The frustrations that many of us experience with Stanley I believe is a matter of expectations. He is a fine QB, it's just that he is in such a visible spot that everyone expects this guy to produce the 1% improvement in team performance that would would eliminate the 4-losses in every season. i.e. if the dumbass had not thrown that pass against PSU, or his quads had 1 extra fast twitch fiber to get us that first down against wisky, etc. That's unfair (though I've been guilty of wanting to kick Stan in the nads also) because the fact is that all 4 losses were manufactured by the braintrust on on the sidelines (to be fair, the PU game was a ref-job.)
Stanley is a good enough QB for Iowa to win a b1g championship, it's other (small) pieces that need to pick up the slack to transform 8-4 into something special. The small pieces being-- ability to rush for 1-yard in short-yardage situations at a 90% clip no matter how good the opponent's DL (this is a very reasonable expectation of any team), punting to flip the field, not missing short FGs, and also being mentally tough enough not to require perfect execution all the time.
Finally, KF is the master of digging deep to produce defeat after the game is won -- this must stop. Hopefully, the NE game of 2018 will serve as a boost to everyone involved.
Incidentally you just described pretty much every team and coach/players in history; but I’m assuming you knew that....right?