Over the last couple years, the Hawkeye team that goes on the road trips is not the same team that plays at Kinnick Stadium. Sure the players are the same, but they just don’t play with the same confidence or toughness.
This year, the offense has been pretty pathetic at home and away until they started moving the ball last week against Illinois. But now they are back on the road against Purdue and the Iowa offense is only a week older than they were last week.
The good news is that Purdue gives up nearly 400 yards a game. 250 through the air and 143 on the ground and they have given up 21 TDs in their 7 games. So the odds look good for the offense having some possibility of moving the ball.
Plus, Purdue lost handily to Michigan and Ohio State which happened to be the only two good teams they played. All of their wins were against some pretty sketchy teams and even those teams didn’t have too much trouble scoring some points.
But, can the Hawkeyes, with all of the young players on offense, actually move the ball at Purdue. One way or another, this appears to be a pivot game for the Hawkeyes. It is probably the toughest game left on the schedule and after this game 3 of the last 4 games will be at home.
I’m going to predict the Hawkeyes move the ball well enough, scoring 20 points when they actually let the field goal kicker play a few more times than against Illinois. Then the defense will pounce and hold Purdue to 13.
But I’ve been wrong before. Tune into ESPN2 at 11am tomorrow to see what happens.