Michigan 42, Iowa 3 -- 2021 Big Ten Football Champions!

[Mike]

Hey, we beat Rutgers by 10! And we played PSU in Happy Valley with their starting QB - a big difference than getting them at home sans a functional offense. Bottom line is Iowa averages 299 yards per game, 13th in the conference and 123rd nationally, and they play in the vastly inferior division. They'd finish 4th or 5th in the East.

Kirk Ferentz is a poor man's Lloyd Carr who plays Tresselball with half the talent.

[Mike]

Red zone offense:

Iowa: 31-41, 18 TDs, 112th in FBS

Michigan: 55-60, 35 TDs, 10th in FBS

Petras sucks and is immobile. If Michigan gets half as much pressure on him as they did Stroud, he may not finish the game. He's a little dinged up as it is.

[THE_WIZARD_]

23-13

[Mike]

Eh, I'll take it but I expect a thumping.

[Cody_Russell]

Rutgers and MSU exploited M's biggest weakness. Playing up-tempo offense to take advantage of M's defense not lining up correctly. That's not what Iowa does.
Penn State? Remember, I missed the game due to being on a plane, but I'm assuming Penn State might have done the same thing.
Maybe Iowa pulls a Lloyd Carr 2007 (M vs Florida) and completely changes their offense for one game. Doubt it.

Iowa vs Michigan is going to be about the trenches and being the tougher team. Ohio State tries to out finesse you. That's not Iowa.
M has more talent and is more likely to win on the outside. Advantage, Michigan over Iowa.

[Jeff Buchanan]

According to 247 sports (news from yesterday and per Ferentz) ........CB Matt Hankins will not play in the CCG on Saturday:

Hankins has played in 10 games for the Hawkeyes this season. He went through senior day festivities for the Hawkeyes ahead of its Nov. 20 win over Illinois but did not play.

The Texas native has 44 tackles this year for Iowa. He also has 5 pass breakups, 3 interceptions, and a tackle for loss. For his career, he’s appeared in 49 games. The Hawkeye defense will miss that experience when it faces Michigan.

The thing about Iowa is that Ferentz loves a sludge fart rock fight that is won on field position. He tries to slow the game down and shorten the time an opponent has the ball. He's focused on his players getting turnovers and capitalizing on them when it's a short field. His players seem to have knack for inducing special teams blunders that turn into more short fields and gifted points. Getting short fields is key to the Ferentz game plans this season because Iowa's offense isn't good.

• Michigan is good in a rock fight.
• Michigan has a good special teams that doesn't make a lot of errors.
• Michigan doesn't turn the ball over and especially not giving an opponent a short field.

Given what Iowa tries to do and appears to have done well to get to where they are (caveats noted), Michigan is not a good match-up for them.

It's going to take some fast work but given Mike Macdonald's superb game plan v. OSU and the near flawless execution of it (it's not what he'll likely run v. Iowa) I expect M will win the turnover battle - expect M to win back the strip-sack-TD v. MSU that they got jobbed on by the officials. If M actually comes out +1 or more on turnovers, that will scuttle what Ferentz is relying on this season to win games.

I also expect Gattis to have an offensive game plan that is going to leverage what has turned out to be maybe the best and most balanced offense in CFB. There's a run to pass approach. The run game demonstrates a capacity to run power and trickeration together. It's efficient in moving the chains and enhances the points/play of the offense.

The pass game is solid. I'm expecting to see a lot of Anthony and Edwards as receivers and I don't expect Harbaugh to try to bludgeon Iowa like he did with Haskins v. OSU. I see the potential for a game v. Iowa similar to M's game v. Maryland. Boat racing Ferentz is a solid play.

[lineygoblue]

Tickets on Stub Hub for cheap seats is $280 and up. $1300 for choice seats, .. the kind Jeff would buy.

[WingsFan]

Since the time they started the Big Ten championship game it's been really depressing not seeing Michigan ( and watching the team down south) in there. Well not this year,! And we're playing one more game to top it off.

[Mike]

Two more games after Saturday.

[lineygoblue]

dang .. I'd like to go ... even if it meant driving back home at 4:00 am ...

[Obi-Jon]

Spencer Petras is the Iowa QB for Saturday.

https://www.thegazette.com/hawkeye-football/spencer-petras-listed-as-hawkeyes-starter-at-quarterback/

And a nice look at some of the Michigan players.

https://www.thegazette.com/hawkeye-football/5-michigan-players-to-watch-against-the-hawkeyes-in-big-ten-championship-game/

[Hannibal]

Iowa might hit us for some annoying play action passes to their tight ends and they might spring a few of those stretch plays on us. Goodson is a really good RB. But beyond that, it's hard to come up with even credible sandbagging material.

[Hannibal]

This is one of those games where it would be nice to continue the trend of "it's different this year" by doing what frequent double digit favorites like Clemson and Alabama have done to similar caliber opponents over the years -- smack the shit out of them.

[Cody_Russell]

The news about Iowa's starting CB Matt Hankins being out is big. I read that Hankins is 2nd team B10 according to PFF.

Scary... I'm starting to feel pretty confident about this game. That can't be a good sign ...



Looking at Iowa's schedule... it's not that impressive. Blown out by Purdue and Wisconsin. Close wins vs the rest of the B10 West. Barely beating Penn State's crappy 2nd team QB. This seems too good to be true.

[Hannibal]

I'll give them this -- their offense seems to be competition invariant. They seem to have the same level of success no matter who it is again. Against PSU, they were able to rip off a lot of chunk plays in the second half and they did it against Nebraska too. They get lots of play action chunk plays, similar to what Mike Debord used to run, and Goodson is great at finding lanes to run on well blocked plays. But I'm pretty sure that absent turnovers and other disasters, they can't move it on us and score more than 20.