14 third-down conversions.

Kirby Van Der Kamp never deserves a bad grade, booting seven punts and pinning two of them inside the 20.

Edwin Arceo missed his lone field-goal attempt, but it was a 53-yard kick. At least he made the extra point.

For Texas to have just the 106th-ranked rushing defense, there should have been much more action from James White and Shontrelle Johnson. Both backs picked up 105 yards on 21 carries, just taking a third of the total snaps for Iowa State.