A succinct but perfectly adequate summary of this game could be written in two sentences: “Oregon was 0-5 in turnovers. Otherwise they played fine.”
Since my editor Adam won’t let me turn in such an article — though he was gracious enough to give me some time to recover from dental surgery right after the game, which I used to review the SkyCam footage as well — the rest of this film study will go towards exploring that second sentence.
The turnovers in this game were catastrophic. They not only resulted in some easy points for Iowa St, they gave the Cyclones absurd advantages in time of possession (42:48 vs 17:12) and field position (63% of ISU’s snaps were in opponent territory, vs 38% of Oregon’s).