Iowa St. defense invades Kansas backfield

AMES — When Iowa State revamped its defense to a 3-4 scheme in the offseason, it did so with the intention of creating more pressure up front against the offensive-minded Big 12.

The Cyclones' eight tackles for loss and five sacks in their 38-13 win against Kansas are exactly what ISU Coach Paul Rhoads had in mind when he made the switch. Rhoads gave part of the credit with the production up front to the coverage in the secondary.

'Making a quarterback move, making him shuffle his feet, the end process of that is usually going to be an errant pass,' Rhoads said. 'You're going to get incompletions and you're going to get yourself off the field.'

Iowa State (2-2, 1-0) has 14 sacks through four games compared to the 15 it accumulated all of last season. Part of that is the scheme and ability to be more creative in pressure situations, but the injection of junior college players and red-shirt freshmen have added to the production.

Seven of the Cyclones' top nine tacklers against the Jayhawks (0-4, 0-1) had never played in Ames before this season. Red-shirt freshman cornerback Brian Peavy led ISU tacklers with 10, while linebacker Willie Harvey had eight stops and two sacks while holding the KU offense to six points — which came on a 47-yard reception by Tre' Parmalee.

The ISU run defense allowed just 38 rushing yards against Kansas, the lowest ground total by an ISU opponent since the Cyclones held Texas Tech to 29 yards in 2007. Harvey said the key was creating confusion up front and mixing up blitz packages.

'We came after them a little bit more this game, which is good because all of us wanted to blitz,' Harvey said. 'But it was good and we need to do it more often, I think.'

'The defense as a whole unit still has a lot of work to do, but the work so far is good,' said nose guard Demond Tucker, who had two stops including 1.5 tackles for loss. 'We work hard so the sacks and stuff is just going to come because we have great pressure.'

Richardson Delivers

Rhoads didn't put much stock into two second-half interceptions thrown by quarterback Sam Richardson. He had plenty of other statistics in his arsenal that illustrated how effective the fifth-year senior was in the 25-point win.

When Rhoads finally sent sophomore Joel Lanning in to relieve Richardson, the seventh-year ISU coach looked up at the scoreboard and saw Richardson was 27-for-37 passing for 269 yards and two touchdowns.

The 38 points were the most Iowa State had produced since it scored 45 on Oct. 18 last year. ISU accumulated more than 500 yards of offense for the first time since Nov. 22, 2014, against Texas Tech.

'I think all those would answer Sam Richardson played a very good football game in leading us to victory in the Big 12 Conference,' Rhoads said.

Perhaps the biggest stat in the eyes of fans was Richardson earning his first Big 12 win as a starter.

'Yeah, it's cool,' Richardson said.

Extra points

Junior cornerback Nigel Tribune was suspended for a violation of the ISU athletic code of conduct policy, Rhoads said, but will be available next weekend against Texas Tech.

Rhoads on kicker Cole Netten on if he's concerned after the junior missed a 28-yard field goal: 'He was perfect the rest of the way, wasn't he? OK.'

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