OT- How Iowa builds a defensive line

Submitted by iawolve on

Figured this was appropriate for this week and how much attention that front four is getting in the media, justifiably so due to their effectiveness. 

First when you come to Iowa as a dlineman you are left on the island since it is pretty much a standard four man front with little, if any, blitzing. They like twists and line stunts, but it sort of feeds a unit mentality of "it starts and stops with us". Take that comment FWIW.

Second, they still love to bulk up less regarded recruits and position switch guys to DT, particularly LBs.  Last year it was King and Kroul who were 3* LBs in high school. This year it is Karl Klug (2* LB), Mike Daniels (2* DE) and Christian Ballard (4* TE) in the middle. On the edge, they tend try for at least one more highly regarded DE where you have Adrian Clayborn (4* DE) and Brodrick Binns (3* LB) on the other side. This approach creates a fairly athletic line, but is not possible with a good SC program (which they have) and gives me some hope that we can have the same sort of luck. 

With that being said, I think we can still get them to the edge, I am less optimistic able much up the middle as there LBs run downhill behind that line. Unfortunately it will look a lot like last week so we will need effective passing to help the run game. 

MinorRage

October 11th, 2010 at 2:51 PM ^

This is definitely not OT. Interesting to see what kind of position switches they have though. I think Iowa's d-line is vulnerable. I remember the game last year when Denard got in with no threat of throwing the ball he was moving it pretty well against them. Iowa is the type of D that I think we can expect to see a lot of those 5-10 yard runs, but we'll be lucky if we can break one or two long ones.

jayman065

October 11th, 2010 at 7:00 PM ^

Yeah, this is not so much a match-up i am looking forward too.  Lewan has all the potential in the world, but is young and inexperienced and will be going up against one of the absolute best.  I am fearful of him getting beat if we drop into a straight dropback passing mode.  However, i supppose thats how you get better, by playing against the best.

blueheron

October 11th, 2010 at 3:25 PM ^

I'm not a fan of all things Iowa, but I sometimes wonder whether they lead the NCAA in "no-name recruits that make the NFL."  Dallas Clark is probably the best-known example.

jayman065

October 11th, 2010 at 6:57 PM ^

An interesting read, nice post.  Hopefully after saterday, they will need to RE build their D line, after they are ground into the turf by the o line, and denard rushes for 200 on them.  

m83econ

October 11th, 2010 at 8:18 PM ^

and run off the non-performers.  For instance, how many TE commits do the have this year? The 3 this year plus 3 signed in 2009-2010 would be 6.  Except they are no more likely to be TEs in college than the 7 brought in 2006-2008.