No. 5 Iowa and No. 6 Stanford have the potential to be a very fun and intriguing matchup.
By Danny Payne  | [email protected]

There is a corny newspaper joke to be made about finals week and the fifth-ranked Iowa football team prepping for its “final exam” against No. 6 Stanford in the Rose Bowl on Jan. 1, 2016.

We’ll spare you from that as we segue into this week’s Monday (sorry for throwing off your weekly routine) edition of the Box Score. What are three key statistical categories to look for heading into the Hawks’ contest with the Cardinal?

Stanford third-down defense — 36.93 percent (third in Pac-12)

Much of the time the Hawkeye offense spends in bowl prep should be focused on finding a remedy to fix the apparent aversion to converting third downs we saw at year’s end. The Hawks converted only three of 21 third downs over the course of the Nebraska win and loss to Michigan State in the Big Ten Championship.

That’s fine when a defense is playing out of its mind to pick up the offense or when Tommy Armstrong Jr. is playing quarterback for the other team, but Iowa can’t rely on that against Stanford.

The Cardinal rank in the top half of this category nationally, owning the No. 54 mark in Division 1. For context, this mark would be the ninth-best in the Big Ten, sliding in almost 2 percentage points behind the Spartans.

There’s a shade of wiggle room, but the bottom line is simple — Iowa’s played with fire for two contests; it’s time for that to stop.

Stanford turnover margin — even (tied-eighth in Pac-12)

Ding, ding, ding. Advantage, Iowa.

The Hawkeyes have made a living off of a good giveaway to takeaway margin this season. When the Hawkeyes haven’t made mistakes and taken advantage of opponent’s mistakes, they’ve won — look at what happened in Lincoln.

When they’ve made mistakes and not capitalized on opponent mistakes, they’ve lost. It’s happened one time this season, and that was in the title game. What if George Kittle is able to hold onto a C.J. Beathard pass on the goal line, or if Henry Krieger Coble doesn’t make his only flub of the year, or Iowa can turn Josey Jewell’s interception into more than 3 points?

Those three examples aren’t the sole reason the Hawkeyes are playing on New Year’s Day instead of New Year’s Eve, but alas, we’ll never get the answer to those questions.

What’s for sure, however, is this — Iowa doesn’t want to find itself asking “what ifs” after this contest.

Time of possession: Stanford 35:23 (first in Pac-12)

In the buildup to this game, more than once you’ll hear (or have heard) someone compare Stanford with a Big Ten team. While the Cardinal possess some classic Big Ten-esque qualities, none stand out more than this one.

As we know, time of possession doesn’t always matter to football teams located in the left or bottom halves of the United States, but if Stanford head coach David Shaw were to read this, he’d scoff at that sentence.

Just like Iowa, the Cardinal enjoy controlling the clock. We all know what happened in the second half against the Spartans, which brought Iowa’s sky-high time of possession down to a middling average of 31:32 per game.

Much like we saw heading into Indianapolis, both of these teams get their bread buttered by holding onto the ball. Whichever team’s offense is on the field the longest in Pasadena has a much higher chance of reveling in the confetti at contest’s end.

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