You can pick at things like that in almost any game, for any coach, in my experience. Ferentz was really poor play calling wise at Iowa until he started to win... funny how that changes perception.
I think the point of bringing in Chizik is that he might develop players to play at a higher level, recruit better... lots of folks can play call, but can't develop a program. McCarney was a great coordinator -- was play calling his biggest failure? Doubt it. Developing, recruiting and cultivating talent is where your coach has to make it happen. Then on game day ... their play calling looks nice.
No doubt that having better talent can cover up a lot of mistakes in terms of play-calling. I've never been a fan of Mack Brown's playcalling ability but he can get away with a lot with the talent he has. ISU doesn't have that luxury so our coaches need to be much more discriminating than they were today.