Okay, I've crunched the numbers for the Iron Bowl by looking at both Alabama and Auburn's performance against conference and "quality" out-of-conference opponents (VA Tech for Bama, and WSU for Auburn). The main goal of my analysis was to see how both teams performed, both offensively and defensively, against their opponents' averages. I can post the spreadsheet later if someone wants it, but here's what the numbers suggest that we might see in the Iron Bowl:

AU Rushing 150-180 yds
AU Rushing 1-2 TD
AU Passing 120-140 yds
AU Passing 0-1 TD
Total: 270-320 yds
1-3 TD

UA Rushing 200-250 yds
UA Rushing 2-3 TD
UA Passing 225-300 yds
UA Passing 1-2 TD
Total: 425-550 yds
3-5 TD

To explain the methodology briefly using an example: Auburn's rushing attack gained, on average, 1.46 times more yards than their opponents averaged giving up against the other teams they faced. They also scored, on average, 1.69 more rushing TDs than their opponents averaged giving up against other teams. For the year they averaged 286.125 yds and 3.125 TDs in these games.

Alabama's rushing defense, held their opponents, on average, to 0.63 times the amount of yards they gained against other teams. Alabama's rushing defense also held their opponents, on average, to 0.31 times the amount of TDs they scored against other teams. For the season, Alabama gave up an average of 105.63 yards and 0.63 TDs a game on the ground.

In order to come up with the range of yards that Auburn is predicted to rush for, I took Auburn's delta (1.69) and multiplied it times Alabama's average (105.63), and then took Alabama's delta (0.63) and multiplied it times Auburn's average (286.125). This gave me a range of 154.22 - 180.18 yards.

Personally, I think the only way we hold AU to below 200 yards rushing is if we jump on them early and force them to pass to try and catch up, but I thought that some here might find this interesting.

For comparison's sake, here are each team's straight average across these games:

AU Rushing 286.13 yds
AU Rushing 3.13 TD
AU Passing 175.25 yds
AU Passing 0.88 TD
Total: 461.38 yds
4.01 TD

UA Rushing 228.5 yds
UA Rushing 2.38 TD
UA Passing 226.25 yds
UA Passing 2 TD
Total: 454.75 yds
4.38 TD

Pretty damn close to each other in this chart.

This post was edited on 11/24/13 at 4:42 pm