2023 CyHawk
- Thread starter iahawks
- Start date
The reality for EIU fans is there is no school that will be hurt worse than EIU moving away from division and going to a more balanced schedule. What seemed like gelling was really just getting into conference play and getting to play Minnesota, Illinois, Purdue, NW, a crappy Nebraska team each and every year, while more often than not missing Ohio State and Michigan.
EIU has been blessed with a schedule that just gets easier once they got into division play, for a number of years. That all goes away after this season.
Yep, our SoS definitely will get and stay tougher after this year, yours will likely take a big dip with no OuT and no more round robin schedules.
It sure does seem like the Hoks conference schedule is easier than their non- con every year. How they avoid Ohio state and Michigan almost every year is mind blowing.
They did, Iowa offense again gained <300 total yards. That said, USU got over 1/3 of its total yards in the last 6 minutes of the game vs. backups and loose coverages.
A lot of garbage time yards. They broke off a few big runs late. They did find some holes in the Iowa secondary as the day went on. As usual, you can beat the Iowa defense, but you have to be accurate and catch the damn ball. IF they get you in 3rd and long, you're asking for a turnover if your QB isn't composed.
Johnson is a good RB, but there were a lot of USU defenders in the backfield.
McNamara is injured, but still better than Petras. Their OL protected him well for the most part, and he is accurate with a clean pocket. If we can move him off his spot, he will make mistakes. He had two balls that were thrown into double coverage and should've been picked off. He is confident in his ability, but he isn't playing with Michigan talent anymore. We don't have to worry about him running at all.
Their TEs are good like every year. Our LBs are going to have to be better than they were against UNI.
Receivers are better than last season, but that bar was extremely low.
It's going to be another ugly game unless we can hit Noel on those deep balls or Sama can bust a big one. You can beat them deep if you protect the QB.
Just know that if/when we get 9 to 11 win seasons that schedule doesn’t matter, we’ve had untold decades of precedent from Iowa fans on that.
Actually I think it’s gonna fluctuate a ton for both. Big ten is still gonna have 7-8 bad programs lots of years, probably similar as new big 12. Rutgers, Maryland, UCLA, AZ, ASU….these aren’t all world beaters.
Big 12 is adding a lot of mostly average football, big ten is adding some high end (especially now with Wash/Ore) but also brought in a lot of poor performers already plus empty stadium ucla. At this point you can add Nebraska to that.
I’m most interested to see how Utah, BYU and UCF end up in a few years.
Pass blocking looked pretty good. Run blocking was really bad.
Flip Rutgers and Maryland in the Big Easy West and they average 2 or 3 wins more than they do now. Every year they have to play Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State and MSU, imagine EIU playing that schedule every year? They would struggle to get to 7 wins, just like Maryland and Rutgers do now.
It'll be interesting to see what the B1G does with scheduling with ORWA addition. The previously announced scheduling system had every team playing every other team in the conference 2 times every 4 seasons. I'm guessing they'll want something that stays close to that so we may be losing some of our protected rivalries, which I'm on board with. If so, we'll be catching some combination of tOSU, Michigan, USC, PSU, Oregon every season. Obviously much harder but I'm looking forward to it.
It’s a really wide swing of difficulty possibility for big ten. Big 12 will no longer be able to match or better the best big ten schedule, but there will still be some easy draws here or there.
The thing with big 12 since it went to ten has been ridiculous depth and lack of a real bottom feeder except KU. If the AZ schools and some newcomers struggle or ISU/ku/wvu struggle that depth could be missing.
Was watching game with wife and that was a comment I made. At one point he overthrew Ragaini who was wide open and my first thought was, yep, he's used to throwing to much faster guys. Then when Ragaini dropped the over the shoulder pass in the end zone that CM put on a dime, and Williams dropped a perfect pass on a flare inside the 5 that he could've scored on, said the same thing. Talent disparity at WR between Michigan and Iowa is very real.
I give Iowa some credit w their defense and special teams. The real fraud in this era of that division is Minnesota. Lots of wins then look up if they really beat any ranked teams the past 5-6 years. They probably aren’t any better than Maryland.
Yeah, if Iowa misses all of tOSU, Michigan, PSU, USC, Oregon one season, they'll likely get them all the next.
Instead of playing OSU twice every 11 years. Good change.
Okay... I know I'm stupid, but doesn't Iowa only have to score 300 pts this season, not 325? 300 pts/ 12 games = 25 ppg, right? What am I missing? Does it also count a bowl game too? I thought it was regular season.
The wins number includes a bowl game, so they're factoring that in. If he doesn't get to 6 wins its all irrelevant anyway. They could fall into 6 wins with that schedule so just as well include it.