Football Study Hall, which is an excellent blog if you are a statistics nerd, had in interesting post the other day on Adjusted Pace. The basic idea behind Adj. Pace is to look at how many offensive plays a team runs during a game. Adj. Pace is defined by the author using these terms:

A simple regression formula was used to determine how many plays a team would be expected to run given their run-pass splits. The teams were then ranked according to the difference between their actual plays and their expected plays.

You would probably expect this watching Iowa's rather methodical pace...Iowa clocks in as the 5th slowest team in the country (the post has a full rundown of all FBS teams). Given Iowa's pass/run split, you would expect the offense to run about 69.3 plays per game. In reality Iowa's average was just 61.6 (FCS games weren't included, i.e. against Eastern Illinois) and Iowa only broke the 69.3 mark three time (against Iowa State, Ball State, and Northwestern). Against Minnesota Iowa didn't even reach 50 offensive plays.

On the flip side, I took a look at the pace of Iowa's opponents and if it changed against Iowa. For the most part it was pretty close...the Hawkeye's opponents averaged 70.2 plays per game against Iowa versus a season averaged of 68.8 plays. In 8 games of 12 games Iowa kept opponents on pace or below with their season average. The glaring exceptions were Michigan, Northwestern, and Missouri who each ran about 10 more plays against Iowa than their average. These three teams really exploited Iowa's bend-but-don't-break cushion on defense and were satisfied moving down the field in small chunks.

It has been a little while since I made my predictions for the offensive and special teams breakout players for 2011 and I'm now just getting around to defense.

Jordan Bernstine

Bernstine was heavily recruited out of high school and came to Iowa with some big expectations. Every year I have thought, "okay, this is the year" for Bernstine only to see him on the sidelines for one reason or another. As a freshman he was beaten out by Amari Spievey. As a sophomore he broke his ankle during camp and missed the season. As a junior was suspended the first game of the year for public intox and spent the rest of a year as a backup. But now he's a senior and this is the last chance for it to be his year.

Bernstine was listed as a second string corner back at the conclusion of spring. However, during the spring game, and from all accounts all of spring practice, he played both corner and strong safety. Safety is probably his best bet at playing time with both starters from last year now departed and both starting corners returning (even though Micah Hyde may end up at free safety).

Helping Bernstine's cause at safety is that Norm Parker recently said that the position could be handled by committee this year. So even if Bernstine doesn't win the starting spot he'll still likely see playing time as part of a rotation. Additionally, we saw Norm really mix up the personnel packages on defense during the Insight Bowl. With a relatively inexperienced front 7 I would expect that trend to continue and that we will see more nickel and dime on passing downs. So again, if Bernstine isn't a starter, he'd be a likely candidate as the nickel back.

B1G in-state recruiting

Recruiting has been the topic du jour around the blogosphere. A poster on mgoblog has a post on in-state recruiting around the B1G. The numbers for Iowa are very interesting.

Iowa is 9th in the conference in percent of recruits that from in-state. Between 2002 and 2011 only 50 of the Hawkeyes's 221 recruits have come from Iowa. Compare that to OSU who had 123 of 204 in-state recruits. However, the Hawkeyes were actually the top school in terms of keeping kids in state even with a very low number of actual recruits.

Iowa has gotten over 90% of all in-state kids who were B1G bound, which was top in the conference. Wisconsin was the next highest with 72.16%. As the poster said, "Ferentz may fill his roster with non-Iowans but only after he makes sure virtually every Iowan who can play for a Big Ten team will play for his."

I think a couple things are going on here. First, yes, Kirk Ferentz & Co. do a great job of recruiting the state of Iowa. Not only do they get most of the top kids on scholarship, but they also get a ton local kids to walk-on and contribute. An advantage the Hawkeyes have in this B1G-only view is that they are competing for kids in Iowa largely with non-B1G schools. Iowa State is the main competition, but Nebraska, Missouri, Kansas, and Notre Dame sometimes also make waves. However, even when Iowa does go head-to-head recruiting with other B1G teams, they do very well (except against OSU).

Again, very interesting stuff, so check out the original post.

The Game

The Basics

Location: Cookeville, TN
Head Coach: Watson Brown
Mascot: Golden Eagles
Conference: Ohio Valley Conference (FCS)
2010 Record: 5-6 (4-4)

The Offense

Returning Starters: 11 (TTU lists 13 starters on offense)
Key Players: RB Jocques Crawford, QB Tre Lamb, WR Tim Benford
Key Losses: QB Cass Barnes, WR Henry Sailes

The Golden Eagles employ a run-first spread offense. The two quarterbacks used last year, Tre Lamb and Cass Barnes, accounted for roughly 1/3 of all rushes, but the main ball carrier was tailback Jocques Crawford. Crawford ran for 625 yards on 118 carries and had 9 TDs. The other main tailback was Dontey Gay who started the first 9 games of the year before going down with an ankle injury. Gay had 63 carries for 429 yards.

Power Rankings

The pre-season power rankings are starting to pour out around the blogosphere. He's a sampling:

• Adam Rittenberg released his post-spring rankings and Iowa comes in at #7.
• Jon Miller has his rankings separated by the Leaders and Legends divisions. He as Iowa as #3 behind Nebraska and Michigan State in the Legends.
• The National Football Post has Iowa at #5 in the post-spring power rankings.

Pretty much everyone caveats Iowa's low-ish ranking with "but Iowa always does better under the radar." Still, after a year of some people predicting a national championship run, 7th in the B1G doesn't sound so great. Still it's probably fair. Iowa returns the least number of starters of any B1G team, has lost 12 players to the NFL draft in the past 2 years, and was just a mediocre team last year.

Kirk Ferentz thinks everyone is tremendous

Ferentz was on 810 WHB in Kansas City on Friday talking about a few of the drafted Hawkeyes. The primary focus was on Stanzi since he was recently selected by the Chiefs. The segment was podcasted, so can listen to the entire interview.