The big 2014 Outback Bowl breakdown: LSU vs. Iowa, big plays vs. trenches

LSU outgained Iowa (significantly, until the final play) and committed fewer turnovers and penalties. JaMarcus Russell found Skyler Green for two touchdowns in the final nine minutes, Iowa made some clock management mistakes in the final seconds, and it appeared that LSU was going to take the 2005 Capital One Bowl, 25-24.

And then somebody forgot to cover Warren Holloway.

The 2014 Outback Bowl is just the second meeting ever between Iowa and LSU. It features a team from the Bayou that might have expected something a little bit loftier this year and a team from Iowa City that wasn’t sure what to expect. It is not what one might call a sexy matchup, but if it finishes anything like the first meeting did, we’re in for a treat.

And make no mistake: If you haven’t seen much of Iowa this year, the Hawkeyes are pretty solid and improved by quite a bit over the course of the season. LSU holds the overall edge here, but a down-to-the-wire finish isn’t out of the question. We can hope, anyway.

Iowa waited until nobody was looking, then turned into a pretty good football team. The Hawkeyes lost by three to Northern Illinois and looked wholly unspectacular in wins over Missouri State and Iowa State (combined score: 55-35), but they slowly began to improve. They won at Minnesota (a win that would begin to look more impressive when we realized Minnesota actually wasn’t too bad), then lost by 12 and 10 to the eventual Big Ten division champions.

A November 2 loss to Wisconsin dropped Iowa to 5-4, but the Hawkeyes took care of business down the stretch; easy road wins over Purdue and Nebraska sandwiched a come-from-behind win over Michigan at home.

Iowa is likely to finish the 2013 unranked for the fourth straight year after finishing seventh in 2009. But after falling to 4-8 in 2012 -- their worst finish since 2000, Kirk Ferentz’s second year in charge -- the Hawkeyes actually got somewhere this fall, doubling last year’s win total. A respectable showing against an SEC power, with a pretty young two-deep, could be a signal that Iowa is ready to compete at a high level in the Big Ten next year.

After early wins over TCU and Auburn (at the time, the former actually seemed more impressive than the latter), LSU fell at Georgia, 44-41. It was only the second time since 1989 that the Tigers had scored 39 or more points in a loss, and though it was an extreme, it defined the season as a whole. LSU couldn’t make late stops in losses to Ole Miss and Alabama and finished 9-3 with a defense that ranked just 45th in Def. F/+.

LSU has come to expect a spot higher on the SEC pecking order than the Outback Bowl, but all things considered, it could have been worse. And an Outback victory would give the Tigers four straight seasons with at least 10 wins for the first time ever.

LSU still has Landry and Beckham. We know the Tigers will try to run the ball -- it’s in their DNA -- but even if they are falling behind schedule and facing some second-and-8 or third-and-6 situations, they still have one hell of a duo lined up out wide. Jarvis Landry and Odell Beckham Jr. were targeted by nearly 62 percent of LSU’s passes in 2013; they caught 72 percent of them at 17.3 yards per catch and averaged a combined 12.5 yards per target. That’s ridiculous.

Even with Anthony Jennings throwing the ball instead of Mettenberger, this will be the scariest pass combination Iowa has seen this year; if the Hawkeyes cannot get pressure on Jennings (and there’s no reason to automatically think they will), he’ll make them pay, inexperience or no inexperience. And even though Iowa’s defense is quite adept at avoiding big plays and forcing you to move methodically, Landry and Beckham will test the Hawkeyes severely in that regard.

There is no margin for error in methodical. Iowa does not produce big plays, and LSU doesn’t allow a ton of them anyway. So the Hawkeyes will attempt to convert on third down, move the chains, win the field position battle, force a turnover or two, and win a game low on possessions and moderately low on points. They might get away with that. Lord knows they’ve done so many times in the Ferentz era.

LSU’s ability to break off big chunks of yardage will come in handy in this game, especially if Anthony Jennings brings a mobile (and unscouted) element to the table in Mettenberger’s absence. It is why the Tigers have the statistical edge, even if Iowa’s path to victory is reasonably realistic.

We tend to overreact to particularly positive or negative bowl results when it comes to projecting forward for the next season. How might we overreact to this game?

It’s hard to figure out how people will perceive Iowa’s fortunes in the offseason, simply because I’m not sure many have noticed how well the Hawkeyes played late in the season. They played like a top-30 team for the season as a whole, and they return almost everybody in 2014; hell, they’ll return a good portion of this year’s two-deep in 2015, too. Of the 24 offensive players listed on Iowa’s pre-bowl depth chart, 12 are freshmen or sophomores, and only five are seniors. On defense, it’s 10 freshmen or sophomores and six seniors.

It would probably take a win over LSU to get people to notice what Iowa could be capable of in 2014, but that win isn’t out of the question. And regardless, the Hawkeyes are set up well for a good or better season, even if we had no idea this was coming a few months ago.

Plus, while we’re playing the count-the-seniors game, there are only three seniors to 15 freshmen and sophomores on the defensive depth chart. This was a young, flawed unit, but LSU will almost certainly be ranked in the top 12 to start next season. Kill Iowa, and the Tigers might get into the top eight or so even without the receiving threats.

F/+ Projection: LSU 31, Iowa 25
Win Probability: LSU 68%

Again, it all comes down to margin for error. Even without Mettenberger, LSU is more likely to make the big plays it needs to win the game. But if the Tigers are a step slow -- if the intangibles (motivation, et al) go in favor of the Hawkeyes -- they are ripe for defeat. (You know what else makes a team seem a step slow? Getting beaten in the trenches.) For one thing, Iowa is a lot better than Arkansas, and the Hogs almost upset LSU the last time the Tigers were on the field.

As good as LSU can look at times, the Tigers can be pretty listless, too, and they’ll need to be dialed in here. We probably shouldn’t expect another finish like the one we saw the last time these two teams played, but unless Landry, Beckham, or Hill really go off, we could see a tight game well into the second half.

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