Iowa Snowflakes: The Defense

DL stepped up at the end of the game.  Held Iowa to 7 points at home for over 59 minutes 50 seconds. 5 & 0, 2 & 0 with a win at Kinnick.  

I assume the late Petras air raid was going mega conservative defense because as soon as it was 20-0 it felt like everything got worse

Pretty great outside of garbage time and one shirt field. This was our road test and we passed. I am generally not one to question depth charts but Okie seems like he deserves more snaps.

Mixed bag.  Some amazing D plays and they did limit Iowa.  But...the fact is that Iowa's offense is bad, and a lot of that is that Iowa's QB just misses easy throws often  If Iowa had a good QB...don't even want to think about it.   

35 rushing yards from Iowa for 1.45 yds/rush

Oh YES!!

Go BLUE!!!

Pressure late. There are lots of ranked teams losing this weekend. Road conference victories are like gold. Wasn’t perfect but they played their tails off and got the stop when it mattered.

Good game but iowa very poor offensive team so idk how much to take away from this one.  I do think this was the best performance by iowa all season so we'll see how much that means.

Need to generate more pass rush, but more than that the LB corp looks to be having a tough time of things.  Still a good showing against a bad defense.  Last week’s performance was more impressive, imho 

The D did what it needed to do. It was hard to watch at times, but I'll take it. I'd like to see more creative ways of putting pressure on the QB in the future. 

Is Iowa’s OL good enough to take anything away from the constant pressure? Feels like they’re bad but UM looked pretty damn dominant up front on D

Defense looked well-prepared, had a little trouble with the tight end passes. They need to work on that. But...Kinnick has cursed M a long time, and today the defense had some key stops.

Not spectacular. Iowa's second half drives were certainly stressful. The meltdown bros in the thread are overreacting a bit; we have known that there are potential weaknesses in this defense, and nothing today suggests anything remarkable either better or worse. 

Defense has moments they look bad, and others when they look great. Worst was giving up a 3rd and 22 that led directly to Iowa’s first TD. Followed by letting Iowa March methodically down the field.

But then they got the stop on 3rd and 4th and short when Iowa was inside the 10. And followed up with a gorgeous 4 and out with multiple QB hits/sacks by our new pass rush that sealed the game.

The last drive essentially doesn’t count, it was literally a meaningless sad TD drive. Michigan called off the dogs. 

Blitz Jesse !!!! What are waiting for on these third and long’s teams are getting against us . Jenkins is very disappointing . Expected more from him . Glad Morris is stepping his game up . Our linebackers can’t cover worth a damn so bring the heat !!!!

Mostly good, often seem to get a little over confident.  Pass rush at the end seemed to take a step forward, albeit when Iowa absolutely had to pass.  The pass D looked a little discombobulated at times though.   

Overall good, but 4th quarter D got a little too bendy 

Still figuring out what they are 5 games in.

So my one real complaint in this game, as I contemplate the fact that we were playing an elite defense and thus I wasn't going to get everything I hoped for on offense, is that the defensive gameplan/calls seemed very weird and not suited to the opponent. Player execution seemed fine to good. But it looked like they were sitting in a soft zone and were reluctant to blitz (at least early on, when they could have set the tone by hitting Petras more). Which is ironic, since this is an opponent--bad QB and bad WRs--where you can Retvrn to Don Brown: Man up and send extra pressure. Felt like the plan was to prevent big plays from... the Iowa passing attack? Maybe it only looked that way in the broadcast and we'll learn more from later reviews of the film. But it felt like Michigan went galaxy brain with a conservative defensive gameplan that's more suited to playing Maryland than Iowa. In fact, it felt like we trusted our DBs to cover a lot more last week, against vastly better WRs. Strange set of choices. Glad we got the W, of course

I hesitate to complain about a game we won, and that we were expected to win, but we've played games like this before, where we played well enough against the teams we were favored against, but exhibited tendencies that led to us getting blown out later in the season. Our soft zones and lack of pass rush in the 3rd and early 4th quarters, in obvious passing downs, wasn't great, and is something we won't want to do in Columbus. 

Spencer Petras outgained J.J. by about 100 yards...

The defense is the most scary (not in a good way) part of this team.  They look passive and just going through the motions much of the time. Almost as if they are thinking too much rather than reacting. 

I am not a big fan of the opposing team scoring garbage-ISH touchdowns really late in the game ("ISH" applies to Maryland).  And that last TD by Iowa helped my bets today today.  But still I did not like it.  Otherwise, the stretch run looks like it's going to be a pain in the ass all season long.  Perhaps getting NHG back will help that some.

Mike Morris is a hoss.  The post-game interview of him standing next to Harbaugh and McCarthy gave me a sense for how friggin big that guy is.  Holy cow.  And I'd love to see more Okie as we go along.  Mason Graham has been phenomenal.  It's amazing that he's a true freshman.

It seemed decent today -- not dominant, but pretty good.

They only gave up 7* points, on the road, and it took a short field for that to happen. Pass rush, though absent for much of the first parts of the game, showed up in passing situations, and with a vengeance in the last part of the fourth quarter. I wonder if the DL was more focused on  playing the run in the first 3 quarters versus going balls-out for Petras -- they only allowed 35 rushing yards (including sacks) for the game.

*Last Iowa TD drive excluded, as the D was in prevent and just playing to prevent a rapid score.

As far as what could use some improvement, the secondary did give up some chunks, even before being in prevent on the last TD drive. I'm assuming they were in a lot of zone, and that could certainly improve. I'm not savvy enough at breaking things down to comment on LB play, so I'll leave that to UFR. The DL seemed as though they improved, and they really got after it when it was clear that Iowa needed to throw. 

Overall, this is a defense that has to improve to keep us in it at the Shoe, and they probably have to get a bit better before the PSU game. I'm hoping for improvement against Indiana so i can feel better about the game against the Nittany Lions.

Wasn’t happy with some of the soft tackling and the scheme didn’t account for a lot of Iowa’s predictable scheme. However, was happy with the pressure we got at the end. Okie needs more snaps. Dude is the most natural pass rusher on the team. He got like 5 pressures in the last few drives of the 4th quarter

We are about what I thought we would be.  We have a lot of nice pieces on defense.  Pass rush worries me.  They did go bonkers at the end of the game and that was encouraging.  I think we have LB problems.  I saw Rolder get some run, after some of the longer Iowa runs.  The coaches do a great job with the kids.  They understand the scheme, I just think we may have a talent deficiency at some positions.  If Green comes back and plays well and Okie gets us a pass rush on third down I may change my tune.

Red flags abound

PSU could put up 40 and OSU will drop 70 if they don’t improve. Pass rush needs to improve, coverage was poor relative to last week, tackling still bad