Previously: Iowa Offense

mind the wheel

Remember the Penn State offense that Michigan held to 191 total yards on 3.5 YPP?

That same Penn State offense roasted Iowa for 599 yards on 8.6 YPP. PSU only needed to throw the ball 18 times. They averaged 7.2 yards per carry (one sack removed) and 12.3 yards per pass attempt (one sack added).

While not as outright depressing as the offense, Iowa's defense isn't exactly in a good place right now.

Personnel: Seth's diagram [click to embiggen]:

Yes, we've removed Mason Cole's star for now; as you've probably gathered from reading this blog, we expected more out of him at center so far this year. He's got a chance to earn it back quickly if he handles Jaleel Johnson, Iowa's dangerous nose tackle.

Base Set? 4-3. Iowa stays in their base package almost exclusively. When opponents go three-wide, OLB Ben Niemann slides over the slot.

[Hit THE JUMP for the rest of the breakdown.]

Man or zone coverage? A lot of Cover 2 with some Cover 3 mixed in, or at least I think so because it's Iowa. These are the kind of downfield looks BTN gave me on passing downs:

Number of visible officials standing in the goddang end zone: 1.
Number of visible linebackers or defensive backs: 0.3 or so.

I hate you, BTN. I hate you with the fire of a thousand suns.

Pressure: GERG or Greg? Pure GERG. Iowa rushes four most of the time. This works alright if you take the numbers at face value—they're 25th in adjusted sack rate—but they've struggled to hit home against better opponents. The only Big Ten game in which they had more than two sacks was against Rutgers; their only sack against PSU came when much-maligned RT Paris Palmer blew a protection and let in a DE unblocked.

Iowa's most notable attempt to get some heat on Trace McSorley through a blitz backfired spectacularly when CB Greg Mabin whiffed on a corner blitz and ILB Bo Bower just, um, stopped covering Mike Gesicki:

That play ended up marked at the one after review; PSU punched in a TD one play later. As you may have noted, Bower was also the player responsible in coverage for the Saquon Barkley wheel route touchdown at the top of the post. He's not much better at run defense, and it didn't take much debate to highlight him as a sore spot.

Dangerman: Desmond King the rare great cover corner who's also a huge plus in run support. PSU stayed away from him almost completely in this game. Almost.

Even taking into account one bad decision, though, King shut down his side of the field. Michigan may try to get him on switch verticals or the like to see if they can catch him peeking in the backfield, but given the rest of Iowa's back seven they're better off avoiding him and picking on the rest of the defense.

Oddly enough, Iowa's second-best player in coverage isn't a defensive back; it's MIKE Josey Jewell, who covers a ton of ground from his usual underneath zone. Jewell managed to check the run on this play and still haul ass 15 yards downfield to make a play on a ball that would've otherwise been a touchdown:

This fell incomplete—McSorley had to adjust his throw at the last second to keep it wide of Jewell, which didn't leave him a window to actually complete the pass. Meanwhile, Jewell is great against the run in tough circumstances; his D-line doesn't keep him clean consistently and Bower doesn't provide much support, but he still makes a ton of plays. He has great range and knows how to shed blocks. Occasionally he'll get caught out of position while trying to do too much; PSU took advantage of that tendancy with a play-action TE flat that picked up a first down when Jewell bit on the run fake. Michigan will look to mess with him in that fashion, but again, they're better off trying to attack Bower.

NT Jaleel Johnson has a huge PFF pass-rush grade and is slightly positive against the run. That matched the eye test. He can push the pocket or knife past a blocker as a pass-rusher, but he had trouble holding up to double-teams in this game—on one instance I now regret not screencapping, he got turned 180-degrees the wrong way by a double. While Johnson is a good player, I think Mason Cole has a good chance of handling him; Johnson isn't an immovable object like Colorado's Josh Tupou and Cole has generally been good in pass protection this year.

OVERVIEW

If Iowa wants to stay competitive against Michigan, they're going to have to get more out of their defensive front, which is grading out well on PFF but didn't look good against PSU. Johnson has to hold up better to double-teams. Fellow DT Nathan Bazata was easing his way back into the lineup after an injury; either his excellent PFF run grade is misleading or he wasn't back at full strength last week. Bazata's rotation mate, Faith Ekakitie, repeatedly got put on skates in the run game.

The defensive ends have gaudy PFF grades because of their pass rush, but I'm not really seeing it based on this game. WDE Parker Hesse is a lot like Chase Winovich; he consistently gets the edge as a pass-rusher, but often because he's going all-out for it, and that makes it easy for QBs to step up and avoid the rush. Meanwhile, he got handled in the run game; he lost the edge multiple times and when he was blocked, he usually stayed blocked. I don't know how to explain the massive positive grade for DE Anthony Nelson, who got a lot of run on the strong side in this game; he has half a sack over the last seven games and didn't do much in this one outside of a couple fruitless edge-rushes when he turned the corner but couldn't get a hit on the QB. SDE Matt Nelson is Iowa Pat Massey; he's 6'8", 282, and has the issues maintaining leverage in the run game that you'd expect given those measurements.

As mentioned above, Jewell has to do a lot to make up for the rest of the linebacker corps. Bower is a liability in coverage, and to make matters worse, he's not a sure tackler. Niemann at least does a good job tackling in space and he's grading out well against the pass, though the only play I saw of him in coverage (BTN, remember) involved him jumping up on bubble action and allowing a wheel route to go for a big gain.

With an iffy front seven against the run, safety play becomes paramount, and that's a problem for Iowa. Starters Brandon Snyder and Miles Taylor have combined for 25(!) missed tackles so far this season, per PFF. Neither was in a great situation here with Saquon Barkley hitting the edge at full speed, but Snyder (#37) takes a bad angle and Taylor (#19) does the same farther downfield and wipes out.

That play, incidentally, was part of a running theme: Iowa couldn't stop the inverted veer (aka power read), which 247's Steve Lorenz highlighted in a board post suggesting Jabrill Peppers could have a bigger role in the offense this week:

However, we may see more of him on Saturday against Iowa. According to Andrew Callihan of our Penn State affiliate, the Nittany Lions ran ten inverted veer plays against the Hawkeyes for a whopping 149 yards, including a pretty easy 57-yard touchdown run by star running back Saquon Barkley.

Here's another inverted veer:

Now picture Jabrill Peppers with the ball instead of Trace McSorley.

The run game should find success. There will also be openings through the air. CB Greg Mabin should've given up an easy touchdown that McSorley overthrew by several yards:

He's grading out negative in pass coverage, as are both starting safeties. Snyder got matched up with Chris Godwin on a seam route in the first quarter and the pitch-and-catch hardly could've been easier.

If Bazata is back to full health, Iowa may be able to stuff enough Michigan runs to keep things interesting for a little while, but only if the Wolverines keep the playbook cut down to the traditional stuff. If Harbaugh opens it up—and especially if he puts Peppers on the field—then this should be a big game for the offense. Iowa doesn't have enough manpower on the second level to keep M's myriad big-play options quiet, and they might have enough up front to slow the run, either.