Good, very good coaches build a good system that usually works, but struggle when the players don't fit the system or cannot run the system. True in everything. Great coaches are mentally flexible, the proverbial win with their players or your players axiom.
In fairness to the coaches they are paid to win, not how to win. The coaches knew the offense was awful. Our game plan is always to shorten the game, thus producing fewer scoring opportunities for both sides and reducing the scores and win with defense and special teams. After putting the worst offense in D1 on the field they were 1 score inside the 4 at Illinois from another division title. When you pull up school seasons on Wikipedia or SportsReference.com they don't tell you how the 1960 Rose Bowl team won, just they were in the Rose Bowl and won it.
The only chance Iowa had to improve the offense last year to a meaningful extent was to make a change at the one position that can lose games by themselves but also make plays where the statue couldn't. The failure to play Joe Labas last year was a huge mistake, and that was made obvious in the bowl game, but so was that one position's ability to kill a game as did Kintuck's QB. That was perhaps the biggest of the Ferentz era because the guys that were playing were already making so many mistakes that it would have been hard to be net negative.
Z-we don't have shit show at WR, although it might turn out that way, we have a near cipher. We really know almost nothing about all but one player. We know what Ragaini can do but everyone else is a huge question mark. We should know something more about Vines but the Statue rarely looked in his direction and the other guy's throws were so wild it was sometimes hard to find his intended target. Hopefully we have enough NIL money left to get some decent guys in Portal, the Sequel.