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#22 Iowa Hawkeyes (3-2, 6-2) at Northwestern Wildcats (1-4, 3-5)

7:00 - Evanston, IL - BTN

The easy narrative is that Iowa's turnover luck ran out.  That's obviously part of it, but there is more to it, particularly with what Wisconsin was able to do.  Listening to Michael Felder break it down on the Athletic's college football podcast this week, the bigger issue is teams figuring out that Iowa's defensive pieces only seem to have one pitch.  Their secondary is outstanding in run support, and being able to crash down on ball carriers.  Against vertical routes, not so much.  Matt Nelson looked like a Thorpe Award frontrunner in September.  The past two games, he has been at best invisible, at worst a liability.  Particularly concerning is that last week was off the bye week.  If Purdue's coaches saw something, and exploited it, good on them.  Not being able to adjust with an extra week off for Iowa's coaches is a bit concerning.  Offensively, Iowa wants to run, but they just can't.  I'm not sure I've ever written that in one of these before.  The Hawkeyes are averaging just 2.8 ypc in Big Ten play, #13 in the conference.  Among the 7 Big Ten teams averaging below 4.1 ypc, only Rutgers is running the ball more often than Iowa, so they are sticking to their guns.  So getting off to a quicker start is a must.  Iowa fell behind 17-3 to Penn State, and needed a Sean Clifford injury to comeback.  They fell behind in the first quarter against Purdue, and same against Wisconsin.  They have led at no point during those two losses.  Iowa's run offense is just regular bad, Northwestern's run defense is a special kind of bad.  If there was ever an opponent to get some things on that line figured out against, it's this Northwestern team.  Let Spencer Petras get back to doing what he was doing earlier in the year, not the guy who has completed just 50% of his passes over the past two weeks, with no touchdowns, 4 interceptions, and been sacked 9 times.  part of that is Petras being exposed, and part of that is simply being an offense that cannot play from behind.  I doubt that'll be an issue this week.  If it is, Iowa's spiral could take them from #2 in the nation to a 7-5 finish.

IOWA 30, NORTHWESTERN 14

Overall excellent analysis,  but one thing confused me.  Matt Nelson is an ex-Iowa DL that now plays for the Detroit Lions.  Did you possibly mean CB Matt Hankins?  Iowa's CB's did struggle against Purdue and Wisc.  One reason is the other starting CB,  Riley Moss, has been out since the PSU game.  And Moss's backup, Terry Roberts also did not play in the Wisc game.  So Iowa had 2 of its 3 best CB's out against Wisc.  Its probably 1 of the reasons Wisc could throw the ball early against Iowa and why the Iowa defense seems a little off the last couple games.  Of course the Iowa defense was struggling against PSU before Clifford got hurt but did you notice Iowa got 3 picks against PSU before CB Moss got hurt.  Hopefully for Iowa Moss can play against NW because he does seem to help take Iowa's defense to another level.

Iowa CB's Riley Moss and Terry Roberts are out again today for Iowa.  That's 2 out of the top 3 CB's  for Iowa that are out again for the 2nd game in a row.