Iowa State's defense is taking the blame for Saturday's loss at Arizona, and that's the wrong target. After falling behind 25-3 in the first half, the Cyclones' defense held a Big 12 offense scoreless for the entire third quarter. Arizona punted on all three of its third-quarter possessions. That's a defense still competing deep into a game its own offense had already made nearly impossible to win.
The actual damage came in the final 6:41 of the fourth quarter, when Arizona scored twice. By then the Wildcats had already run multiple long, clock-draining drives, including a 13-play possession spanning nearly seven minutes and a 15-play drive before halftime. Arizona's offense had the ball, and the clock, all night. Iowa State's offense finished with 221 total yards and 14 first downs, and its 23-game streak of rushing for at least 100 yards got snapped cold: 52 yards on 31 carries. That defense had little rest and no margin for error, and its own offense's failure to sustain anything is what wore it down before it finally cracked late, against fresh legs and Arizona's backup quarterback closing it out.
That brings up the quarterback switch everyone wants to blame instead. Jimmy Rogers pulled Jaylen Raynor at halftime for Connor Moberly. He called it a search for "a spark," and said it doesn't change how he views Raynor as a leader or what he's capable of. Judge the move by what happened next: Raynor was 8-of-10 for 106 yards before the switch. Moberly came in and went 7-of-17 for 63, and Iowa State didn't cross midfield once in the entire second half. If you bench a quarterback for a spark and the offense gets measurably worse, you've just relocated the problem and called it a decision.
The people saying Raynor didn't deserve to sit have the stat line on their side. Efficiency doesn't get much cleaner than 80 percent completion with no damage done. The counter is that a few completions in clean pockets don't prove the second half goes differently with him still in. That doesn't change whether the switch worked. It didn't. Nobody has even named a starter yet for No. 24 Oklahoma State. The competition is still open. Moberly hasn't earned the job.
So point the finger where it belongs. Sullivan Schlimgen put together one of the best individual defensive performances of Iowa State's season: 15 tackles, a sack and two tackles for loss, the first Iowa State player since Beau Freyler in 2023 to hit 15 tackles in a game. That's a guy playing like his defense never gave up. If Iowa State loses to Oklahoma State next week too, the review shouldn't start with the defensive coordinator. It should start with Jimmy Rogers, who had a quarterback completing 80 percent of his passes and benched him anyway, then watched the backup offense fail to reach midfield for a half while his own defense ran out of gas trying to cover for it.
