Iowa football team aware of Minnesota’s QB sack prowess

CEDAR RAPIDS - You get one. You get one.

You get a couple. So do you.

It might have been easier to count the players who didn’t get a quarterback sack last week for Minnesota in its 24-6 Big Ten beatdown of Nebraska at Huntington Bank Stadium in Minneapolis. This was Christmas in October for the defensive guys.

The Golden Gophers set a school record with nine sacks in a game they dominated the line of scrimmage on both sides of the football. Minnesota is second in the Big Ten Conference in sacks, behind only Indiana.

“Everybody gets a sack,” Minnesota defensive lineman Anthony Smith said to reporters postgame. “It was like Oprah Winfrey out here.”

Smith finished with two and a half sacks of Nebraska quarterback Dylan Raiola. He has seven this season.

Fellow end Karter Menz also had two and a half. Lineman Jaxon Howard had two.

Matt Kingsbury, Deven Eastern and Maverick Baranowski picked up one each.

“Nine sacks, I love that. We're really proud of a program record,” Minnesota Coach P.J. Fleck said. “We're talking about the whole complete defense doing what you're supposed to do when you're supposed to do it.”

“That was really special what all the guys did,” Smith said. “That’s the back-end coverage helping the defense out, and the defensive line helping out the back-end coverage. That’s what happens when you get home. That’s what happens with the defense. We get home.”

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The thing was Minnesota played without a pair of starting defensive backs, who were out with injury. One of those was cornerback John Nestor, who transferred from Iowa this past spring.

He has three interceptions this season. The Hawkeyes host Nestor’s new team Saturday afternoon at Kinnick Stadium (2:40 p.m./CBS).

"We've had a relationship with John. Obviously, we recruited him out of high school. [We] got to build that relationship early with him," Gophers defensive coordinator Danny Collins told local media when Nestor announced his transfer destination. "When that came time, to being able to get him in that transfer portal window ... again, just continuing to get to know him. We knew what type of person he was, and the type of fit. It all goes back to the type of fit in this program."

Collins is in his first season as DC for Minnesota, though he has been on staff since Fleck came to the Twin Cities nine years ago. He also coaches Golden Gophers safeties.

Fleck said he feels Collins is an amalgam of his previous defensive coordinators at the school and at Western Michigan, where he was prior to Minnesota.

“Danny has his own way,” Fleck said this week. “He has been with me 13 years, he’s seen four coordinators before him. That’s a lot. And you see it within the same system, then you make it your own. I see us, I think we’re still really aggressive. But I felt last year we were ultra aggressive, whether you want to talk about blitzing, whether you want to talk about assignments, whether you want to talk about ‘Hey, we’re just going to let them play fast, and if that happens, that happens.’

“I think Danny checks every single box. Danny is really, really disciplined, and Danny allows the guys to still play fast by checking all the boxes.”

Iowa Coach Kirk Ferentz knows he has a very good offensive line to combat Minnesota and its pass-rushing tendencies. But he said staying on time down-and-distance wise will be important.

“Yeah, these guys are very aggressive, and they've done a really nice job rushing the passer. It's multiple guys, too. It's not just one guy. So that's a concern,” Ferentz said. “But I think probably the bigger thing (is) hopefully you're managing the long-yardage situations. Once you get into a certain situation with these guys yardage-wise, they throw a lot of stuff at you, a lot of creative stuff, and it's a challenge. Plus it's just a challenge, even if they were straight rushing because the probabilities always go down.

“So a big part of our success I think this Saturday is going to have to be productive (on) first and second downs, so we're not looking at a lot of third-and 7s, third-and-8s. Because they've proven they can be very effective when that comes to bat.”

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