2021 Iowa Hawkeyes Football Predictions: Season Win Total Picks

2020 Record: 6-2

2021 Las Vegas Season Win Total: 8.5*

2021 Season Win Total Picks NCAA Football: ‘Under’

Not every college football team can be Alabama or Clemson or Ohio State. So, for the mere mortals, there is something to be said about the power of consistency. Few coaches in the last half-century have been as consistent as Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz.

Ferentz has guided the Hawkeyes to 18 of 20 winning seasons, and Iowa has closed the year above .500 for eight straight years. You know exactly what you are going to get when you line up against the Hawkeyes – a rock fight – and this year’s team is pretty much a prototypical Iowa unit.

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The main question is whether or not that will be enough to help Iowa overcome Wisconsin in the West. A secondary question is whether or not this team will be able to carry some momentum over from last year. Iowa was one of the hottest teams in the nation to close out last fall, winning their last six games by an average of 21.8 points per game.

Iowa has 14 returning starters back, including their quarterback, leading rusher and leading receiver from a unit that averaged 31.8 points per game. Defensively, they have eight of their top 11 tacklers back from a group that finished in the Top 10 in total defense, scoring defense and rushing defense. They held opponents scoreless on 81% of their possessions and were one of the stingiest groups in the nation.

No one in the Big Ten has an easy schedule this year, because the Big Ten is loaded. Iowa’s slate is even more difficult than most, though. They have a monster nonconference game against No. 8 Iowa State on Sept. 11. They also have two critical divisional games on the road – at Wisconsin and at Nebraska. The Hawkeyes have to face two teams (Purdue and Illinois) off a bye week as well.

This is a difficult team to bet on or against. They don’t blow opponents out or overwhelm anyone, so they are tough to trust as a favorite of more than a touchdown. They also rarely get blown out and have a way of mucking up games, making them tough to lay points against. Case in point: they are 4-2 against the spread the last three years and have only lost by more than a touchdown four times in their last 60 games.

The Hawkeyes have one of the toughest openings of any teams in the nation, opening at home No. 16 Indiana and then facing No. 8 Iowa State on the road. Iowa needs to find a way to split to those two games if they are going to beat this number. Even if they do, nine wins is still a tall ask because of dates with Penn State and Wisconsin.

I’m going to take the ‘under’ on Iowa simply from a value perspective. That said, it wouldn’t surprise me at all to see Ferentz catch fire and guide this squad to 10 wins (or more) like he did in 2015 and 2019.

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