Even with football guy truisms it doesn't make sense. "Trust your defense." What, trust your defense to hold onto a 5 point with 40 seconds left but not a 9 point lead with two minutes left?
I've also never understood why you're not supposed to trust your offense. How about in that scenario "trust your offense to gain 3 yards without turning the ball over"?
Something that nobody has talked about that I wonder if it didn't affect them that there was a similar Minnesota game from 2015. Kirk has a memory like a steel trap and I'm sure remembered it.
In that game Iowa was ahead by 5 and then LeShun Daniels went on a 51 yard run to score a TD with a couple minutes left to put them up 40-28 and seemingly the game was over.
Minnesota though went 75 yards in 45 seconds and scored a TD to make it 40-35 and then had an onside kick that was pretty damn scary and Iowa had a recent history of fucking up onside kicks.
With all that said, I absolutely can see how Kirk and Brian's main concern wasn't scoring the points, but was running out enough clock and making them burn that timeout before they "tried" to score.
I don't agree with it, but I wouldn't be surprised if that is what happened on Saturday. They wanted to run the clock down, make them burn the timeout and then hopefully score. If they had to kick a FG, they would life with Minnesota having to get a TD from their own 30 yard line with about 35 seconds left.