It's championship week everybody! And that means it's time for an extra week of FFFF, the first ever to discuss a Michigan football game in Indianapolis. We're in uncharted waters for the stakes and situation, but very much not in uncharted waters for the opponent: the Iowa Hawkeyes are the same old bland Iowa team they've always been. Today we're tackling the defense first, unlike the normal format, because we had to wait until yesterday to find out who the starter at QB would be for the Hawkeyes and your author starts on this column on Monday. Iowa boasts the 4th best defense in SP+ but is that spiked by poor competition? Let's see: 

The Film: This was rather difficult, because when it comes to offense, Iowa Ain't Played Nobody. The best offenses they have faced per SP+ are Iowa State, which happened at the season's beginning, limiting its usefulness, and Maryland, a game that featured seven Terrapin turnovers (!), rendering it basically unusable. That left us grasping for shreds of competency. Iowa faced PSU but only half of that game saw Sean Clifford healthy. I decided to zero in on a good rushing offense as a decent comp. for Michigan, which is Wisconsin. Iowa faced the Badgers after Wisconsin found its new guy at RB in Braelon Allen, and by that point were a very competent rushing offense.

So, I decided to use Wisconsin as the game for me to use for the pressure metric, but I also watched the entirety of the Purdue game, because that is arguably the best passing offense Iowa has seen recently. This was the result of me being dissatisfied by the Wisconsin tape, because while the Badgers are a good rush offense, they play dinosaur football and are so passing-averse that their ability to be a decent comparison for Michigan's offense is not great. Therefore, I'm basically just gonna splice this piece together, using clips from different games, one against a team who can run but can't pass and one against a team who can pass but can't really run. B1G West everybody! 

Personnel: Seth's chart (Updated: click for big)

After last week's paving of Ohio State, our offense graphic looks quite a bit different than preceding weeks. And yes, that's a star you see around Cade McNamara. Go crazy, ya filthy animals. 

Iowa has a pretty consistent collection of starters on defense, with the exception of the defensive line. At defensive end you have Zach VanValkenburg as the pretty consistent starter opposite John Waggoner. Waggoner was around last time Michgan played Iowa in 2019, but was listed as a DT on our chart back then. He rotates at the end spot with Joe Evans, while Devontae Craig gets some snaps here or there at the position too. 

Defensive tackle sees a consistent rotation between four players. The starters are Logan Lee and Noah Shannon, both of whom will get mentioned in this article. They're backed up by Yahya Black and Lukas Van Ness. There's a bit of a gap in the distribution of snaps between the starters and the next two, but it's not a large one and all four see the field a lot. There's also not much of a gap in the quality of play between any of the four, either. 

Iowa runs with two traditional linebackers, and they have two locked in starters at that spot. Jack Campbell (not the Toronto Maple Leafs' goalie) starts at the MLB position, and he's a player I liked a lot in my viewings, particularly in run defense. I didn't fancy the play of WLB Seth Benson quite as much, but he's also got a starting spot firmly secured. Neither Benson nor Campbell come off the field much, but for the sake of throwing a backup name out there, let's go with Jay Higgins. The Hybrid Space Player role in this defense is called the "LEO" or the "CASH", and is manned in a starting capacity by Dane Belton, who also receives a star on this graphic. Jestin Jacobs is the backup, though it should be noted that Belton is more DB sized and Jacobs is more LB-sized. 

The secondary sees standout corner Riley Moss slated to start opposite Jermari Harris, due to the injury of Matt Hankins. If you go off of PFF's data, that's a huge loss. I'm less certain, because Hankins was good against the "we refuse to ever pass it" Badger offense, but then was ripped to tatters by David Bell and the Purdue offense in the second game I watched. Terry Roberts is banged up at corner, but has a role to play if he can go on Saturday, and Xavior Williams is also a depth corner. Safety has two consistent starters in Jack Koerner (who was a starter in 2019!) and Kaevon Merriweather. I was a decent fan of Koerner's play compared to him being cyan'd in 2019. Neither of those two safeties come off the field much at all, but we will throw Quinn Schulte out as a depth name. 

[AFTER THE JUMP: clips!]

Base Set: Iowa's a 4-2-4 and then you can classify the HSP as either a LB to make it 4-3 or a DB to make it 4-2-5. It looks something like this in action: 

I like this image because you can really see the spread of the defense. You have four linemen, one of which is standing up (sometimes he's got a hand in the dirt too), followed by your second level. The HSP often lines up close to the line, as he is here, normally shaded over the TE. In this image the TE is to the top of the line and the HSP is thus right there too, lined up on the Hawkeye logo. The two traditional LB's are at the proper "second level" (right around the 50 in this image). The corners line up on most plays with a lot of cushion, as they do here, and then the two safeties are high and pretty deep. This is the base Iowa defense. 

Against the stodgy Badgers defense, the defensive alignment is the same in principle, just compressed together to match the offense's jumbo formation, as if the defense had gotten caught in the Death Star's trash compactor: 

Same premise, just this time everyone is closer together. And yes, I included this screencap so we'd get that LOLWisconsin graphic on the screen. 

One interesting quirk in Iowa's formations is this alignment in passing downs, which they started going to in order to frazzle Graham Mertz: 

Bring the LBs down to the line of scrimmage and create a wall of DBs at the line to gain. They actually dropped the LBs into coverage on this play, which was pretty successful, because reading seven dudes in zone coverage has been an issue for Mertz. Interested in whether they try it against McNamara. 

Man or zone coverage: Iowa is a zone defense that rolls with a base Cover 2 and then has a bunch of other variants it can toss in. Two safeties high is the standard on each play, but sometimes they can use that to play man with the corners leaving the two deep safeties, which Seth told me was called "Man 2". The best way to describe Iowa is "Graduate Level Cover 2", mixing their coverages out of the mold of their base set as a way to confuse opponents and generate turnovers. 

Pressure: Iowa rushed more than four on 32% of plays that I tracked in the Wisconsin game, which is a little bit on the lower end of things. It's worth noting that a number of those were run blitzes too, because of how rarely the Badgers try and throw the football. They never rushed less than three (also a function of Wisconsin rarely throwing). They were a bit more blitz-happy against a passing-oriented Purdue team (don't have a number because that's not the game I charted extensively), but it's been a consistent problem for Iowa this season that they are routinely unable to generate pressure against the opposition. More on that later. 

Dangerman: For this week's Dangerman, we're picking a player who, funny enough, did not appear in either of the two games I watched. That would be star corner Riley Moss, who missed both Iowa losses (the two games I saw) with injury, yet was still named First Team All-B1G this week. Though I think Iowa losing those two games had more to do with them playing solid teams with semi-competent offenses than it did not having Moss, the fact that they are undefeated with him in the lineup feels notable. Moss' grades from PFF are sparkling and watching them play against Purdue, I could definitely see why the Hawkeyes could use a guy like him in the lineup, particularly when Hankins was being abused relentlessly by David Bell.

Moss' absences leading to losses is one reason to describe him as indispensable to this game, but there are more reasons I tabbed him for this honor. The injury to Hankins will place more weight on Moss' shoulders to hold down Michigan's passing offense, and secondly, Moss is a consistent fiend at interceptions. His 4 INTs in nine games played was the second highest INT/G rate in the conference this season. Given that the #1 way Iowa defeats Michigan is through generating another goofy +4 turnover margin game, they really need Moss to come through for them. 

He made his interceptions felt early in the season with two pick-sixes in the same game against Indiana: 

Moss has a good sense of where to be when the ball is being thrown and his read on that second interception is good evidence of that. Some of his other INTs have been lucky, right-place, right-time plays: 

I don't have many more clips to show you of Moss in action, because again, he wasn't in either game I watched, but the profile of "good, ballhawking cover corner" is a pretty simple mold to comprehend for most readers. That's who Moss is. 

 

Overall

So how do we feel about this Iowa defense? I think it's a very solid, well-coached unit, but I'm highly skeptical that it is a dominant, world-beating group given some of the results this season and also what I saw on tape. This week I'm going to look at the run defense side and then the pass defense side, basically moving from the Wisconsin game to the Purdue game in the process. 

RUN DEFENSE

The Iowa run defense appears to be rather fearsome, allowing 105.8 yards per game on only 3.0 YPC. What I saw in these two games was about what I expected: Purdue, a terrible run offense, got very little on the ground and Wisconsin, a pretty good run offense, was able to find some success. The Badgers ran for only 3.5 YPC as a team, but Braelon Allen, who I think is their best back by a considerable margin, was able to rush for 5.2 YPC. And looking under the hood, you see some encouraging signs for a team like Michigan. Notably, the defensive tackles were often being moved by Wisconsin's interior offensive line, and it was the linebackers and safeties who were helping to fill the gaps and make up for it. This is a problem that can be eliminated if you pass the ball effectively and spread those LBs out, something Wisconsin was incapable of doing. You see a lot of plays that look like this: 

There the DTs are Logan Lee and Noah Shannon, and they are both shoved out of the way but then the LBs Jack Campbell and Seth Benson come down to make the tackle to hold it to a 4.5 yard gain. Wisconsin OLs were regularly winning their battles against this defensive front on the ground, but it was the fact that Paul Chryst refuses to take this offense out of its hard shell that held them back. On the very next play you have Lee and Zach VanValkenburg get sat on but because Wisconsin is in a goal line formation at the 41 yard-line, you're only able to get a few yards out of that win: 

#97 and #85 to the top of the line

Spread the damn formation out! In other cases you have a solid win at the line, but then someone from the back 7 makes a great play. In this case it's (now injured) CB Matt Hankins who fills the hole: 

CB #8 to bottom of screen

I found myself rather puzzled at PFF's ultra-positive grades for this defensive line, because again, they were not doing much work against Wisconsin. Wisconsin's the best rush offense Iowa has seen and yet is still not as good as the one they're set to see on Saturday. If the LBs and safeties didn't know how to solve the play, or lost a tackle, it was trouble: 

Despite the wins they were getting on the interior, I actually thought some of the best rushing plays came outside the box, something that Purdue and their spread offense was able to do occasionally. Here's Wisconsin edging VanValkenburg and Jestin Jacobs and taking advantage of Campbell overrunning it: 

In particular, this could be a game for the JJ package. Purdue has a similar situation with a running QB/passing QB trade-off and the running QB package brought some success in this one. The Iowa edges had trouble recognizing it and that was about the only way Purdue could get yards on the ground: 

If you're moving their defensive tackles with regularity, you may not need to do anything fancy, but I do like the possibility of targeting the boundary again, like Michigan did against Ohio State. It may be a good idea just to do it so you can get the LBs, Campbell and Benson out of the box. I thought their run fills were very good, and they made up for issues on that defensive line. Their leaping heroism to stone Wisconsin's FB dive at the goal line is both the most B1G West clip I'll show you this season, while also encapsulating what I'm talking about when you see how the DTs get shoved on this play: 

Don't run at the linebackers! 

 

PASS DEFENSE

Iowa's pass defense faced a major test in their game against Purdue and it did not go particularly well. The Hawkeyes were ripped apart by the Boilermakers, allowing 378 passing yards on 31/43 completion. That said, it was mostly one guy doing all the damage, David Bell. The sensational wide receiver hauled in 11 catches on 12 targets (!) for 240 yards (!). The clips are pretty ugly in that one, contrasted to the impaired Wisconsin passing offense, which managed only 11/22 for 104 yards (4.7 Y/A lol). My conclusion from watching the two games is that you can pass the football on Iowa if you have a QB that can read a defense and you have a receiver or two who can get separation. Purdue had both of those things, Wisconsin had neither. 

The reason I bring up reading a defense is because of the way they throw different coverages at you that sprout off their Cover 2 base. Here's their Man 2 approach on a 3rd & 6 against Mertz: 

This was the big change Iowa made after the first couple Wisconsin drives. They dropped more dudes into coverage, played man with the corners, left the safety help over the top, and because Mertz is skittish about throwing and because the Wisconsin receivers can't get any separation, no dice. Coverage was generally pretty strong from the Iowa secondary in this game: 

Unsurprisingly, Wisconsin's best passing situations came through PA, when they built on their running game. The Badgers were so boring and consistent at slamming the ball up the middle in the red zone that the Hawkeyes felt they didn't have to respect the pass. Then Wisconsin capitalized for a TD: 

You can compare this experience of Wisconsin's compact offense unable to find any room in the secondary with Purdue and David Bell who were creating it all day long. Bell was no match for Hankins, who got him on plays like this over and over again: 

If Iowa was just sitting in Cover 2, Bell was able to find space: 

And he even beat Iowa over the top: 

Michigan doesn't currently have a player of Bell's caliber, but I'd say that Andrel Anthony, Cornelius Johnson, Mike Sainristil, and Roman Wilson are a significantly better group of receivers than what Wisconsin boasts at this time and should be able to have some success finding holes in the Iowa zone. It may be harder to come by when Iowa switches into man on a blitz if you're matched up against Moss, but with Hankins out, there should be a bit of a drop off from him to the next corners out there. As for the rest of the secondary personnel, I don't have many notes on those backup corners. I liked their FS Jack Koerner, but that was more for his play in run defense than anything in the pass game, while Kaevon Merriweather didn't grade out particularly well in my data, but it wasn't enough to give him a cyan. 

Attacking Iowa through the air is also aided by the fact that Iowa gives you tons of soft coverage. Remember the base set photo from earlier, where the corners play 5-7 yards off the line of scrimmage? Yeah, those flats should be open all day long, as they were for Purdue: 

Iowa plays this way for a reason. They're content to give up the flats because that's what Cover 2 does, and they need to play Cover 2 in order to both close the athletic gap between themselves and a team like Michigan or Penn State and to be able to build their tricky Cov2 variants that help them create interceptions. Since 2017, Iowa has been one of the top interception defenses in the country. Here are their ranks in INTs per game by year among all FBS defenses: 

2017: 2nd

2018: 3rd 

2019: 34th

2020: 11th

2021: 1st 

Turnovers are generally random luck, but Iowa's ability to generate interceptions specifically is not luck, it's schematic. They play this way in pass defense because it can confuse the opposition and create the takeaways they need to win, especially this year when their offense is incapable of moving the football and needs points handed to them by the defense. 

One more area that's worth discussing that you may have picked up on in some of these clips: Iowa is terrible at generating pressure. Last time we saw the Hawkeyes in 2019 they had an elite pass rushing defensive end in AJ Epenesa, who got a huge amount of that year's FFFF devoted to him. This year it isn't like that. The four man rushes that Iowa sent against the Badgers almost never got home, while they were marginally more successful against a rather poor pass protecting Purdue team. As a whole, Mertz was very rarely pressured even when the blitzes came, and Iowa's sack numbers back that up. They sit 86th in sack rate and 76th in sacks per game. Given how good Michigan's offensive line has been in pass pro this season, and having just watched them stuff ostensibly better pass rushers in a locker last weekend, the Wolverines should be able to deliver clean pockets for Cade McNamara. 

 

What does this mean for Michigan? 

Iowa has a good defense, but I did not come away from watching these two games thinking that they are the 2016 Michigan defense reincarnate. Their defensive line is nowhere close, with the defensive tackles being moved by a good offensive line and a defense-wide inability to get pressure on the QB. They lock opponents down because they rarely face even semi-competent offenses, and haven't played anybody in the conference who can run and pass it effectively. The back seven make up for some of the issues in run defense up front against a team like Wisconsin, but a better offense, one who can even attempt to throw the ball, should be able to relieve some of that pressure. 

The secondary is very solid and the variations of Cover 2 help to induce the one thing that Iowa's defense gets by off of: turnovers. This is a pretty good matchup for Michigan as a result, since the Wolverines have thrown just five interceptions this season- only 60% of which were by the player who figures to be throwing most all of the passes on Saturday. So long as Cade McNamara is his usual self, I like the chances for Michigan here. Iowa has not faced an offense as good or as complete as Michigan, one that can actually exploit the soft cushion given by the corners, with a QB who can find holes in the zone, AND a running game that should be able to find room up the middle on the ground. Mixing in Michigan's bread-and-butter power running scheme with targeting the boundary on end-arounds and threatening down the field through the air should provide a very different approach than either Purdue or Wisconsin showed. And it's worth noting that both of those two teams beat Iowa anyway, mostly because they avoided the turnover bugaboo. 

Limit turnovers to <2 and score ~24 points and it should be enough to win this game. There's a chance Michigan could score more than that though.