Would Northwestern at Kinnick at Night Light a Fire?

[JonDMiller]

New rules for college football were a part of the discussion at the second day of the Big Ten's spring meetings. Marc Morehouse has a write up on that front here. The new rules on cut blocking give me a headache. Give it a read and decide where you are at. Seems real cloudy.

Morehouse also filed a notebook that talked about Brad Rogers status, Iowa's night game this year (he thinks its Northwestern at Iowa), Kirk Ferentz comments on the location of future Big Ten title games and more. If Northwestern at Iowa is the Iowa's night game this year (each Big Ten team is guaranteed to play at least one game in prime time, and this year that game will be on the Big Ten Network for Iowa), perhaps that will add some 'juice' to the 'rivalry' from Iowa's point of view.

Iowa has beaten Penn State seven of their last eight games, but Northwestern has beaten Iowa five of the last six tries, including the last three meetings at Kinnick Stadium. That's right; Northwestern has beaten Iowa three straight games in Kinnick Stadium.

In the last 14 meetings between the schools, Iowa is just 5-9 against the Cats. Reading these stats is making my eyes burn, and I hope that a fire gets lit in Iowa's locker room when these two teams hook up this year and as long as Pat Fitzgerald is the coach there. Fitz brings it for this game, as he holds a grudge against Iowa for breaking his leg and depriving him of the chance to play in the 1996 Rose Bowl. This goes back to the early 1990's in fact, when Northwestern was looking to change its paradigm. You can read those details here, including a Northwestern player quoted last summer saying that 'Fitzgerald hates Iowa.'

These two teams will play one another every year until...well...until the Big Ten decides to make changes to its divisional lineup, as the Hawks and Cats are in the Legends. It's a Division game now, you know they will be there every single year.

I know Iowa has dialed up the intensity for the Iowa State game and it's time to do something for this one...the danger in that is you play 12 games...if you turn the intensity up to 10 one week, do you go Spinal Tap the next week and turn it up to 11? Regardless, if this game is played at night, in Kinnick, I think for the first time maybe ever, the Hawkeye Nation will bring it's game face for the Northwestern Wildcats...let's hope the team follows suit.

By the way, the Big Ten Network will announce its Prime Time pairings on Thursday night at 7pm.

Scott Dochterman of The Gazette talks with Mark Rudner of the Big Ten about future TV contracts, the thought of playing games on Sundays this year if there is no NFL and much more...an entertaining read...Dochterman followed that up with this read related to Big Ten basketball games starting a littler earlier...perhaps before school ends in December....and then one final offering from Dochterman where he speaks with Fran McCaffery about the summer basketball plans for Matt Gatens, Melsahn Basabe and Bryce Cartwright...will they be in the Prime Time League?

STRAIGHT LINKS

Did ARob's Presser Doom His Iowa Future? | Sean Keeler asks this question..a good one
Remembering Whitey | Whitey Piro was a fixture in Iowa athletics for a long time. He died last month
Iowa's Slow Pace Key to Success? | I have said it before; give me stats and graphs and I will link it.
Breaking Down a 9 Game Conference Slate | Good stuff from BHGP

 

[olddude]

Some good news.

 

[okeefe4prez]

Northwestern has beaten Iowa five of the last six tries, including the last three meetings at Kinnick Stadium. That's right; Northwestern has beaten Iowa three straight games in Kinnick Stadium.

In the last 14 meetings between the schools, Iowa is just 5-9 against the Cats.

Thanks for the reminder, JD. I just hope JVB is more like JC than Ricky Stanzi and Drew Tate when it comes to playing against Northwestern, but I ain't optimistic based on how the 'cats dominated JVB in the '09 game.

 

[Hawkfromnorwalk]

Shake it up. This game has been played at 11:00 since before the ball dropped in the year 2000. Northwestern barely ever plays under the lights. Bring them into Kinnick in front of 70,000 boozed up and rabid fans and see how they handle it.

 

[BlckNGldHwk]

If you need a night game to beat northwestern then you have already lost. It's freaking northwestern. Sack up and dominate.

 

[CAARHawk]

Come on Jon, this isn't about the players not dialing it up. It is about the coaching staff getting their ***es handed to them by Fitz. The Northwestern players even called it. Iowa stubbornly sticks with their gameplan even when it isn't working. Northwestern is built to beat that system and they just do it.

This is mostly predicated on taking advantage on the holes in Iowa's defensive scheme and loading up at the point of attack on Iowa's predictable offensive scheme. These are smart kids, you know they know which one of Iowa's 5 plays are being run just by the offensive formation.

Instead of trying to get Iowa players to dial it up to 11 so they can win despite their coaches, how about calling on the coaching staff to finally freaking scheme to beat the Cats.

 

[HawkinGoferLand]

spot on CAAR, well said.

 

[trj]

Come on Jon, this isn't about the players not dialing it up. It is about the coaching staff getting their ***es handed to them by Fitz. The Northwestern players even called it. Iowa stubbornly sticks with their gameplan even when it isn't working. Northwestern is built to beat that system and they just do it.

This is mostly predicated on taking advantage on the holes in Iowa's defensive scheme and loading up at the point of attack on Iowa's predictable offensive scheme. These are smart kids, you know they know which one of Iowa's 5 plays are being run just by the offensive formation.

Instead of trying to get Iowa players to dial it up to 11 so they can win despite their coaches, how about calling on the coaching staff to finally freaking scheme to beat the Cats.

I don't disagree, but the last 3 years the hawks have got off to pretty large leads and for whatever reason have melted down in the 2nd half. Maybe 4 qtrs. of aggressive football instead of being complacent is what is needed. I would not get nutty with wholesale schematic changes just yet.

 

[83Hawk]

College football night games are an abomination.

That said...there is NO reason Iowa shouldn't beat Northwestern most years. Like CAAR said: Iowa needs to change things up once in awhile.

 

[edr247]

Thanks for the reminder, JD. I just hope JVB is more like JC than Ricky Stanzi and Drew Tate when it comes to playing against Northwestern, but I ain't optimistic based on how the 'cats dominated JVB in the '09 game.

To be fair, it was his first ever real game action, no? Actually, take that back. He was 2 for 3 against Iowa State.

 

[hawkfan2679]

If you need a night game to beat northwestern then you have already lost. It's freaking northwestern. Sack up and dominate.

This x 1000. Why do we need to "create" some sort of energy to beat a team that has beaten us 3 straight times at Kinnick?

Our current struggles against NW span more than just the current group of players, so I have to look elsewhere for the lack of spark...

Come on Jon, this isn't about the players not dialing it up. It is about the coaching staff getting their ***es handed to them by Fitz. The Northwestern players even called it. Iowa stubbornly sticks with their gameplan even when it isn't working. Northwestern is built to beat that system and they just do it.

This is mostly predicated on taking advantage on the holes in Iowa's defensive scheme and loading up at the point of attack on Iowa's predictable offensive scheme. These are smart kids, you know they know which one of Iowa's 5 plays are being run just by the offensive formation.

Instead of trying to get Iowa players to dial it up to 11 so they can win despite their coaches, how about calling on the coaching staff to finally freaking scheme to beat the Cats.

 

[homerHAWKeye777]

I actually DO disagree. How much of the loss was on Ricky's big pick in that game? That totally changed the momentum in that game. Furthermore, don't take a thing away from Persa's heroic effort ... that kid played his guts out. Iowa was throwing well-timed blitzes at Persa, among other looks .... and the kid was still making plays.

Lastly, Iowa's D was at a marked disadvantage against Northwestern's style of O ... and there was little we could do about it due to injuries. Our LBs simply couldn't limit the short- to mid-ranged routes well enough ... and that limited what the D could do.

One of the things that we like to do against teams like Northwestern is to match-up more with 3-4 and nickle/dime looks ... however, for obvious reasons, we didn't have the horses to pull off the 3-4 looks. As for extra DB looks, we often like to use safeties in those formations ... and let me remind you that our safety depth wasn't so good in 2010. Admittedly, we did have guys like Miller and Sleeper .... however, from what I understand, both of those guys had gotten knocked a bit by health issues.

The point here being that Iowa's D really WAS limited in what they could do schematically. I continue to be struck by fans who don't seem to make that obvious connection. If fans don't recall ... Iowa's O was similarly limited in '09 because we were stuck playing FR at the RB spot. Similarly, in 2000 and 2001, we were limited some in what we could do on D because Bob Sanders was still picking up the D ... however, for obvious reasons, it would have been foolish to keep Bob off the field ... the the Hawk coaches were willing to deal with the trade-offs there because they obviously valued tough, agressive, and fast play (over changes in scheme). Once you also recognize the coaches as educators ... then their decisions make that much more sense too.

While I didn't like the fact that Iowa lost the game to Northwestern, I really didn't see many egregious errors made by the coaches. The biggest errors I saw in the game were made by players. However, at least the players were fighting hard and trying to make plays.

Come on Jon, this isn't about the players not dialing it up. It is about the coaching staff getting their ***es handed to them by Fitz. The Northwestern players even called it. Iowa stubbornly sticks with their gameplan even when it isn't working. Northwestern is built to beat that system and they just do it.

This is mostly predicated on taking advantage on the holes in Iowa's defensive scheme and loading up at the point of attack on Iowa's predictable offensive scheme. These are smart kids, you know they know which one of Iowa's 5 plays are being run just by the offensive formation.

Instead of trying to get Iowa players to dial it up to 11 so they can win despite their coaches, how about calling on the coaching staff to finally freaking scheme to beat the Cats.

 

[tm3308]

This x 1000. Why do we need to "create" some sort of energy to beat a team that has beaten us 3 straight times at Kinnick?

Our current struggles against NW span more than just the current group of players, so I have to look elsewhere for the lack of spark...

Personally, I'd see it as a way to get the fans more dialed in. I get tired of the "It's freaking NORTHWESTERN!" attitude around here. This isn't the same program that got demolished by Brad Banks and Co. This is a solid program that can compete with almost anybody, and if allowed to hang around, they WILL beat you. It's time people around here started taking them seriously. Or are we really just so arrogant that we can't do that?

I actually DO disagree. How much of the loss was on Ricky's big pick in that game? That totally changed the momentum in that game. Furthermore, don't take a thing away from Persa's heroic effort ... that kid played his guts out. Iowa was throwing well-timed blitzes at Persa, among other looks .... and the kid was still making plays.

Lastly, Iowa's D was at a marked disadvantage against Northwestern's style of O ... and there was little we could do about it due to injuries. Our LBs simply couldn't limit the short- to mid-ranged routes well enough ... and that limited what the D could do.

One of the things that we like to do against teams like Northwestern is to match-up more with 3-4 and nickle/dime looks ... however, for obvious reasons, we didn't have the horses to pull off the 3-4 looks. As for extra DB looks, we often like to use safeties in those formations ... and let me remind you that our safety depth wasn't so good in 2010. Admittedly, we did have guys like Miller and Sleeper .... however, from what I understand, both of those guys had gotten knocked a bit by health issues.

The point here being that Iowa's D really WAS limited in what they could do schematically. I continue to be struck by fans who don't seem to make that obvious connection. If fans don't recall ... Iowa's O was similarly limited in '09 because we were stuck playing FR at the RB spot. Similarly, in 2000 and 2001, we were limited some in what we could do on D because Bob Sanders was still picking up the D ... however, for obvious reasons, it would have been foolish to keep Bob off the field ... the the Hawk coaches were willing to deal with the trade-offs there because they obviously valued tough, agressive, and fast play (over changes in scheme). Once you also recognize the coaches as educators ... then their decisions make that much more sense too.

While I didn't like the fact that Iowa lost the game to Northwestern, I really didn't see many egregious errors made by the coaches. The biggest errors I saw in the game were made by players. However, at least the players were fighting hard and trying to make plays.

This is an excellent, thorough analysis of what went wrong for us in 2010. But that's just one of the nine games Northwestern has won against us in the last 15 years or so. We haven't had the same personnel handicaps every time we've played them.

 

[kuhntz]

Last year we were ahead 17-7 with 11 minutes to go and had the ball at the NW 40 yard line. I don't think spark or game plan had anything to do with the loss. Situational playcalling cost us last year and is the reason we leave many points on the field during KF's tenure. Throwing deep up 10 with 11 to go from the opponents 40, into the wind....stupid.

 

[trj]

I think the coaching staff will put a little more emphasis this game than the past, how that translates on the field remains to be seen.

It would not shock me if we get a few snorting/snorkeling noises from KF the week leading up to the NW game......clear indication that he is frustrated/irritated with reporters questions about the annual debacle known as the NW game

 

[trj]

Last year we were ahead 17-7 with 11 minutes to go and had the ball at the NW 40 yard line. I don't think spark or game plan had anything to do with the loss. Situational playcalling cost us last year and is the reason we leave many points on the field during KF's tenure. Throwing deep up 10 with 11 to go from the opponents 40, into the wind....stupid.

That was just a bad, very bad read on Stanzi's part....A little bit of patience and he had McNutt open underneath for a 15-20 yd. gain and probably the ballgame.

 

[hawkfan2679]

Personally, I'd see it as a way to get the fans more dialed in. I get tired of the "It's freaking NORTHWESTERN!" attitude around here. This isn't the same program that got demolished by Brad Banks and Co. This is a solid program that can compete with almost anybody, and if allowed to hang around, they WILL beat you. It's time people around here started taking them seriously. Or are we really just so arrogant that we can't do that?

I can't tell if you are agreeing with my post or not...but we are definitely on the same wavelength. The only part we disagree (and disagree might be a strong word) is that I don't think it should require a night game to get our attention for a game with NW. I think the fact that they've beaten us 3 years in a row and, as pointed out, the last 3 times they've come to Kinnick, should be ammunition enough to want to blow them out of the water.

 

[homes]

It took KF a while to notice that ISU got up to play Iowa, and it's taken him a while to notice NW also gets up to play Iowa. He's more interested in the big picture than 1 game seasons. Unfortunately, it's led to some losses that otherwise shouldn't have occurred, and he is responsible for those. However, once he recognized ISU saw this as a different game, he handled the game differently, and since then, ISU has not been much of a problem. The same will hold true starting this year with NW. It won't matter when they play the game or how smart NW players are perceived to be. As Hawkeye fans, we need to stop wringing our hands over NW - they were, are and will be, always - just Northwestern.

 

[tm3308]

I can't tell if you are agreeing with my post or not...but we are definitely on the same wavelength. The only part we disagree (and disagree might be a strong word) is that I don't think it should require a night game to get our attention for a game with NW. I think the fact that they've beaten us 3 years in a row and, as pointed out, the last 3 times they've come to Kinnick, should be ammunition enough to want to blow them out of the water.

I was agreeing with you, at least for the most part. The players definitely shouldn't need any extra ammunition to get fired up for this game. But a lot of fans apparently do, because most Iowa fans I know don't take NW seriously at all. Not that the fans' attitude has a tremendous impact on the game, but finding a way to amp up the their energy level during the game certainly can't hurt anything.

 

[hawkfan2679]

It took KF a while to notice that ISU got up to play Iowa, and it's taken him a while to notice NW also gets up to play Iowa. He's more interested in the big picture than 1 game seasons. Unfortunately, it's led to some losses that otherwise shouldn't have occurred, and he is responsible for those. However, once he recognized ISU saw this as a different game, he handled the game differently, and since then, ISU has not been much of a problem. The same will hold true starting this year with NW. It won't matter when they play the game or how smart NW players are perceived to be. As Hawkeye fans, we need to stop wringing our hands over NW - they were, are and will be, always - just Northwestern.

I wonder how much of that was related to McCarney leaving? Everything I've heard about him is that he took the Iowa game almost too seriously, to the detriment of most of the rest of the schedule. Not playing the "It's their Super Bowl" card because that's BS, but it's something to think about.