Omg

4

4thngoal

Well-Known Member
So as I start to look ahead I pull up Wisconsin's 2020 schedule. Michigan, Maryland and Indiana are their cross overs. (They do have Notre Dame as one non con.)
Well I guess if you want to be the best you have to beat the best.
What will be interesting is how do you move up the rankings when you only play a couple of ranked opponents? Michigan, Notre Dame and Minnesota (yes a Minnesota team that loses a lot) will be their biggest games before coming into Kinnick at the end of the season.
We have a chance not only to catch them but blow them out of the water next year.
 
I can't recall a single time that the division champ was determined solely by the result of the cross overs. Had we beat Wisky this year, even losing to Michigan and PSU, we would have won the division. Last year, had we beaten NW and one of either Purdue or Wisky, we would have won the division.

If we can take care of the teams in our division and win one of the 3 cross overs, in most years that should be enough to win the division.
 
If you haven't looked: (for reference, we are breaking in a new QB, our oline will be totally revamped, and on defense a lot of our dline and MLB. The QB may be the least of our worries.)

After playing UNI and Iowa State at home, we play:

at Minnesota: who loses really only Johnson and Rodney Smith on offense, but 6 of their front 7 and a few db's on defense. Tough matchup so early in the year with against a cohesive offense.

After Northern Illinois at home, somebody in the scheduling offense wanted to put the screw job on us big time:

Michigan State
at Ohio State
at Penn State

back to back to back. Who knows what Michigan State is going to look like, but we will most certainly be big underdogs on the road to both OSU and PSU.

NW - who will have to be better than this year.
Bye
at Illinois - they are competitive
Nebraska - still a dumpster fire
at Purdue - always a challenge for us
Wisconsin - hopefully no Jonathan Taylor

That is pretty rough. Our crossovers are difficult, playing 2 of them on the road is difficult, and even our bye position is not ideal. Nice to have Wisconsin at home I guess.
 
dirtwrap said:
If you haven't looked: (for reference, we are breaking in a new QB, our oline will be totally revamped, and on defense a lot of our dline and MLB. The QB may be the least of our worries.)

After playing UNI and Iowa State at home, we play:

at Minnesota: who loses really only Johnson and Rodney Smith on offense, but 6 of their front 7 and a few db's on defense. Tough matchup so early in the year with against a cohesive offense.

After Northern Illinois at home, somebody in the scheduling offense wanted to put the screw job on us big time:

Michigan State
at Ohio State
at Penn State

back to back to back. Who knows what Michigan State is going to look like, but we will most certainly be big underdogs on the road to both OSU and PSU.

NW - who will have to be better than this year.
Bye
at Illinois - they are competitive
Nebraska - still a dumpster fire
at Purdue - always a challenge for us
Wisconsin - hopefully no Jonathan Taylor

That is pretty rough. Our crossovers are difficult, playing 2 of them on the road is difficult, and even our bye position is not ideal. Nice to have Wisconsin at home I guess.
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This is really no different than most years. We have one game that we essentially have 0 shot of winning (OSU), two games we should absolutely win (UNI and NIU), and the rest are essentially toss ups.

The QB is going to the be difference. I don't care if we lose our entire defense to graduation, until Phil Parker proves otherwise, he's always going to put a Top 20 defense on the field. And as far as our OL goes, we stunk up the joint this year and had no running game to speak of, but were still able to get to 9 wins (10 if we win the bowl). We've got some solid, yet unproven, pieces behind the guys leaving on the OL. But the good thing is we keep the most important spot on the OL, Center.

A way-too-early W/L:
UNI - W
ISU - W (mainly because it's at home)
@ Minn - W (until they beat us again, I'm always going to assume W)
MSU - W (they are an absolute dumpster fire right now)
@ OSU - L
@ PSU - L
NW - W (until they get the QB position solved, they aren't going to be good)
@ ILL - W (this was their year with all the grad transfers, they'll regress back to the mean next year)
Neb - W (until they show they have any semblence of toughness in the trenches, I'll keep picking W)
@ PU - L
Wisc - W (probably an "L", but if it's for the division and we're at home, I like our chances)
 
If we get to the Wisconsin game with a shot at Indy that would be shocking in my estimation. Probably due to lose to either Minny or Nebby. Going to lose to OSU and PSU. MSU will be a toss up, I’m sure they’ll have talent.

Next year is not the year OP. The golden opportunity was not this current year but last year, when we pissed away every close game and crummy NW won the west.
 
NCHawker said:
I don't know if its been discussed here before, but Iowa will need to get its offense to be more productive if they expect to win a divisional championship.
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In my mind, it's one thing and one thing only....redzone conversions.

We made it to the redzone 38 times in 2019, which for a team that typically packs a defense like we do, that's an okay number. By comparison, Wisky made it 47 times.....not quite 1 more attempt per game.

The difference, though, is the conversion rate. We converted only 52% of our redzone attempts into TDs. Wisky, by comparison, converted nearly 70% of it's redzone attempts into TDs.

Even if we didn't get to 70%, but got to 60%, that's 4 more TDs rather than FGs. At a difference of 4 points per, that's 16 more points. We lost our 3 games by a combined 14 points. So yeah.

By the way, we had 32 passes of 25+ yards which is now the KF record for a season. So the passing game, in my mind, is where it needs to be for the most part. The running game needs figured out, which will directly correlate to redzone conversions.
 
4thngoal said:
So as I start to look ahead I pull up Wisconsin's 2020 schedule. Michigan, Maryland and Indiana are their cross overs. (They do have Notre Dame as one non con.)
Well I guess if you want to be the best you have to beat the best.
What will be interesting is how do you move up the rankings when you only play a couple of ranked opponents? Michigan, Notre Dame and Minnesota (yes a Minnesota team that loses a lot) will be their biggest games before coming into Kinnick at the end of the season.
We have a chance not only to catch them but blow them out of the water next year.
Click to expand...

Playing Indiana to start off the season is not ideal. They don't back down physically like they used to. And they have 2 very good QBs. They won't win the East but they'll give everyone they play from the West trouble
 
NikeHawk21 said:
If we get to the Wisconsin game with a shot at Indy that would be shocking in my estimation. Probably due to lose to either Minny or Nebby. Going to lose to OSU and PSU. MSU will be a toss up, I’m sure they’ll have talent.

Next year is not the year OP. The golden opportunity was not this current year but last year, when we pissed away every close game and crummy NW won the west.
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Meh.
I think we split OSU and PSU.
If we take care of business we will most definitely be playing for something when Wisconsin comes to town for the last game.
My thought is, that Wisconsin simply does not have the schedule to get much above a top 15ish finish. We do.
It doesn't matter if you go undefeated if you really don't play anyone. Nebraska has a tough schedule, but they need to worry about making a bowl and getting the extra practice. Minnesota is going to be super soft upfront on one side of the ball. The rest are all improving but I don't think any are prime time. Basically it should come down to Iowa and Wisconsin and we will hold the sos. So we can blow them out on the national level.
It's a great opportunity.
Iron sharpens iron.
 
ChosenChildren said:
I've argued this before: The Division champs should be determined by division games only. The crossover games vary wildly from team to team. Not fair at all.
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That's horseshit because if we were in the East and someone implemented that rule you'd be whining about how all B1G wins should count, not just divisional wins because--wait for it--it's not fair at all.

You're saying it'd be fair for Indiana to have to play Michigan, Penn State, and Ohio State every year and have none of their crossovers count when Iowa would get to play WIsconsin and 5 wet blanket teams every year?

That's some seriously @HuckFinn -ish bullshit right there.
 
NCHawker said:
I don't know if its been discussed here before, but Iowa will need to get its offense to be more productive if they expect to win a divisional championship.
Click to expand...

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Fryowa said:
That's horseshit because if we were in the East and someone implemented that rule you'd be whining about how all B1G wins should count, not just divisional wins because--wait for it--it's not fair at all.

You're saying it'd be fair for Indiana to have to play Michigan, Penn State, and Ohio State every year and have none of their crossovers count when Iowa would get to play WIsconsin and 5 wet blanket teams every year?

That's some seriously @HuckFinn -ish bullshit right there.
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Exactly.
Our schedule has the opportunity to propel us upward and Wisconsin could win every game and hardly move the needle on a national level.
I get you are talking conference only and not national, but the two are related. Because if OSU didn't play Michigan, PSU and have tougher cross overs I doubt they are ranked #1 and it doesn't matter how good they are.
I suspect this schedule is exactly why Wisconsin put ND on the schedule. Because you take that game away and where are they? Potentially winning and still losing ground in the rankings.
They way ours is set up, we can storm the college football scene early next year and keep that momentum.
 
SpiderRico said:
In my mind, it's one thing and one thing only....redzone conversions.

We made it to the redzone 38 times in 2019, which for a team that typically packs a defense like we do, that's an okay number. By comparison, Wisky made it 47 times.....not quite 1 more attempt per game.

The difference, though, is the conversion rate. We converted only 52% of our redzone attempts into TDs. Wisky, by comparison, converted nearly 70% of it's redzone attempts into TDs.

Even if we didn't get to 70%, but got to 60%, that's 4 more TDs rather than FGs. At a difference of 4 points per, that's 16 more points. We lost our 3 games by a combined 14 points. So yeah.

By the way, we had 32 passes of 25+ yards which is now the KF record for a season. So the passing game, in my mind, is where it needs to be for the most part. The running game needs figured out, which will directly correlate to redzone conversions.
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This isn’t a bad analysis, but if we lost three games by a combined 14 points, so extra 16 points over 12 games isn’t going to cut it. They needed to average another 14/3 points in those three games to tie in all three, so another 17 in those three to win, we’ll call it 6 points in each game. In other words, they needed to average one more touchdown, or (god forbid) two more field goals per game to win the close ones. They need to score more points, regardless of how they do it. TDs in the red zone would be a great place to start.
 
BrianFerentzForPresident said:
This isn’t a bad analysis, but if we lost three games by a combined 14 points, so extra 16 points over 12 games isn’t going to cut it. They needed to average another 14/3 points in those three games to tie in all three, so another 17 in those three to win, we’ll call it 6 points in each game. In other words, they needed to average one more touchdown, or (god forbid) two more field goals per game to win the close ones. They need to score more points, regardless of how they do it. TDs in the red zone would be a great place to start.
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They don't need do any of that, what are you talking about? They just need to score more point than their opponents do in any particular game.

Look at 2018 Northwestern, they went 8-1 in the B1G

AVG 24.2 PPG and allowed per game 23.2 PPG.

Iowa 2018
Avg 31.2 PPG and allowed 17.8 PPG
 
Of those 32 passes that traveled over 25+ yards, how many of those went for TD? This year Stanley did hit more deep passes, but he had to put so much touch on them it caused our open WR to slow down and get tackled immediately. It does Iowa offense no good if teams are willing to let them march between the 20s, and then use the out of bounds in the EZ as a 12th defender.

Obviously losing Hock and Fant hurt production in the RZ this year, but it also showed how our WR still don't get enough separation, plus a QB who struggled with accuracy hurt the offense. Teams continue to sell out on the run because of this.

Whoever the QB is next year needs to hit those intermediate routes at a much better clip for Iowa to have any shot of winning the division (cause clearly beating the teams you're supposed to doesn't translate)
 
Fryowa said:
That's horseshit because if we were in the East and someone implemented that rule you'd be whining about how all B1G wins should count, not just divisional wins because--wait for it--it's not fair at all.

You're saying it'd be fair for Indiana to have to play Michigan, Penn State, and Ohio State every year and have none of their crossovers count when Iowa would get to play WIsconsin and 5 wet blanket teams every year?

That's some seriously @HuckFinn -ish bullshit right there.
Click to expand...

Blah Blah Blah. Division champions should be based on the record inside the division. DiNardo agrees with me. He knows more about football than either one of us.

It is a purely academic discussion anyway. They won't get rid of the current format, although I could see them rebalancing the divisions (move Michigan or Penn State to the West?)
 
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