Iowa defensive lineman Yahya Black has boisterous impact in games and meeting room

IOWA CITY — Iowa football’s creative content staff put a microphone on Yahya Black for a practice in August, but the fifth-year senior was vocal enough that the microphone might not have even been necessary.

“It’s D-Line Appreciation Day baby,” Black exclaimed multiple times in the video.

“We play football!” Black shouted at the top of his lungs at another point in practice.

“Coach Niemann!”

“Boomskis!”

Watch on YouTube

Black’s contagious and vocal enthusiasm throughout the August 2024 practice figuratively spoke volumes, too, considering what the defensive tackle from Marshall, Minn., was like earlier in his Hawkeye career.

“Actually Chauncey Golston came back and was at a game, and he’s like, ‘You talk?’” Black said last month. “You actually, like, talk to people?”

Iowa Coach Kirk Ferentz also noticed that Black was “kind of quiet and reserved.”

“Quite frankly for three years I wasn’t sure if he liked it here,” Ferentz said.

But now the imposing defensive tackle — he is listed, perhaps conservatively, at 6-foot-5 and 317 pounds — brings a boisterous presence on the field for the Hawkeyes and increasingly off the field as well.

“He’s so loud,” center Logan Jones said. “He’s yelling everything, getting everybody lined up on the defensive line. He’s really the leader of that room, and he’s done a great job with that.”

Fellow defensive lineman (and fellow 2020 recruit) Deontae Craig has noticed Black bringing “a great form of levity for the room.”

“I came in with Yahya, so seeing him go from like a kind of shy, quiet kid when he first got here back in 2020 to the most outspoken guy on the field day in and day out has been really cool to see,” Craig said. “And I think me and his relationship has evolved over time as well. That’s one of my best friends now, and I’m definitely lucky to get to play alongside him.”

It’s been a matter of “getting out of my comfort zone,” Black said.

“Joe Evans, Logan Lee and Noah Shannon — they’ve really gotten me out of my comfort zone,” Black said. “And now I’m that guy that’s got to step up with Deontae Craig and Ethan Hurkett, so it’s pretty cool to see yourself grow.”

Jay Niemann, Iowa’s assistant defensive line coach, said he and the staff “appreciate not only his quality of play on the field, but what he does in the meeting room with these guys.”

“He’s always really had a good handle on football and had a good, high football IQ,” Niemann said. “Now where it’s really affecting the rest of the room is by how he’s pulling guys aside and just teaching them the little intricacies of the position and really sharing his knowledge and expertise in that area.”

Iowa defensive line coach Kelvin Bell said Black is the sharpest player in the room “when it comes to our defense and the adjustments at the line of scrimmage.”

“He keeps me on my toes when it comes to my daily points of emphasis,” Bell said.

Black’s willingness to share his knowledge was evident, too, between “D-Line Appreciation Day” declarations in the preseason video.

“So right there, go bull, then reach here,” Black said to freshman walk-on Trent Cakerice during the practice as he reached toward Cakerice’s left shoulder. “Pull with that.”

Particularly as a two-gap defensive tackle at Iowa, Black’s traditional statistics — 2.5 tackles for loss and 15 total tackles — do not truly encapsulate his on-field impact.

“A lot of what he does won’t show up in the stat sheet,” Bell said. “He commands double teams. He takes up so much space on the interior that he can cover two gaps even when his technique isn’t spot on.”

Iowa center Logan Jones said the “run game is what stands out to me the most” about Black.

“He is the hardest defensive tackle I’ve ever had to block in the run game,” Jones said. “He’s so smart, and then he’s just huge. He just understands everything. Going against him now for three years, he’s made me a lot better.”

The linebackers behind Black — the ones benefiting from him taking on two gaps with relative ease — do have the numbers to show for it. Jay Higgins tied the program record for tackles in a single season with 171 last year and is at pace for another 100-plus-tackle season in 2024.

“I’m only as good as my D-line in front of me,” Higgins told The Gazette. “He just does a great job of eating up gaps. … Obviously, he’s got size, all that, but it’s him understanding the Xs and Os of football and how this defense works is what we really appreciate.”

Linebacker Nick Jackson, who has 28 tackles and three pass breakups so far this year, said Black is “violent, physical, huge, takes up all the space and can move everybody else out of the space that was somewhat left.”

“He’s the one that forced me to come back,” the much smaller Jackson said kiddingly.

Black has been a part of a rush defense that ranks 21st nationally with only 3.15 yards allowed per carry, and that’s despite having to go up against one of the most formidable rushing duos in the country last week (Ohio State’s Quinshon Judkins and TreVeyon Henderson).

From ‘young, slender’ kid to imposing defensive tackle

Black’s size has always been an asset for him in football. Even as a freshman in high school at Marshall, his coach Terry Bahlmann remembers him having “great length at the time.”

“He was a young, slender kid,” Bahlmann said. “Actually sophomore year, he played a stand-up defensive end/outside linebacker for us. And then he started putting some weight on and we moved him inside.”

Bahlmann “always thought he was an offensive tackle” at the next level (and still gives him and others a hard time accordingly about that opinion).

“I went to the Iowa Hall of Fame last year, and Coach Ferentz was presenting,” Bahlmann said. “And I leaned over and said, ‘Yahya should be a left tackle.’ We both had a nice chuckle about it.”

But what Bahlmann saw in Marshall, Minn. — a municipality roughly 90 miles northeast of Sioux Falls, S.D., and 150 miles west of the Minneapolis area — did not catch everyone’s eye right away. Black ended up with Power Five offers from Iowa, Minnesota and Kansas State.

  Buy Photo

“He was sort of under the radar,” Bahlmann said. “He’s a quiet kid. He didn’t even have a lot of Hudl highlights out there. He didn’t want to do all that stuff.”

Black — a guy who was “not about the bells and whistles” — quickly bonded with Bell during the recruiting process.

“When Coach Bell came and visited, they made a great connection,” Bahlmann said. “It was pretty much done after that.”

Iowa was not Black’s only camp — Bahlmann remembers taking Black to Kansas State as he “dominated everybody” there — but it was the one that made a strong enough impression for him to quickly commit afterward.

“After he camped with us in June of 2019, he committed to us in the least dramatic way possible,” Bell said. “I think he knew what he wanted. And we were glad to get him.”

Jumping ahead to 2024, this is Black’s fifth season of college football and his second as a starter. He earned some playing time early in his career, taking 335 defensive snaps in 2021, according to PFF. Those were not necessarily easy times to be playing defensive tackle, though.

“I did get whooped every day for like two years by Lindy,” Black said, referencing eventual NFL center (and Solon native) Tyler Linderbaum. “So I wouldn’t vocalize it, but football was very difficult.”

Now, Black is the guy with enough confidence and swagger to show his personality on “D-Line Appreciation Day.”

“He’s really come around on that front,” Ferentz said. “He’s emerged as not only a good player, but as one of our team leaders, and it’s been fun to watch that.”

Comments: john.steppe@thegazette.com

Sign up for our curated Iowa Hawkeyes athletics newsletter at thegazette.com/hawks.