If history’s any indication, Iowa is going to ball Diego Pavia up and stuff him in a locker

1 week ago 2

Iowa! Vanderbilt! A game…we actually want to see?

It gives me the vapours just thinking about it, but we are about to watch ranked Iowa take on ranked Vanderbilt in the Tampa…and actually be a little excited about it?

ReliaQuest Bowl

The Facts, Ma’am

#23 Iowa Hawkeyes (8-4) vs. #14 Vanderbilt Commodores (10-2)
11am | ESPN | Vandy -4.5 | O/U 45.5 | at Raymond James Stadium (Tampa, FL)

Much in the same way the Music City Bowl is the Gaylord Hotels Glen Mason Memorial Music City Bowl, I petition that we rename the ReliaQuest Bowl the Kirk Ferentz Memorial Outback Bowl.

When Iowa has the ball

This is Year 39* of Kirk Ferentz. You know what’s going to happen. So let’s play Iowa MadLibs!**
^{* Give or take.} ^{** There’s a joke about libs and Iowa, I just can’t thread that needle with a hangover.}

[Generically white quarterback] will need to be efficient with the ball and avoid mistakes. He’ll do that by leaning on [steady, bellcow-type running back] and play-action passes to [tight end who likely grew up no more than 200 miles from Iowa City and will be a first-round NFL draft pick]. Iowa will go 8-4 or 9-3 with this offensive program.

Iowa’s leading receiver has 288 yards and 2 touchdowns. On the season.

And yes, it is DJ Vonnahme, a freshman tight end from Breda, Iowa.

The literal only other thing to know is that still, now four months into the season, teams don’t seem to understand that Iowa QB Mark Gronowski—he of the 8 TDs, 6 INTs, and 1529 passing yards and again, he’s played the full season, 12 games—can run the ball. He’s scored 15 rushing touchdowns on the year.

To review, Iowa went 8-4 with this offense, and I’m not sure if that’s a compliment or a dig.

When Vandy has the ball

I’m genuinely…excited is the wrong word. but…curious?…for this.

The only matchup you need to know: Diego Pavia vs. Phil Parker.

The piss-and-vinegar Iowa defensive coordinator has had weeks to discipline his linebackers into how to deal with slippery and definitely-not-bitter Heisman runner-up and future UFL Player of the Fortnight Diego Pavia. Can he do it?

Of course he can. And to remind ourselves of why, let’s go back to 2010:

The 2009 Iowa Hawkeyes were as close to a non-fraudulent Iowa team as Kirk Ferentz has ever had in Iowa City: [Tight end from less than 200 miles away who would go on to play in the NFL] was indeed a dynamic pass-catcher, and there were TWO bellcow running backs in this pasture. [Generic white quarterback] threw for 17 TDs against 15 interceptions but had that moxie about him, and that’s what was, in part, different about this Iowa team: they swaggered, man, and they had wide receivers who could do the damn thing.
^{* Just to be clear: Tony Moeaki and Ricky Stanzi.}

Marvin McNutt and Derrell Johnson-Koulianos were a formidable 1-2 at wide receiver—McNutt for touchdowns, DJK for yards, and with Stanzi getting them the ball, they started to churn: a 1-point win over Northern Iowa to open the year dumped the Hawkeyes from the Top 25, but they returned in October after consecutive wins over Iowa State, Arizona—gadzooks! Ferentz played a second P5 team in the non-conference!—and at #5 Penn State.

They survived Michigan. They went on the road and beat both wisconsin AND Michigan State. You were talking to your kids about Top 10 Iowa.

(What’s funny here for me, the author, very much a non-Iowa fan, is that I know where this is going, and any Iowa fan reading this is either rolling their eyes or viscerally annoyed with me, because they know where this is going, but I’m hoping for some of you readers you don’t know where this is going, because it remains deeply, deeply erotic for me on a personal level…)

They lost to Pat Fitzgerald and Northwestern. Again. ROLL THAT BEAUTIFUL BEAN FOOTAGE:

Anyway. That and a loss to Ohio State the following week, sans-Stanzi, dropped Iowa out of national contender status, but a season-ending blanking of Minnesota—for the second-straight year, though no bathroom shenanigans in this one—earned Iowa a trip to the 2010 Orange Bowl against #9 Georgia Tech.

You had an instant classic in the making: Paul Johnson and the Tech triple option against Ferentz and his then-defensive guru, the unrelated but still piss-and-vinegar-fueled Norm Parker, he of the frosting steaks and all the other OG Black Heart Gold Pants lore.

And Norm Parker shoved Johnson and the Yellow Jackets in a fucking locker.

Pat Angerer. Tyler Sash. Adrian Clayborn. Karl Klug. Broderick Binns. That was a goddamn defense, man. They held Georgia Tech to 155 total yards in a 24-14 win, with Tech scoring one of their touchdowns on an interception return [see again: generic white quarterback, but with moxie].

Get back to Vanderbilt, dude.

Sorry.

I offer very little in the way of analysis on Diego Pavia’s ability as a quarterback. Indeed, you—one of the five people to click on this article because lol Google Zero or whatever, and let’s be real, you’ve got thirty different Iowa football journalists to read—probably figured that out when we did an Iowa MadLib to see how the Hawkeyes offense lined up against Vanderbilt’s defense—a unit of which I did not bother to name one single player because it doesn’t fucking matter, Iowa is going to do the same shit Iowa has done since you were in short pants and you absolutely can stop them but also somehow you’re still going to lose.

I am very, very prepared for Phil Parker—a permanent sneer with a callsheet—and the Hawkeyes to crumple Diego Pavia up and stuff him in a locker, because that’s just what Iowa does when there’s something fun in college football.

Prediction: Iowa 21, Vanderbilt 13.

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