It's once again time for my annual reminder that the common theme you hear about the Iowa-Northwestern series is wrong. Most people still seem to think that the reason jNW has so much success against Iowa is that their dink-and-dunk offense is the perfect foil for Iowa's bend-don't-break defense.
Former Wildcat QB CJ Bacher has even bought into the theory. However, the evidence doesn't really back it up.
I show below the average points the IA defense gave up each season, the points NW scored against IA that year, and the average points NW scored that season. What I would expect is that NW would score some amount between the IA D number and the NW O number.
That's generally what we see. The only exceptions are in 2006 (which actually does support CJ) and in 2011 (which we won anyway). By and large though, I don't see the NW O having an inordinate amount of success vs IA.
Let's look at the other side of the ball. Obviously all the columns are the same idea.
Here, the impact is obvious. Look how the average for all years is less than both the average IA O and the NW D. Also, a very clear rule-of-thumb emerges: if IA scores more points than their season average, they win the game. I'll bring up the 2006 game again to partially deflate CJ's argument. Yes, NW scored more than IA was allowing and quite a bit more than they were scoring on average. But really, if IA's offense had put up what they were averaging or, even better, what NW was giving up, IA still would have won.
So, the end result is, when you're sitting in front of your TV or tailgating this weekend and someone tells you NW always beats IA because our defense, go ahead and tell them they don't know what they're talking about...especially if it's CJ Bacher.
