The complementary football scorecard: Northwestern

The Iowa Hawkeyes-Northwestern game is one I have still yet to see! Shame on me. I’ll do better this week with boots on the ground in West Lafayette against the Purdue Charliejonesers. Should be fun.

The Hawkeyes finally got a much-needed win with the offense scoring on 7 of their 8 possessions. That really sticks out to me. Sure, not all of them were TDs but the Hawks should win pretty much any game if they can get to 21 points.

Onto the numbers...

Here are the stats from Saturday via Team Rankings.

Last week in complementary football

(Reminder of the weightings here and stats here)

50% - Win or loss: This is probably the worst team on Iowa’s schedule but, the Hawks still had to get it together and they did so.

33% - turnovers, time of possession, & offensive touchdowns: Iowa had zero turnovers, a welcome respite from the six against Ohio State. The Hawks held it for 31:44, which was 51st in the country last week. That’ll do. The three touchdowns? 52nd in the country. I’d like to see some of those less-than-30 yard field goals turn into tuddies but it ultimately didn’t matter in the end.

17% - 3rd down conversion, yards/carry, completion percentage, QB sacks: Iowa’s offense converted 45% of their third downs for 40th in the country; had 4.5 yards/carry for 45th; 70% completion for 27th; and allowed just 1 sack for 20th. That will absolutely get it done on the margins. Remember - I’m not asking for an elite offense...just an average one!

All together, That gets the Iowa’s complementary football score to ... (.50 * 1) + (.33 * .74) + (.17 * .75) = .87.

It was the highest mark of the season (Nevada’s win tabulated as a 0.84) by a wide range and a 0.27 increase over last week. The question, of course, will be if it will remain Iowa’s high mark or if they can use it to build some traction for the most important November in Kirk Ferentz’s tenure.