How Iowa football’s defense is evaluating its aggressive approach up front after first five games

IOWA CITY — The Iowa defense isn’t afraid to cause chaos on the field.

It has flustered quarterbacks with near-perfect completion rates. Individual efforts are cutting off fourth down attempts.

It looks similar to the Iowa defensive standard — just one difference has shown up in Big Ten play.

Iowa’s first two conference football games had passing-heavy quarterbacks. Defensive coordinator Phil Parker is using one tactic to help switch things up and make it difficult for opposing QBs to get the ball out.

Bring on the blitz.

“We spend some time in this building preparing for that,” Parker said. “We're always looking for answers like, ‘hey, how can we get some pressure on these guys, to make sure that in certain downs and distance we break it down all the way to the third downs and then the second downs.’ What we try to do is figure out how can we put pressure on them, and how can we get there.”

Iowa’s defense has tallied 28 tackles-for-loss this season for 120 yards — almost half of those are sacks (12 for 76 yards).

Max Llewellyn leads the Hawkeyes with five sacks this season for a total 30 yards, well out-pacing his teammates. Aaron Graves and Ethan Hurkett are the only other Hawkeyes to reach an opposing quarterback more than once so far.

Calling these blitzes, however, will still incorporate more than just the defensive line. Some of the linebackers and secondary are heavily involved in blitzes, too.

That’s how Zach Lutmer got his first interception of the season against Indiana last week.

“It was a time where, it's either they were getting a little bit close to kick a field goal, the time is starting to run a little bit down,” Parker said. “I thought we had to hurry up and make a decision on, hey, put a little bit of pressure on the quarterback, see if he can get it out.”

The Hawkeyes’ secondary had struggled to get interceptions through the first three games, finally recording the first pick against Rutgers. Typically, Iowa’s got a few interceptions through the first games of the season, making it an uncharacteristic drought the defense had to work through.

Now, there’s back-to-back games with an interception at Iowa’s first bye week.

Parker said with the blitz packages, the Hawkeyes have more of the man-to-man, press coverage. Because there’s a bigger focus on the individual matched up against the other, sometimes it makes it harder to follow.

Whereas in zone coverage, it’s sometimes easier to anticipate where the play is.

“When you are playing bump-and-run or whether you are playing some type of man-to-man, it's usually you're still playing tight coverage that you might get more pass breakups, but not more turnovers,” Parker said “So that's kind of a thing we've been working on, but we always have been working on the turnover circuit that we have at the beginning of practice.”

Turnovers are a staple in Iowa’s defensive scheme. There’s a 17-season-long streak of pick-sixes Iowa’s defense has produced, the second-longest active streak in college football.

Though the typical interception hasn’t happened as often as Iowa would like through five games, the Hawkeyes know more of those are coming when the timing works.

“If you're in the right position, we're gonna get those turnovers, make those interceptions, probably force some fumbles,” cornerback TJ Hall said in September. “But we’ve got to be in the right position first to make that play.”

Parker said as the rest of the season evolves, the blitzes may appear more often or disappear. It depends on who the Hawkeyes face each week.

With Iowa’s first bye week of the season quickly coming to a close and Wisconsin on the horizon, the Hawkeyes can make their decisions on when, and if, they continue to lean toward a blitz-heavy defense against Big Ten opponents.

Or if Parker just simply has something else up his sleeve entirely.

“We have a lot of young guys that are growing in their positions, and they're learning on the run,” he said. “I think this is a good break over here to re-evaluate some of our players and some of our schemes and then move on to the next one against Wisconsin.”

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