Hats for Cats

IOWA CITY - On every snap in practice this week, all 11 Iowa defenders ran to the ball carrier and at least laid a glove on him.

This was every snap. This was no matter where the play took them. If you ended up covering a wide receiver all the way down the Avenue of the Saints, you had to run up and get a piece of the runner.

This was the hard lesson learned from the Maryland game. You remember the 23-yard TD run that got the Terps rolling. It was a running back just kind of popping out of the pile and sprinting to the end zone.

'When we practiced this week, it didn't matter if you were 40 yards downfield covering somebody,” safety John Lowdermilk said. 'You had to run and at least get to the ball and touch the ball, if not hit him. I think that really showed today.”

The idea was to teach pursuit. It also happened to sharpen the Iowa defense's attention to detail and overall ferocity and it certainly showed up in the Hawkeyes' 48-7 victory Saturday. This was a different unit than the one that allowed 500-plus rushing yards in their last two outings.

'We let off the gas the past couple of weeks,” defensive end Drew Ott said. 'We knew we wanted to keep our heads down and keep grinding and finally got that done this week.”

Here's what Iowa's defense ground out:

- The Hawkeyes held NU to 180 yards total offense, its lowest output since 120 yards at Ohio State on Sept. 22, 2007, a span of 93 games.

Northwestern had just 105 rushing yards (boosted by 96 yards from freshman running back Justin Jackson) and 75 in the air, which was the eight lowest in Kirk Ferentz's 15-plus seasons.

'The defensive line came up with some critical stops there and pushing the pocket back there and causing pressure, so that's a good thing,” Ferentz said. 'Louis [tackle Trinca-Pasat] has been doing a great job all along, [end] Drew Ott gives us some juice.”

- The five sacks tied a season high. Trinca-Pasat had three in the first half, a career high. With one Saturday, Ott now has eight sacks this season, the most for an Iowa player since Adrian Clayborn had 11.5 in 2009.

'They [the D-line] are doing everything right,” linebacker Quinton Alston said. 'They do everything right each and every day.”

- The secondary broke up a season-high eight passes.

'The big thing about today was we didn't give them a chance to get back into the game,” safety Jordan Lomax said. 'We started fast and we finished strong.”

- Iowa had some upheaval at linebacker with sophomore Reggie Spearman's two-game suspension for an OWI arrest last weekend. Junior Travis Perry started at middle linebacker, and freshman Josey Jewell switched in on the weakside with Alston bouncing between both positions.

It seemed to go smoothly. Iowa didn't change anything in its schemes. Six defenders collected career highs in tackles, including Jewell (five) and Perry (six).

'If we're ever struggling, I think we'll be able to look back at this game and see how we pulled it all together and finished,” Ott said.

l Comments: (319) 398-8256; marc.morehouse@thegazette.com