Iowa football: How the Big Ten West looks through two weeks

Big Ten West Bottom Dwellers

This may not be of popular opinion to fans of these teams, but anyone can look good two games into the season. Even Illinois who has used a cupcake schedule of Kent State and Western Illinois University to jump out to a 2-0 record. The three teams that fit into this category are the aforementioned Illinois Fighting Illini, the Minnesota Gophers, and the Purdue Boilermakers.

Fighting Illini

There’s not much to say about Lovie Smith’s team other than they beat a bad Kent State team by seven points at home FCS opponent Western Illinois 34-14 at home as well. While they sit at 2-0 right now, there is a chance this team could follow suit with last year’s team.

Last year’s Fighting Illini also started off 2-0. They then proceeded to lose the remaining 10 games on their schedule. Next week the Illini face the University of South Florida before beginning their conference schedule, and while there are winnable games on that schedule, Lovie Smith’s teams have shown me nothing that makes it worth paying attention to.

Minnesota Gophers

In PJ Fleck’s first season, the Gophers went 5-7. The Gophers, however, aren’t deep on talent and they are starting a walk-on true freshman quarterback in Zach Annexstad. This isn’t a Baker Mayfield situation though; the Gophers just don’t have much talent the quarterback position.

College Football News doesn’t think much of the Gophers either. They predict Minnesota will finish last in the Big Ten West. At this point, we don’t really know what to think of Minnesota.

They blew out a terrible New Mexico State team and beat a solid Fresno State team by seven at home this weekend. With the way their schedule starts out, they are likely to start our 4-0 before facing Iowa in Minnesota in a battle for the Floyd of Rosedale.

After that easy stretch of four games, Minnesota is likely to only beat Indiana and Purdue at home while not being favored to win a single road game.

Purdue Boilermakers

I’ll admit that I thought Purdue could be a tough team in the Big Ten this year, but after starting 0-2, I have my doubts. The team could very well be 2-0 right now, but they lost to both Northwestern and Eastern Michigan by a combined total of five points. This team now heads into a three game stretch where they head face Missouri, Boston College, and then head to Nebraska.

This three game stretch could leave the Boilermakers 0-5 at which point their season is essentially dead. It’s tough to come back from that. Despite high expectations, this may end up being a season to forget for Purdue.