agreed about Art vs Tommy
but Mo Ibrahim had more to do with the difference in the defensive data than Sitkowski did
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agreed about Art vs Tommy
but Mo Ibrahim had more to do with the difference in the defensive data than Sitkowski did
A lot of talking heads are going to spew a lot of words about Iowa's defense for the next week, but how good are they really?
I guess the first question we need to ask ourselves is: Have they played anybody?
That's tough half way through the year. It's beginning to look like a lot of the B1G is fraudulent this year, so it may be that a lot of our upcoming opponents aren't what they seem. If we assume this to be true, the only way to analyze how you do against a bad schedule is seeing how much better you do against it than everyone else does. This is usually the purview of DSA, but I have a lot going on this week so...
So before we get into a poor-man's DSA, let's see if maybe that's what's called for. Let's look at Iowa's defensive rankings compared to the average offensive rankings for its FBS opponents in the same categories. For comparison, I've included the same numbers for Illinois, the best defense by raw statistical measures.
The first thing to note is that both of them have played an amalgamation of crap. Most teams have at this point in the year, but... I mean... Woof
The only category for either team where the opponents struggle all the way up to Mt. Mediocrity is Rushing yards per game, and that pulls the Iowa defense all the way down into the 20s. Still good, but nowhere near the single digit level that they and Illinois enjoy against the rest of that garbage.
Having said that: I've seen them play. Iowa looks solid. Illinois looks very good against the pass. No one is saying they suck. The point is that there is good reason to believe that they are not the juggernauts that context-free statistics might tell you they are.
So to really determine if either of these defenses is good, let's see how well they do against their opponents compared to how everyone else does against their opponents. Instead of full-on DSA though, let's just rank every team that played each of these team's opponents by the 7 metrics in the table above. Then we can see what the Hawkeyes' and Illini's average rank is.
For example, the most impressive category for any of them, is scoring defense for Iowa. While Illinois is first in the nation in this metric, it is Iowa that has held all but one of it's FBS opponents to their fewest points of the year; and that exception (Iowa State) was held to its second fewest points of the year. So Iowa's rank is 1 for four of the teams that it has played, and its rank is 2 for Iowa State. This makes its average rank for scoring defense 1.2 among its opponents. Illinois ranks 1 for four of its opponents as well, but ranks 2nd against Minnesota (Purdue held the Gophers to fewer points) and 3rd against Indiana. So Illinois' rank comes out to 1.5.
Doing this for all 7 categories we get the following:
Iowa is top-ranked among the performances against its opponents in 19 of 35 possible categories (5 FBS opponents times 7 categories = 35).
Illinois is top-ranked among the performances against its opponents in 19 of 42 possible categories (they had 6 opponents).
Based on this analysis then, both are really good, but not elite. If we compare these numbers to the standard by which all dominance should be judged (the Ohio State offense)...
The Ohio State offense gave the top-ranked performance in the 7 above categories 27 out of a possible 42 times, and 26 of a possible 35 times since the aberration that was the ND game.
Based on DSA of past years, being top-ranked in one of the above stats for about 1/3 of them is very good. Pushing above 1/2 like Iowa's defense is exceptional. Moving above 70% like Ohio State's offense has been for the past 5 weeks is unheard of. (The 2006 Buckeyes had a top performance in these categories right around 1/2 of the time.)
KEY POINT:
Ohio State's defense doesn't fair too bad by this analysis: The Silver Bullets are top ranked in 17 of 42 categories, just 2 behind Illinois who everyone thinks is the best in the country. And the Buckeyes are improving. They held the Spartans to their lowest number of the year in 5 of the 7 categories.
Even more interesting, if you take an average of all categories across all opponents, the rankings come out as follows (lower numbers are better).
Illinois Defense: 2.333
Iowa Defense: 2.086
Ohio State Defense: 2.071
Ohio State Offense: 1.548
That's right: The Ohio State defense has had a higher-ranked average performance vs the other teams their opponents have played than Iowa and Illinois. Not only that, but both Iowa and Illinois had the WORST performance in at least one category for one opponent, whereas for Ohio State this has not happened even once on offense or defense.
Conclusion: Illinois' defense is good. Watch them play; they're good. But based on this analysis, Iowa appears to be better. They are legitimately a very good defense, and they are more consistent than the Illini. Odd as it sounds though, the Silver Bullets are not at all far behind, and at the rate they're improving they stand a good chance of being better by the end of the year. The sad part for Iowa is that the Silver Bullets are facing Petras and company on Saturday, whereas the Hawkeyes are going to have their stats ruined by Stroud. More on how this is a bad matchup for Iowa (or bloody well OUGHT to be) as the week unfolds.
A much more thoroughly researched version of my conclusion from watching Iowa play a lot, one that I enjoyed. Iowa probably has an objectively good defense, one where I don't think we'll go score 50+ on. But a 35-7 type game I could very easily see. I do think we'll look just as dominant as we did against Wisconsin or Sparty no matter what the score is. And is Miyan and JSN are full go and allowed to unleash...yeah, we might break the 50 point barrier. I'm looking forward to this one.
Edit: Side note, B1G looks really this year overall. But nothing you can do about that except crush everyone in the way.
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The Vegas line / total are calling for a 39 to 9 or 10 kind of game
I don’t bet
But I’d go with the over
Gun to head I’d take the Buckeyes to cover as well
I don’t bet
But I’d go with the over
Gun to head I’d take the Buckeyes to cover as well
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Abenaki
Ohio against the world.
- Iowa has scored seven* offensive touchdowns in 2022; 23 FBS players have scored more touchdowns by themselves this season. Iowa's seven TDs on offense are matched by 17 other FBS players, including one Purdue wide receiver named Charlie Jones.
*If you want to add the two defensive touchdowns from the Rutgers game, Iowa has nine, good enough to match Ohio State's Marvin Harrison, Jr.; all of his touchdowns have come on offense.
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Abenaki
Ohio against the world.
More ooof:
- 2022 Iowa averages less total offense than all eight teams, with the second closest being 1981 Northwestern.
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OregonBuckeye
Semper Fi Buckeyes
Curious to see if we'll look rusty at all on offense after the bye. Might take us a half to get in sync on offense.
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More fun Iowa stats continued...
I've run the DSA numbers, and according to DSA, the Iowa defense is good
shocking
With a differential scoring defense of 0.403, it is safe to say this will have been the best defense the Buckeyes have played all year. Those are really good numbers, and they contribute to the following DSA result:
Buckeyes: 20-24 points
Hawkeyes: 9-14 points
Kind of surprising, right? Vegas believes that the numbers above reflect the Hawkeyes total pretty well, but they’re expecting 15-20 more points from the Buckeyes. What gives?
As I've said before, it all comes down to how the stats were compiled. You have to look at how each team does with respect to the level of competition. Let's take them one unit at a time.
Hawkeye Offense:
One of the reasons that DSA is a little off on the Hawkeyes is that the Hawkeyes' differential scoring offense is MUCH higher than you might expect. They are actually scoring almost 93% as much on their opponents as everyone else does. The Hawkeyes were actually helped by the fact that DSA throws out games against FCS schools, because their 27 points against Nevada don't look very good compared to the 55 points that Incarnate Word scored on Nevada.
Think about that for a second: Incarnate Word scored more than twice as many points vs Nevada than Iowa did, and that game was not considered by DSA.
So... yeah... Iowa's offense is worse than DSA says it is. And it gets worse when you consider how the numbers were compiled.
That game against Nevada... the defense that gave up 55 to Incarnate Word... unsurprisingly that game was tied for the most points that Iowa scored all year. The other game was Rutgers, in which all-timer bad qb play by the Scarlet Knights gifted Iowa most of their points. This also skewed their differential scoring offense, as it allowed them to score more than Rutgers usually gives up; something that the Iowa offense was in no danger of doing without help from the Rutgers QBs.
Apart from those two games the most points they scored were the 14 against the Michigan defense, which itself is highly suspect when you look at how their numbers were compiled (look at their schedule if you have a strong stomach).
The Hawkeyes scored 7 or less against everyone else, including 7 the hard way against South Dakota State, yet another game that was thrown out because it was against an FCS school.
Conclusion: Based on the way the numbers were compiled, the Iowa offense is likely to score LESS than DSA predicts. Now lets look at the other side of that equation, the silver bullets.
Buckeye Defense:
I'll keep this bit short. The difference between the most points Ohio State has given up and the least they've given up is only 11 points. Who the opponent is doesn't matter that much. Most of the points have come in garbage time.
Conclusion: Based on how points have come against the Buckeyes, and on the fact that this is the worst offense the Buckeyes have faced all year, the number that Iowa scores depends as much on how much of the game will be garbage time as anything else. That will be determined by the other side of the spread, points scored by the Buckeyes.
Hawkeye Defense:
As has been observed elsewhere, the offenses that Iowa has faced are absolute garbage as a whole. Michigan ran against them at will and scored 27 points; everyone else scored 10 or less. This is a very brittle defense. They shut weaklings down entirely, but if you can beat them up front, they don't really pose that much of a threat. The bad news for the Hawkeyes is that this Ohio State offense is not the throwback that the Wolverines threw at them.
Conclusion: Based on the way the numbers were compiled, the Iowa defense is likely to give up a LOT more points than DSA predicts. That depends of course on how the Buckeye offense looks. (I'll give you three guesses...)
Buckeye Offense:
To get right to the point, the variable in Buckeye point production has been time. Not the quality of the opponent... just time.
Ohio State took a couple of weeks to find their footing, but since then they have scored 6-8 touchdowns in the first 3 quarters of each game and then have coasted. The quality of the opponent has not mattered. And the Buckeyes have faced much higher ranked defenses than the Hawkeye defense has offenses.
After week 2, the average ranking of the defenses Ohio State has faced is 52. Here's where it gets fun though. If you discard the game against Ohio State, their average ranking goes up to 29.75.
That's pretty incredible by itself. But when you consider that the range of those rankings go from 10th (if they hadn't played the Buckeyes) to 49th (if they hadn't played the Buckeyes), and then consider that the result against ALL of them was 6-8 touchdowns in the first 3 quarters and then coasting...
Yeah...
Conclusion: Ohio State is going to get revenge for 2017 in a huge way.
I've run the DSA numbers, and according to DSA, the Iowa defense is good
shocking
With a differential scoring defense of 0.403, it is safe to say this will have been the best defense the Buckeyes have played all year. Those are really good numbers, and they contribute to the following DSA result:
Buckeyes: 20-24 points
Hawkeyes: 9-14 points
Kind of surprising, right? Vegas believes that the numbers above reflect the Hawkeyes total pretty well, but they’re expecting 15-20 more points from the Buckeyes. What gives?
As I've said before, it all comes down to how the stats were compiled. You have to look at how each team does with respect to the level of competition. Let's take them one unit at a time.
Hawkeye Offense:
One of the reasons that DSA is a little off on the Hawkeyes is that the Hawkeyes' differential scoring offense is MUCH higher than you might expect. They are actually scoring almost 93% as much on their opponents as everyone else does. The Hawkeyes were actually helped by the fact that DSA throws out games against FCS schools, because their 27 points against Nevada don't look very good compared to the 55 points that Incarnate Word scored on Nevada.
Think about that for a second: Incarnate Word scored more than twice as many points vs Nevada than Iowa did, and that game was not considered by DSA.
So... yeah... Iowa's offense is worse than DSA says it is. And it gets worse when you consider how the numbers were compiled.
That game against Nevada... the defense that gave up 55 to Incarnate Word... unsurprisingly that game was tied for the most points that Iowa scored all year. The other game was Rutgers, in which all-timer bad qb play by the Scarlet Knights gifted Iowa most of their points. This also skewed their differential scoring offense, as it allowed them to score more than Rutgers usually gives up; something that the Iowa offense was in no danger of doing without help from the Rutgers QBs.
Apart from those two games the most points they scored were the 14 against the Michigan defense, which itself is highly suspect when you look at how their numbers were compiled (look at their schedule if you have a strong stomach).
The Hawkeyes scored 7 or less against everyone else, including 7 the hard way against South Dakota State, yet another game that was thrown out because it was against an FCS school.
Conclusion: Based on the way the numbers were compiled, the Iowa offense is likely to score LESS than DSA predicts. Now lets look at the other side of that equation, the silver bullets.
Buckeye Defense:
I'll keep this bit short. The difference between the most points Ohio State has given up and the least they've given up is only 11 points. Who the opponent is doesn't matter that much. Most of the points have come in garbage time.
Conclusion: Based on how points have come against the Buckeyes, and on the fact that this is the worst offense the Buckeyes have faced all year, the number that Iowa scores depends as much on how much of the game will be garbage time as anything else. That will be determined by the other side of the spread, points scored by the Buckeyes.
Hawkeye Defense:
As has been observed elsewhere, the offenses that Iowa has faced are absolute garbage as a whole. Michigan ran against them at will and scored 27 points; everyone else scored 10 or less. This is a very brittle defense. They shut weaklings down entirely, but if you can beat them up front, they don't really pose that much of a threat. The bad news for the Hawkeyes is that this Ohio State offense is not the throwback that the Wolverines threw at them.
Conclusion: Based on the way the numbers were compiled, the Iowa defense is likely to give up a LOT more points than DSA predicts. That depends of course on how the Buckeye offense looks. (I'll give you three guesses...)
Buckeye Offense:
To get right to the point, the variable in Buckeye point production has been time. Not the quality of the opponent... just time.
Ohio State took a couple of weeks to find their footing, but since then they have scored 6-8 touchdowns in the first 3 quarters of each game and then have coasted. The quality of the opponent has not mattered. And the Buckeyes have faced much higher ranked defenses than the Hawkeye defense has offenses.
After week 2, the average ranking of the defenses Ohio State has faced is 52. Here's where it gets fun though. If you discard the game against Ohio State, their average ranking goes up to 29.75.
That's pretty incredible by itself. But when you consider that the range of those rankings go from 10th (if they hadn't played the Buckeyes) to 49th (if they hadn't played the Buckeyes), and then consider that the result against ALL of them was 6-8 touchdowns in the first 3 quarters and then coasting...
Yeah...
Conclusion: Ohio State is going to get revenge for 2017 in a huge way.
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There's a game simulation on YouTube of the game, and they had Ohio State winning by a score of only 27-10. I'll say we'd get to 27 by halftime and Iowa won't score 10 points in the whole game.
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