Recap of last week:
Minnesota looked competent vs OSU until they shot themselves in the foot with turnovers and stupid penalties. Penn State vs Wisconsin looked like two identical teams playing each other so YES! I got one! It remains to be seen if they’re both bad or both not bad… Rutgers put up 61 point?!. That can’t be right… I don’t care if it WAS Temple, and they DID turn the ball over 5 times… Rutgers isn’t supposed to score 61 points in a season! Nebraska scored <checks stats sheet again> FiFTY TWo PoiNtS!!! <throws imaginary stack of papers in the air and walks away>
Iowa isn’t always dangerous. Even there sports arenas are peaceful corn field baseball diamonds inhabited by friendly baseball loving ghosts. Kirk Ferentz does have his weapons but usually you can use your speed, avoid the swinging wrecking ball and jump on his head 3 times and move on. But sometimes ghosts are scary. Sometimes Kinnick is a terrifying place full of spike traps and robot piranhas. Sometimes Kirk Ferentz ditches the floating hover ball and shows up in a giant mech suit with rockets and a jet pack. Indiana forgot, got punched in the face and lost all of their rings and Chaos Emeralds. Let’s hope none of you are making picks based on my season analysis* because “Indiana is going to win the Big Ten East” doesn’t seem like it’s going to hold up.. Back to TeAm CHaoS!
Iowa:
I kind of covered Iowa in the previous post and the recap above. They’re Sonic the Hedgehog for Sega Genesis. It’s often not the MOST difficult game in your library but usually provides a good challenge to see if you’ve still got the proverbial “it”. Then sometimes you hit the hard level (Kinnick at night) and Kirk Ferentz cashes in all 150 years of his coaching experience for one game that leaves you smashing the reset button going “what the f$%^ was that?” Or sometimes Michael Penix throws 3 interceptions, completes less that 50% of his passes and you’d lose 34-6 just because you blew it. Either way Iowa is at least good this year and the West is now theirs to lose.
Michigan State:
Michigan state LOOKED good on Friday. It was a dominant performance over Northwestern that really wasn’t even as close as the 38-21 points suggests. But was Michigan State playing that well? It’s hard to say… The announcers were spewing praise over MSU’s offensive line all night. Kenneth Walker’s 264 yards on 23 carries suggests that this was justified but watching the game, it was not. For NCAA14 fans: Northwestern’s defense spent all night pressing R2+Down before the snap** They couldn’t set an edge to save their lives
Northwestern’s defense did this repeatedly and this was a big reason why Walker had such a great debut. Don’t get me wrong, the Offensive line didn’t play poorly, but when the guy you’re blocking runs where you want to put him anyway, it makes the job a little easier. The passing game, on the other hand, looked surprisingly competent. Payton Thorne threw for 7.4 yards per attempt. Northwestern’s pass coverage looked largely good.
The Defense? Well they did let Hunter Johnson throw for 275 yards and 3 TDs… But two of those TDs and a lot of those yards were in garbage time in the 4th quarter when MSU was already up 2+ scores… Too soon to tell…
Overall I think MSU will not be good this year due to lack of talent but wouldn’t be surprised if they look like a better coached team. Dantonio was a great coach at MSU for a long time but the last 3 years of “deck shuffling” the same coaching staff and other issues left the football team in a pretty bad state. It’s going to take more than one Covid-shortened-season for Mel Tucker to fix that even if he is the right coach to do it.
Northwestern:
Pat Fitzgerald is the perfect coach for Northwestern. He played linebacker for the Wildcats in 1996 and helped the team get to their second Rose Bowl appearance ever. In 2006 Northwestern made him the youngest Head Football coach in NCAA Division 1 when he was selected to replace Randy Walker. Once every 3 or 4 years Pat Fitzgerald is able to do something amazing. He is able to scour Northwestern’s 8,000 undergraduate population*** and put together a competent football team. Some years that team even pulls off a miracle and gets to make a trip to Indianapolis.****
This is not that year. Hunter Johnson is not good and they still haven’t recovered from losing Joe Gaziano, Blake Galagher, or Paddy Fisher (Who I’m pretty sure is just Pat Fitzgerald in a body suit… or a robot controlled by Pat Fitzgerald like Hugh Jackman in Real Steel). See above section for more in depth analysis but yeah… Maybe they’ll learn what an edge is by the end of the season.. They’ll finish… 5th in the West? Probably better than Illinois, Nebraska and maybe Purdue but not better than Wisconsin, Iowa or Minnesota.
*Unless I’m creating this to intentionally trying to get you all eliminated so that I win and get to quit filling out spread sheets early this year.
**Guessing Run Middle so that every lineman dives between the tackles like it’s 4th and goal on the 1.
***Clearly this is bullshit… He DOES know that recruiting is a thing… but still.. it’s pretty impressive
**** Where they lose horribly to Ohio State, obviously, because this is football and the football gods hate us.