Through a quarter and a half of football, the Iowa Hawkeyes couldn’t put together a scoring drive. Fans began showering the field with “Fire Brian” chants, as the Hawkeyes trailed Western Michigan in the second quarter.

That’s when the Hawkeyes made a concerted effort to run the football, and run it as well as they ever have. Iowa toted the ball 43 times for 254 yards, the most in any game over the last four seasons.

Starting back Kaleb Johnson was out and Jaziun Patterson suffered a minor injury, so third string running back Leshon Williams splurged his way to a 145-yard day.

“We’ve got a lot of backs in this room — obviously we’ve got a real stable,” Williams said. “We’re stacked, we’ve got a lot of talent. I feel like next man up and anything can happen in any moment.”

“Offensively, we went with the run game and it felt good,” left tackle Mason Richman said. “It was really exciting. We were at 200 and we were at 250 and why not 300?”

“We’re all some dogs and we’re all gonna work and they’re all my boys,” said freshman running back Kamari Moulton, who scored on two of his eight carries.

“Execution is such a big part of it and you have the potential to execute, too,” head coach Kirk Ferentz said. “I think it’s more realistic we can start playing the way we want to.”