Kid is a beast, stanford is on another level of talent with iowa like the game last night with bama/sparty, same style of play but different type of athletes
It's all about matchups. Iowa had the benefit of a schedule this season that did not include B1G East toughies such as Ohio State and Michigan. The Western Division also had an unusual lack of "take it to the house" playmakers this year. Gordon had graduated at Wisconsin, and Clement was hurt much of the year. The Nebraska and Minnesota backs were mostly grinders this year. At Northwestern, we have a very good back in Justin Jackson (1,000-yard rusher his first two seasons without much of an NU passing game), but he's more of an elusive-style runner than a blazer. So Iowa, not having faced any of the B1G's fast runners such as Elliott at OSU and Barkley at Penn State, simply had not faced a back with McCaffrey's combination of speed and elusiveness this year. He completely exposed their lack of top-end speed on defense. The Hawkeyes looked totally bewildered in the first half. When Northwestern played Stanford in the opener and beat them 16-6, McCaffrey was not nearly as successful as we had people in the back seven (mainly Walker at MLB and some of the guys in our secondary) to run him down. I'm fully prepared to say Stanford improved over the season and likely would have beat NU in a rematch, but I doubt they'd have run roughshod over our D as they did Iowa's. On the other hand, when NU played Iowa, our pedestrian offense was not quick enough to gash them, they kept our defense on the field and turned the game ugly when NU turned the ball over and the defense tired. The same script happened in NU's other two losses against Michigan and Tennessee this year. All about the matchups.
