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Ohio State Buckeyes at Iowa Hawkeyes (Saturday – 3:30pm ET)
Iowa got a signature win at the Big House last week, and in dramatic fashion. Now the Hawkeyes get to celebrate their buzzer beater walk off touchdown at Michigan by returning home to face Ohio State. Not an easy task. Now, if there’s a team disciplined enough not to fall into a letdown spot, I suppose it’a Iowa.
Kirk Ferentz is a great coach and will do his best to motivate. At the same time, Iowa now has the Michigan win and a great looking schedule post-Buckeyes. It has to be in their heads that they can afford to let this one go and focus on the rest of the season, particularly with a short turnaround to a Friday night game at Washington on deck.
Ohio State cannot afford to let one go, following a complete collapse in Austin. If you’re ever going to catch Iowa off guard, this is the spot. But even if we take the Iowa letdown out of the equation, the Hawkeyes simply might not have the horses to keep up here. Of course, they’ll try to slow the game down, lean on defense and special teams and see where that gets them.
But if they Buckeyes are clicking offensively, Iowa just doesn’t have a shot to keep up. The Hawkeyes have played two Power Four opponents, winning both on the final play of the game, and averaging just 18 points in those games. Meanwhile, Bryce Underwood actually looked impressive as a passer against the Iowa defense. Imagine what the Buckeyes can do with their weapons. Iowa has not been challenged vertically by a passing game yet, and it will on Saturday.
Gaging Ohio State is more difficult, but we know this is a national contender. We can toss out 50-plus point wins over Ball State and Kent State, but last week’s win over Illinois looked pretty solid. But to be honest, the most impressive thing the Buckeyes have done this season is the first three quarters they played at Texas.
Ohio State dominated the Longhorns … for about 45 minutes –it was 23-3 entering the fourth quarter. Julian Sayin was accurate, Jeremiah Smith was other-worldly, and the defense was punishing. I think that loss actually helps Ohio State finish games with margin the rest of the way, specifically putting an emphasis on not letting that happen again.
From a trends standpoint, when Iowa plays above its weight class, it gets handled. The Hawkeyes win at Michigan improved them to 5-0-1 ATS as an underdog over the last two seasons. However, Iowa was catching single digits in all of those games. Iowa’s last win as a double digit underdog came in 2017, and was over Ohio State back in the Urban Meyer era. That was also the Hawkeyes’ last cover as a double digit dog. Since then, Iowa has been a dog of +10.5 or more seven times. It has gone 0-7 ATS, losing those games by an average of 29.3 points while failing to cover by 12.2 points. The Hawkeyes averaged 6.86 points in those games, with a high of 14 points and two shutouts. Two of those games were against Ryan Day’s Buckeye teams, losing 54-10 in 2022 and 35-7 in 2024.
I’m expecting the Buckeyes to jump out to a big lead in this one, and between the memories that loss in Austin left, and Iowa not having much of an explosive offense, the margin should only continue to grow.
CFB Pick: Ohio State -13.5 (-110)
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