By
News Desk
Each week during the season, the Hawkeye Headquarters staff will predict the outcome of the Iowa football game.
Nature is healing.
Political ads will soon disappear from our television sets, Aaron Rodgers just threw a touchdown pass to Davante Adams and Iowa plays Wisconsin in a football game tomorrow.
November is winning time; the Hawkeyes are 18-2 in this month since 2019. But this is the one trophy game that has proven to be tricky. Wisconsin won four straight games in the series from 2016-2019.
But Kirk Ferentz’s kryptonite has been replaced by Kirk’s biggest admirer. Iowa looked like the more physical team in Camp Randall last season, something that was often not the case in the 2010’s.
As podcast guest Andrew Bandstra alluded too, Wisconsin struggled mightily when Penn State’s mobile quarterback Beau Pribula challenged the Badgers on the ground. He proved to be more effective than starting quarterback Drew Allar.
If Cade McNamara was starting this game, I would pick Wisconsin to win. Despite hosting two top five teams this season the Badgers have a top 25 overall defense. We saw Michigan State take Kaleb Johnson away, and how poorly the Iowa passing game responded.
Brendan Sullivan is set to make his start as a Hawkeye, and I believe he’ll be good enough to get the job done. The Iowa defense will feast their eyes on a quarterback who’s prone to turning the ball over, maybe we’ll have a repeat of Cooper DeJean’s game changing play in 2022.
Iowa’s scored 38+ in half of their games this season. We’re due for a classic, old school Big Ten football game. Sign me up for a Deontae Craig scoop n score, and a walk off Drew Stevens field goal. For the first time ever, the Hawkeyes will own the brass bull for three consecutive years.
Prediction: Iowa 16, Wisconsin 15
Here’s a look at what others from near and far expect:
HawkeyeInsider.com
David Eickholt: Iowa 26, Wisconsin 20
Sean Bock: Iowa 24, Wisconsin 21
Hawkeye Beacon (formerly Go Iowa Awesome)
Mark Hasty: Iowa 20, Wisconsin 16
Hawk Central
Chad Leistikow: Iowa
Hawkeye Nation
Rob Howe: Iowa
Dear Old Gold
Ericka Brockish: Iowa
ESPN
Bill Connelly: Iowa 23, Wisconsin 17
Athlon Sports
Steven Lassan: Iowa
Dan Lyons: Iowa
Thomas Neumann: Iowa
Bleacher Report
David Kenyon: Iowa 23, Wisconsin 19
Irrelevant prediction
@Hawkologist
And finally, the Totally Irrelevant Prediction based on playing EA Sports’ NCAA Football 2004 on a PS2, as is the tradition since 2015.
Ryan Jaster: Hawkeyes 33, Wisconsin 29. Winds blowing 25 MPH sideways. A halfback pass touchdown for the Badgers. A scoop & score and a fumble recovery in the end zone for Iowa. 10 turnovers total. A safety for each team. Sloppy, yet somehow electric. A wild win for the Hawks. Overall prognosis: It’s odd to see all of the picks lean Iowa. Usually there’s a lot more red on this ledger when Wisconsin is on the calendar. Last week, we talked about when Northwestern wasn’t a threat to Iowa for 21 years. Believe it or not, the Hawkeyes never lost to the Badgers from 1977 to 1996. 17 wins and one tie. Since then, Iowa is 10-15 — all but two of those losses under Kirk Ferentz — and Wisconsin now leads the overall series 49-46-2 and the trophy games 10-8 (the Heartland Trophy only started in 2004). Floyd is my favorite, but this might be Iowa’s best rivalry. During the trophy series, the games have been competitive but not necessarily close — only a third were decided by one score. The highlight is probably the 10-6 win at Madison in 2015. It ended a three-game Wisconsin win streak in the series and kept Iowa undefeated on their way to a 12-0 start. Some even called last year’s game a classic. (Any time you get a safety, it’s on the table.) This used to be the game that decided the Big Ten West most years. That division is gone now and the title game is already out of reach for both. It’s all for the brass bull now. The Hawkologist’s prognosis — after consulting with the words and picks of local reporters and the national media above — is a 4 on the 6-point pain index.
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Ryan Jaster contributes to the weekly predictions column during football season for HawkeyeHQ.com and previously wrote and edited for CBS Sports, the Quad-City Times, ChicagoSports.com and the Chicago Tribune. As a member of the FWAA, he votes for the College Football Hall of Fame and many of the national awards. You can follow his Hawkeye musings at @Hawkologist on Twitter and @RyanMJaster everywhere else.