{"id":290513,"date":"2025-11-14T05:23:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-14T05:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/290513\/"},"modified":"2025-11-14T05:23:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-14T05:23:08","slug":"joel-klatt-predicts-iowa-to-upset-usc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/290513\/","title":{"rendered":"Joel Klatt predicts Iowa to upset USC"},"content":{"rendered":"

No. 17 USC<\/a> travels to No. 21 Iowa<\/a> in a matchup between two teams still vying for a spot in the College Football Playoff. The pair of ranked programs are two of three one-loss teams in Big Ten play. <\/p>\n

FOX Sports analyst Joel Klatt ran through his picks for Week 12\u2019s marquee\u2019s matchups and revealed that he\u2019s choosing Iowa to pull off the upset on the road. Klatt doesn\u2019t expect Lincoln Riley\u2019s offense to have the same success they enjoyed during last week\u2019s 38-17 win over Northwestern<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s going to be an insanely frustrating day for USC offense, because they want to be explosive, they want to be high octane and do a bunch of things and do them well. Five-play, six-play drives and get down the field and gain a lot of yards and score a lot of points, and that\u2019s not going to be afforded them against Iowa,\u201d Klatt said<\/a> on his show. <\/p>\n

USC\u2019s offense is currently ranked first in the Big Ten in yards per game with 503.2 \u2014 good for second in the country behind the SEC\u2019s Tennessee Volunteers<\/a>. Their 39.6 points per game is second in the conference only to Indiana<\/a>. At the same time, the Hawkeyes are allowing teams 250.2 yards per game on average.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think they\u2019re going to make life difficult on USC,\u201d Klatt said. \u201cMake them go 10-12, plays in order to score the football. And the weaknesses for USC are specific. It\u2019s about stopping the run, and Iowa\u2019s running the football really well.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know that they didn\u2019t against Oregon<\/a>, but that\u2019s an Oregon defense. That\u2019s one of the better defenses in all of college football, in particular, stopping the run. That\u2019s not the case with USC, it\u2019s just not. So if Iowa wants to run the ball, they will be able to. If they do that, they control the tempo of the game.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rushing defense hasn\u2019t been a strength for the Trojans this season, letting teams average 141.7 yards per game on the ground in 2025. The Hawkeyes are one of the better rushing teams in the conference this season with 175.9 yards per game rushing, so Iowa should be able to run the ball against USC.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just one of those games late in the season I don\u2019t love for the Trojans,\u201d Klatt continued. \u201c\u2026 So I like Iowa 19-16 in another Iowa-style game. They win it outright.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kickoff between the Trojans and Hawkeyes is set for Saturday at 3:30 p.m. ET. The game will air live on the Big Ten Network. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"No. 17 USC travels to No. 21 Iowa in a matchup between two teams still vying for a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":290514,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[399,398,396,397,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-290513","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-football","11":"tag-ncaafootball","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=290513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290513\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/290514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=290513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=290513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=290513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}