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Re: STAN (-6.5) - washingtonismoney - 12-07-2015

Supposedly Iowa's run defense is strong, while its pass defense is weak.* Have only seen bits and pieces of them, so can't really say.

* (relative to the opposition)

Re: STAN (-6.5) - ColoradoTree - 12-07-2015

According to the numbers, wim, you're right: Iowa's run defense is indeed very good (10th in the country at 114.9 yards/game) while its pass defense isn't as good (60th at 219.3 yards/game).  But as I noted earlier in the thread, their secondary gets a lot of interceptions, so Hogan will have to be careful with the football.  That said, they haven't faced quarterbacks of the caliber we find in this conference.  Nor has their run defense faced a player as dynamic as Christian McCaffrey.  They can shut down opposing power backs pretty well (the ol' 3 yards and a cloud of dust), but our offense will present a challenge they haven't seen yet. 

My guess is that Iowa gets a steady dose of McCaffrey from various positions, combined with a lot of targets for Hooper, Schultz, and Cajuste in the middle of the field.  Running McCaffrey right up the middle might not be the most effective way of doing it, but if we can manufacture some runs out wide for him, I'm not sure Iowa has the speed at LB to keep up with him. 

And CornFed, I'd actually be surprised if it turned out that way.  Given the potential mismatch between our TEs and Iowa's LBs in coverage, I'm hoping we see a season-high in Hogan pass attempts, with lots of 5- to 10-yard gains.

Man alive, I wish this game were tomorrow.  Not sure how my heart will get through the rest of the month!

Re: STAN (-6.5) - Hurlburt88 - 12-07-2015

I would not be surprise if they hold mcCaffrey under 100 yards rushing but I still expect him to be over 300 total. 

Re: STAN (-6.5) - ColoradoTree - 12-07-2015

As another example of Iowa's pass defense, Minnesota's Mitch Leidner is, in my humble opinion, one of the worst passing QBs in Big Ten history.  (The U of Minnesota is the other college team I follow closely, as I'm from there and went to law school there.)  He's just dreadful.  An impressive knack for making the worst possible decision at the worst possible time.  Against Northwestern, he was 10-21 for 72 yards, no scores, and a pick.  Against Illinois, he was 15-25 for 88 yards.  Against Purdue, he was 8-12 for 59 yards (though with 2 scores).  A 13-10 TD-INT ratio on the season (and I swear each of those INTs came with a chance to win where he threw into double coverage, not seeing the crossing route open underneath), so not exactly a guy who beats you with his arm.   

Against Iowa, he was 19-27 for 259 yards and a TD.  Sure, this is anecdotal, and it was also a rivalry game where he may have been fired up.  But the point is that Iowa's pass defense is vulnerable, and I'm looking forward to how our coaching staff decides to attack it.  Iowa decided to sell out against the run that day (reasonable given that the run game was Minnesota's offensive bright spot this season), and even one of the worst Power 5 QBs in the country was able to take some advantage.  If Iowa sells out to stop McCaffrey, Hogan could have quite a day. 

Re: STAN (-6.5) - BostonCard - 12-07-2015

Here are the numbers from football outsiders S&P+ for defense:

TeamDef S&PRkRushing S&PRkPassing S&PRkSD S&PRkPD S&PRkSucces RtRkIsoPPPRk
Iowa21.426116.122105.946112.028107.549105.846114.926

They are ranked 26th overall (Northwesterrn is 4th, Washington is 10th, Notre Dame 33rd to give you a basis for comparison).  For S&P numbers, 100 is considered the national average, so they are above average in both run defense and pass defense (but better against the run), and in both standard downs and passing downs (again, better in standard downs).  Success defensively is the ability to prevent the opponent from gaining, 50% of necessary yardage on first down, 70% on second down, or 100% on third or fourth down.  IsoPPP is "An explosiveness measure derived from determining the equivalent point value of every yard line (based on the expected number of points an offense could expect to score from that yard line) and, therefore, every play of a given game. IsoPPP looks at only the per-play value of a team's successful plays (as defined by the Success Rate definition above); its goal is to separate the explosiveness component from the efficiency component altogether."  Thus, they are good at preventing plays from being successful and from preventing successful plays from being explosive, but are better at preventing the big play.

BC

Re: STAN (-6.5) - OutsiderFan - 12-07-2015

Iowa's offense has been very poor the last two outings. 

Nebraska: 250 yds
Michigan State: 268 yds

These things are hard to reconcile:

Stanford 6
Northwestern 16

Iowa 40
Northwestern 10

The only way Iowa can beat Stanford is if Stanford turns the ball over more than 2 times.  Stanford hasn't turned it over once since the Oregon game.  Something tells me that is not a coincidence.




Re: STAN (-6.5) - CornFed - 12-07-2015

Ah, more is revealed.  I was reacting to the anecdote about Iowa's Indiana game.  But the additional information so far has made me even more excited about Stanford's prospects.  The impressive offense we have displayed this year derives from the dual capacity to run power effectively and threaten the middle of the secondary and more vertically down the field.  If we can successfully throw Iowa off balance with those two capabilities early in the game, they will be hard-pressed to recover.

I would think Bryce Love could be instrumental in the early going in order to help us establish a running game unlike Iowa has seen this year to date and for which they would be totally unprepared.  Finding a way for Love to complement McCaffery and attack outside the tackles (like the Wildcat option w/ McCaff and Love) has the potential to assert our speed advantage in that regard (it was fun to type that - "our speed advantage" - just .  .  . wow)  To the extent that we can establish that we can be effective against their strength, they will be vulnerable to our TE's, WR and McCaffery and Love out of the slot.  If Shaw comes out having Hogan throwing the ball all around, it would seem out of character for him at the start of a game.

Re: STAN (-6.5) - ColoradoTree - 12-07-2015

(12-07-2015, 02:18 PM)OutsiderFan link Wrote:Iowa's offense has been very poor the last two outings. 

Nebraska: 250 yds
Michigan State: 268 yds

These things are hard to reconcile:

Stanford 6
Northwestern 16

Iowa 40
Northwestern 10

The only way Iowa can beat Stanford is if Stanford turns the ball over more than 2 times.  Stanford hasn't turned it over once since the Oregon game.  Something tells me that is not a coincidence.

Agreed.  I can absolutely see Iowa putting together long scoring drives on the ground.  But given our red zone defense, I think we'll hold them to field goals more than they get touchdowns.  (And FYI, Iowa's kicker, Marshall Koehn, is good, so he'll probably make them.  Kicked a 57-yarder to beat Pitt.  7-9 from 40-49 yards, too, and 15-19 overall.  A strong leg, as 46 of his 78 kickoffs went for touchbacks, meaning McCaffrey might not be as much of a factor in the return game.) 

But if we come out like we did against USC in the first half and get up a couple of touchdowns early, what I can't see is C.J. Beathard winning the game with his arm.  It doesn't look like Iowa has trailed late in the second half all year, so we haven't seen Beathard bring his team back to win, but here are his lines in their closest games this year:

Wisconsin (10-6 win): 9-21, 77 yards, 1 TD/1 INT (9 rushes for 12 yards) (Iowa won this game by forcing 4 turnovers)
Illinois (29-20 win): 15-31, 200 yards, 2 TD/0 INT (5 rushes for 29 yards)
Pitt (27-24 win): 27-40, 258 yards, 0 TD/1 INT (8 rushes for 39 yards and a TD, 27 of which were on the final GW drive)
Iowa State (31-17 win): 15-25, 215 yards, 3 TD/0 INT (10 rushes for 77 yards)
Minnesota (40-35 win): 18-26, 213 yards, 0 TD/0 INT (10 rushes for 50 yards, 2 TD)
Indiana (35-27 win): 19-31, 233 yards, 1 TD/0 INT (5 rushes for 38 yards, 1 TD)
Nebraska (28-20 win): 9-16, 97 yards, 1 TD/0 INT (3 rushes for 5 yards)
Michigan State (16-13 loss): 18-26, 216 yards, 1 TD/1 INT (5 rushes for -15 yards)

But he can hurt us with his legs, and for that, the Pitt win deserves a special mention.  After Pitt tied the game with less than a minute left, Beathard WAS the offense to get in position for a long FG try.  Starting on the Iowa 30, here's that drive: Beathard 12-yard run; 4-yard pass; Beathard 7-yard run; incomplete; incomplete; Beathard 8-yard run; 57-yard FG good. So, playing prevent in that situation would be a bad idea, given how Beathard took what Pitt gave him and used that space well to gain vital yards on the ground.

The lesson seems to be that if we load the box and focus on stopping their strength (run game) like Michigan State did, Beathard can do OK and get decent numbers, but he won't go off for some crazy stat line.  Still stunning to me that Michigan State held Iowa to 52 yards rushing on 24 carries.  That's just nasty.  Granted, Michigan State's DL is healthier and deeper than ours right now, but if we want a blueprint on how to shut Iowa down, the Spartans gave it to us. 

Re: STAN (-6.5) - fullmetal - 12-07-2015

I was really impressed by Iowa's run D in the B1G ccg.  McCaffrey may not have very much room to run.  Devon Cajuste, otoh, could end up with an NFL scouting highlight reel...

Re: STAN (-6.5) - TrumpCard - 12-07-2015

With all the normal caveats, and to the extent recruiting rankings matter at all in predicting outcomes of college games:

Iowa's two-deep has a total of 4 players who were Rivals four-star recruits (DL Johnson, DL Ekakitie, OL Walsh, OL Blythe).  Note: To save time, I went by the recruiting classes listed in Rivals and cross-referenced with the two-deep, so this would include JC kids, but would not include any incoming transfers who were 4-star recruits that showed up on another school's recruiting class.

Stanford's two deep has 4 players who were Rivals five-star recruits (Murphy, Garnett, Shittu, Thomas) plus another 19 who were four-star recruits (1 QB, 1 WR, 1 TE, 5 OL, 2 RB, 2 DL, 3 LB, 4 DB). 

FYI, I'm not counting guys outside the two-deep on either team because I'm assuming they won't have a brobdingnagian impact. 

Again, I recognize this method is far from a perfect predictor.  I'm just putting it out there to add to all of the other data.

Re: STAN (-6.5) - BostonCard - 12-07-2015

Sagarin's predictor would predict Stanford by 5 points.
ESPN's FPI gives us a 6.9 point advantage and a 69% chance of winning (although I'll be the first to say I don't like FPI).
Football Outsider's S&P system gives us a 6.1 point differential over Iowa.

I'm not sure how to convert FEI into a point spread or a probability of victory.

BC