Iowa/Penn St vs Iowa/Northwestern

hawkfan2679 said:
What other rebuttal was there? You went through the games of the past several years and either "we didn't play well" or "We woulda won if...", which is complete conjecture.

Here's a different take on it...

2005 - This one I'll give to you. I bet the %'s are pretty small for teams who have 13 point leads with very little time left and actually lose the game. Not something that happens very often...yet NW still got the TD to pull them within 6, got the onside, and still had to drive half the field to get the go-ahead score. Completely wasted AY's 38 carry, 202 yard rushing performance, if memory serves...

2006 - We got our ***** handed to us. Call it whatever you want, we got curb-stomped. Dominated in almost every facet of the game.

2007 - We win. (We agree again! :))

2008 - Sloppy game...didn't we have 5 turnovers? Teams that turn the ball over 5 times generally don't have a chance to win the game. Even still, we had a shot with 1st and goal from the 8 with time left and we didn't gain a single yard. Following a somewhat familiar ******, we got out to a decent lead (I think we were up 14) and let NW back into the game...the 5 turnovers didn't help in that aspect. That hit on Greene was iffy, at best. Those type of collisions happen in every game.

2009 - Backup QB wasn't prepared. Playside TE & FB blew their assignment (well, one or both of them did) and let Wooten in instead of blocking him. Does the facemask call really change the game? Stanzi is still injured...with JVB, we scored exactly 0 points. Take away those 2 from NW's total and they still beat us. The facemask call was used as a crutch to deal with A) the loss of Stanzi, and B) another loss to NW. Also, 4 more turnovers, making 9 in the last two games.

2010 - Iowa in control in a bad weather game until Stanzi throws a terrible pick in the 4th. NW does what NW does best, patiently moving down the field against our tiring defense on drives of 85 and 91 yards for scores. They made the plays when they had to, we most certainly didn't.
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Couple things. In 2008 I would argue that if we had Greene on that 1st and Goal we would not have tried 4 straight passes.

2009 you have it wrong. They scored a TD on Stanzi's fumble, not a safety.
 
The biggest forgotten DJK boner was the 1st and goal from the 8 in 2008. One of the passes was an out or a corner to DJK, who came jogging out of his cut and then had to "holy !@#$ its coming my way" and start to sprint and never caught up.
 
Section136 said:
2009 you have it wrong. They scored a TD on Stanzi's fumble, not a safety.
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You got it right...strange, I remember playing it back in my head while I was typing that out, and yet "2" still managed to hit the keyboard instead of "7." :)

To some extent, my point still stands. After JVB came in, we didn't do anything offensively (provable because it happened). Had the game been 10-10 instead of 17-10, NW most likely would have played it differently (not provable because again, it'd be conjecture to insist they would have scored).
 
hawkfan2679 said:
What other rebuttal was there? You went through the games of the past several years and either "we didn't play well" or "We woulda won if...", which is complete conjecture.

Here's a different take on it...

2005 - This one I'll give to you. I bet the %'s are pretty small for teams who have 13 point leads with very little time left and actually lose the game. Not something that happens very often...yet NW still got the TD to pull them within 6, got the onside, and still had to drive half the field to get the go-ahead score. Completely wasted AY's 38 carry, 202 yard rushing performance, if memory serves...

2006 - We got our ***** handed to us. Call it whatever you want, we got curb-stomped. Dominated in almost every facet of the game.

2007 - We win. (We agree again! :))

2008 - Sloppy game...didn't we have 5 turnovers? Teams that turn the ball over 5 times generally don't have a chance to win the game. Even still, we had a shot with 1st and goal from the 8 with time left and we didn't gain a single yard. Following a somewhat familiar ******, we got out to a decent lead (I think we were up 14) and let NW back into the game...the 5 turnovers didn't help in that aspect. That hit on Greene was iffy, at best. Those type of collisions happen in every game.

2009 - Backup QB wasn't prepared. Playside TE & FB blew their assignment (well, one or both of them did) and let Wooten in instead of blocking him. Does the facemask call really change the game? Stanzi is still injured...with JVB, we scored exactly 0 points. Take away those 2 from NW's total and they still beat us. The facemask call was used as a crutch to deal with A) the loss of Stanzi, and B) another loss to NW. Also, 4 more turnovers, making 9 in the last two games.

2010 - Iowa in control in a bad weather game until Stanzi throws a terrible pick in the 4th. NW does what NW does best, patiently moving down the field against our tiring defense on drives of 85 and 91 yards for scores. They made the plays when they had to, we most certainly didn't.
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06, Agree, Iowa was a train wreck and clearly not the better team.

07, continued the trend of the better team not winning only this time it benefited Iowa.

08, Yes there were at least 5 turnovers but Iowa absolutely dominated that game from a physical standpoint. Even NWs offense was not able to do anything, King and co. had them locked down like Ive never seen Iowa do and Shonne Green looked like he was playing against children. That should have been a 20+ point win for Iowa. Iowas boneheaded, mostly unforced, turnovers were literally the only thing Nw had going for it in that game highlighted by Spivey running out of the endzone on a kick return and gently dropping the ball at Nws 10 yard line. The Greene injury was just the icing on the cake. 999 times out of 1000 Iowa wins that game.

09 was already discussed. You take out that one play of that game and Iowa wins easily. Nw offense only manged 10 points all day and that was with Iowa being able to do nothing on offense the entire second half without Stanzi. Iowa was well on its way to a comfortable win had Rick not gone down.

10, close game, Persa was better than Stanzi.
 
briankaldenberg said:
But wait... Norm Parker defenders will come to his rescue and show how we've held NW to very low scoring numbers in most of our losses...

First of all, Norm Parker is an excellent D-coord. One of the best in the nation no doubt. Our defense has been in the top 10 in both rushing defense and scoring defense more than 50% of the time the last 10 years. I think it's something like 90% of the time we've been in the top 25 in those categories.

HOWEVER.... every defensive philosophy has flaws and our flaw is defending teams that like to run the football our of shotgun while spreading the field and using quick short passes in the passing game.

NW's offense is build to do exactly what we try and force teams to do. This allows them to chew up huge amounts of TOP and also dominate the field position battle. Notice how we don't ever score that many points against NW.... It's because we're always digging ourselves out of poor field position.

Unfortunately if you look at Iowa's offensive numbers over the last 10 years they've been mediocre "at best". Mediocre offense combined with a philosophical mismatch on defense..... is why we lose to NW.

And guess what? Nebraska's going to be running a very similar, but more run oriented, up-tempo spread offense...
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I agree with your point, this has definitely played a part. But this dosen't change the fact that even given these factors Iowa still should have won in 05, 08 and 09 and could have easily won in 10.
 
Maybe the point of this thread is to compare the recent dominances of Iowa vs PSU and NW vs Iowa (in wins)?

Defense.
Iowa's d shuts down PSU.
NW's o exploits mismatches against Iowa's d - Iowa's d can't stop NW's o.
And Purdue's and Indiana's and just about any adept passing team and any team that forces matchups with great athletes (so far, Iowa State is in neither category).
Iowa beat - pounded Ball State. A spread team with inferior talent.


It's that simple.
 
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hawkfan2679 said:
You got it right...strange, I remember playing it back in my head while I was typing that out, and yet "2" still managed to hit the keyboard instead of "7." :)

To some extent, my point still stands. After JVB came in, we didn't do anything offensively (provable because it happened). Had the game been 10-10 instead of 17-10, NW most likely would have played it differently (not provable because again, it'd be conjecture to insist they would have scored).
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You forget the 40 yd Wegher TD run called back on a make-believe holding call. You can watch that play as many times as you want and never find anything remotely resembling a hold by Iowa.
 
Something else to add... our last few wins against NW have been huge haven't they? So when we win it's a domination, but I'm guessing we don't lose that badly against Penn St.
 
Jonesy86 said:
Something else to add... our last few wins against NW have been huge haven't they? So when we win it's a domination, but I'm guessing we don't lose that badly against Penn St.
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The last time we lost against PSU (2007) it was a complete domination.
 
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