| Iowa had an extra week to shake off that disappointing home lopsided loss to Purdue, which probably ended their College Football Playoff hopes. They'll need to do that in a hurry against a Wisconsin team, which may finally be rounding into form, coming off their own lopsided road win at Purdue last Saturday. Bucky blew open a game that was tied at halftime by outscoring Purdue 17-0 in the second half, holding Purdue to 102 yards on 2.8 ypp, forcing 3 turnovers. Really the game wasn't even that close, Purdue turned the ball over 5 times and was held to negative rushing yards. But that's the Wisconsin defense right now, which has only surrendered 7 points in their last 65 minutes of conference play. The question now, and still, is the Wisconsin offense. During this three game winning streak, Graham Mertz has attempted just 14 passes per game, throwing for a TOTAL of 264 yards (88 ypg). He attempted just 8 passes last week, completing just 5, 3 of which were for under 10 yards, the longest was for 17. The wide receivers combined to catch just one pass, for 9 yards. They ran the ball 51 times, with Chez Mellusi and Braelon Allen combining for 289 yards on 7.4 ypc, and 3 touchdowns. It's an even more extreme version of the question we've been asking Michigan all season. We get it, you have a formula to bully lesser teams, but will it work against better ones? Michigan hasn't faced one yet. Wisconsin has thrice, and lost all 3, while failing to score more than one touchdown in any of those (save a garbage time touchdown against Michigan). So have things gotten figured out, or has Wisconsin just gotten to face three inferior teams in a row? I think the coaches have figured out Jalen Berger never should have been the #1, but the line still looks like it has issues to me. Whereas everyone asks whether Cade McNamera can pass it, they've never had to answer. Wisconsin has, and the answer wasn't pretty. Wisconsin has the conference's top run defense, but Iowa's is #2. Spencer Petras wasn't doing anything special, but he was doing enough, prior to the disaster of the Purdue game, when he threw 4 interceptions. I'm not worried about him having a bounceback game, I'm worried about the offensive line keeping him upright, after giving up 7 sacks over the past two games. The Hawkeyes are giving up sacks on 7.89% of dropbacks, second worst in the conference. Ultimately, everything tells me to take Wisconsin, but I've picked Wisconsin in all three of their big games this year, and all three times, they let me down. So since I think this one just depends on who wins turnovers, and you can't really predict that, I'll just go with putting the Badgers in "prove it to me" mode. |
