Previously: The Offense

Resources: My charting, Iowa game notes, Iowa roster, CFBstats

There are four storylines to track with the Iowa defense this year. The first, and longest coming, is the defensive tackle depth after a backlog of DL talent caused a spate of transfers in 2016-'17, then graduated in 2018. The second is the push-pull between DC Phil Parker's beloved linebackers and the 21st century's demand that you turn one of them into a hybrid safety. The third is AJ Epenesa: what does Iowa do with a bona fide 5-star defensive end who's the size of an offensive tackle and runs like a safety? Lastly it's injuries; like Michigan the Hawkeyes got pretty banged up, particularly in their secondary depth, in the first few weeks of the season. Some of those guys are back but unable to reclaim old starting positions. Some of them are out and sorely missed.

The film: El-Assico!

Iowa State runs a similar offense to Michigan's. Also they're not MTSU, Rutgers, or Miami (NNTM). Also they fall down, miss assignments, hold a lot, and fumble. They're good at bombs and arc zone.

Also sorry about the video quality. I had a massive H.265 file that doesn't work with anything yet, and a condensed version of the game that wasn't in great resolution but, you know, worked. I used the latter whenever I could.

Personnel: My diagram: 

PDF Version, full-size version (or click on the image)

Michigan's banged up and have mostly surrendered their stars for florping around all season. At least one former star is one more bad game away from cyan. Onwenu got his finally, and Collins keeps his. If you made weekly depth chart graphics you could send messages to the coaching staff too.

On the flip side, yes that's Mario's brother, Michael Ojemudia (+2/-3.5 in coverage, +2/-0 vs run), and yes he's somehow pretty decent, though I think he plays soft to make up for his general Ojemudianess. The other cornerback spot had meh/oft-injured Matt Hankins at it last year, backed up by meh Julius Brents, and now features redshirt freshman DJ Johnson (+7/-6, +2/-1), who's holding down the fort for Hankins (out) but remains ahead of Brents, who returns this week. ISU tested Johnson all day and he was mostly there on the deep stuff and not there for the first ten yards underneath.

It's a similar story with safety, where preseason projected starter Kaevon Merriweather is back but according to reports is now stuck behind FS Jack Koerner (+4/-11 coverage, +1/-0 run), who gave up most of ISU's points on a pair of EXTREME –4s, thus the cyan. SS Geno Stone (+3/-2 coverage, +3/-1 run) got to start at strong safety last year when the old SS was drafted for hybrid duty, although Stone himself looks and plays a lot like a hybrid. He also got to spend most of this day chilling while ISU ignored his side for the Koerner/Johnson one.

I was disappointed in the latest linebacker crop. MLB Kristian Welch (+4.5/-2 run, +0/-3 coverage) is decent; he's good at reading and reacting to the run and not great at playing his zone. WLB Djimon Colbert (+3/-6 run, +1/-9! coverage) was a tackling machine last year as a redshirt freshman rotation player and blitzer, but throwing coverage onto his plate seems to have short-circuited him. He is discussed more thoroughly below. After playing with an HSP last year, Parker is back to using a more traditional strongside linebacker, mostly because Nick Niemann (+0/-3, +5/-2) is too much of a throwback, thump-ya SAM for an old school guy like Parker to leave on the bench. Niemann will also play WLB over Colbert when they go to their nickel, which they don't do very often. Merriweather appears to be the guy, though there's another Niemann-esque guy in Barrington Wade they want to play.

The line is way better than the preseason whinging suggested. Both DEs, Chauncey Golston (+9.5/-4) and AJ Epenesa (+16.5/-2) played a ton last year in rotational roles; Golston had some trouble defending zone reads early but also paid off a lot of the singling he gets with Epenesa constantly demanding all extra blockers. Left DT Cedrick Lattimore (+4/-1) was the returning rotational piece who was always just some weight away from being okay, and at 295 as a senior he's there as a run stopper, though only a little dangerous as a pass rusher. Right DTs Daviyon Nixon (+2.5/-0) and Austin Schulte (+1/-1) are line of scrimmage players, solid at the type of run defense they play but don't offer any pass rush. The low numbers for the interior guys suggest Parker's plan might be to mitigate them some.

[after THE JUMP: You can mitigate DTs?]

No. I didn't mean to suggest that.

[after THE JUMP: False advertising!]

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Base Set: It's a 4-3 even that gets shifted to an under by the will of the offense. Iowa's front is left/right, not strong/weak. There's a left end, a left tackle, etc. Very old school. It does make the DL rather interchangeable; an end is an end, a tackle a tackle, and as generalists there's no point in making them do things the other guy wouldn't.

What you can do is motion them from an over to an under because all they'll change is where the SAM linebacker is set up. They may tap their toushies too, which signals to the linebackers they've transitioned their gaps to whatever the motion transition is. The over/under split below is really more about how often the other team motioned:

El-Assico	D Shift					Safeties			Rushers
Down Type	Over	Under	Wide	Goofball		1-high	2-high		3	4	5	6+
Standard (36)	47%	44%	8%	-		22%	78%		-	44%	36%	19%
Passing (19)	42%	21%	16%	21%		11%	89%		-	63%	26%	11%
Total (55)	25	20	6	4		10	45		-	28	18	9

I swapped where I show tendency vs totals

Goofball is Iowa's take on the 1-5-5 defense. They'll stand around schmoozing about their 401Ks, the latest Juan Harris transfer rumors, and whether Luka Garza will ever learn to how to play defense and then the bar opens and…

What Shall We Call the Hybrid Today?: Cash. They stopped using a hybrid and went back to a SAM for the most part, but the hybrid position is called "Cash" because "Money" is a typical coach shorthand for a nickel/dime position.

Man or zone coverage: The most zone team we're going to see this year, since the other fully committed Cover 2 team, Northwestern, isn't on the menu. It's Cover 2 almost every play, with some man shell or Quarters thrown in just for the blitzes, but then those are just ways of playing Cover 2.

Pressure: GERG or GREG: They dial it up, particularly on standard downs, with a lot of what I call "x.5"—an extra pass rusher who breaks off if the running back squirrels out of there. 

Dangerman: I watched AJ Epenesa versus Rutgers last week and felt bad for cyan'ing their left tackle for being on the business end of all that carnage.

Epenesa should not exist. He's looks like an offensive tackle, so much so that at first you'll think of Dan Rumishek-ian defensive ends of the '90s. Then AJ springs forth with uncanny acceleration, then either bats away the arms of a blocker who wishes he had Epenesa's length or launches that poor dude into his quarterback. The only hole in his game is he arrives a bit out of control, having accelerated a 6'6"/290 body to speeds they don't let automobiles go in residential neighborhoods.

Iowa State decided to double him every play, speed up the passing game, and generally nope nope nope nope the hell away from him. This isn't Chase Allen (or Chase Winovich) squirting past your blocking. This is violence.

People have been making "A.J. Epenesa vs [Baby Seal]" videos on Youtube, for reasons having to do with things you don't want to know about humanity.

With all that going on, the other DE, Chauncey Golston, gets to be in on a lot of action. That's not ideal, since he can more than hold his own.

Both of them got picked on by ISU's arc read game some, with Golston looking at times like he'd never seen the play.

Also the punter, Aussie Arizona State grad transfer Michael Sleep-Dalton, who averaged 44 yards per punt net(!) last year, with just one returnable kick. Prior to ASU he was at a community college, and before that he was an electrician. He can punt with either foot. He's 27.

OVERVIEW:

Let's review our storylines.

1. Defensive tackles: they have them? The DTs they're playing ain't so bad, despite already suffering a hit to the depth chart.

Cedrick Lattimore (#95) was always about whether he could size up without losing his penetration, and I think that's come to pass (I know, it's weird, but places that aren't ours sometimes have good things happen to them). They're also getting what they paid for in Daviyon Nixon, whose participation looked dodgy after an academic redshirt and a few months in the transfer portal. Even backup Austin Schulte, who's been sidelined most of the last few years, is rounding into a positive contributor. If they do get back Brady Reiff eventually, the position might even be deep.

The way Iowa plays their DTs they're not supposed to penetrate except on the blitzes (about 20% of the defense) or passing downs. Most of what they're doing is preventing linemen from releasing to the linebackers, and trusting the linebackers to clean up. It's similar to how Northwestern plays. There's a lot of the kind of defensive holding that doesn't ever get called, and a lot of slanting that can turn into detritus linemen on the ground right where you were planning to put a nice paved running path. Only Lattimore gets to the backfield—tackles are for linebackers. Speaking of…

2. The hybrid: they don't have one? Playing a soft Cover 2 does let you use more linebackerish sorts on the second level, but I don't know if Nick Niemann is worth removing a guy with a neck from the defense in 2019. The hybrid safety was pretty successful last year mostly because the player, [edit: updated] now-NFL safety Malik Hooker, was good at it, and they were short on LB depth. This drew in Geno Stone at strong safety, where Stone was an immediate success.

Now it's safety depth that's the issue. Or was, pending the health of Kaevon Merriweather, a true sophomore from Belleville who was playing basketball when Jermain Crowell found him. Niemann's an awkward fit at weakside linebacker—and for this century in general—but I also think Parker's going to ride that guy as long as he can. It makes them not as fast on the edges. Rutgers got Niemann matched up with Raheem Blackshear—the same guy who just gave Jordan Glasgow fits—and was rewarded with about their only Power 5 passing yards all season. If they try that with DPJ or Ronnie Bell…

I feel like I have to justify my take on Djimon Colbert, because it's not every day one comes down negative on an Iowa linebacker, especially one the Iowans seem to think is fine. Here are the Colbert events in my charting:

• 32-2cov out of his zone. 94+.05 was getting held like whoa.
• 32-2cov leaves a hole in coverage, has nobody else he's watching but this TE. 94+ occupies two guys, had one on the ground
• 32+cov read the WR screen and is booking for it before the snap, but he's too slow to get the TFL so a 5 yard loss becomes a 1 yard gain. 12+ came and was ready to stop it after another yard. 34 reacted more slowly but the speed difference between these two is sharp. Like sharper than Bush vs McCray/
• 32-2cov leaves a hole in coverage, has nobody else he's watching but this TE. 94+ occupies two guys, had one on the ground
• 49- and 32-2cov both way out nobody in middle zone despite 2 receivers there
• Refs-2 as 34+ in position then (h) is grabbed so bad. 32-2 bad angle turns this from bad to potentially all the yards, until 94+ runs it down like a safety. A 6'6/300 safety. Unreal.
• Entire DL is just collapsing pocket, TA. 94+.5, 54+.5, 95+.5, 57+.5, 32+.5
• 94+ around quickly, can't make sack, 74- stuck at LOS just falls down. 32+.5 and 11+.5 force out
• 94 in coverage, 32-cov slow to break on the route and gives up 1st
• Pin & Pull, 95- gives up ground and 32- gets caught behind it watching two pullers cross his face. Would give anything for a Parker cam right now.
• 32-3 horrible angle gives up the edge, 9+ comes over to just barely push out or else this is getting many yards. Cyan time.
• 94 and 95 run into each other, QB falls down, EL ASSICO! 32+ was there

3. Epenesa: What do you do about him? Damn Iowa State already used the thing I was saying in places I knew Iowa didn't have any agents: the Arc Read package.

That's the play that to an unblocked DE first looks like zone read, then when he sees a crosser coming at him looks like split zone (which you use to thwack a guy holding up for zone read), then WHOOP the crosser just runs by the guy expecting to get lit up and the quarterback keeps and follows him outside. Back before Shea Patterson was replaced by a robot who never keeps, Michigan was really good at this. What's great about it is how it can screw with a DE who can't stop his momentum, especially if your quarterback is good at making the read last. Every defense practices meshes of course, but Iowa doesn't see as many in practice as most, and it shows. Watch Golston, the DE on the bottom.

Hit that shuffling end outside once and he'll start thinking he's got to defend the quarterback, which means you get to run a back right past him next time:

Iowa State also used a lot of TE motion against Iowa to get them in the preferred setup. They'd start with the TE and RB on the same side then flip whichever they wanted for the gap they wanted to attack. When Iowa set up in an over front, Iowa State motioned the TE and now they're in an under. When Iowa adjusted by coming out in an under, the RB flipped sides. Soon they had Iowa's slant tendencies down and used that to set up an arc read that expected a diving Epenesa.

ISU's best running plays all came from this package. While they won't be as surprised by it, I like that it punishes how Iowa likes to crash their DEs. Those are big guys, and I don't care how athletic you are, you can't turn a body that big that fast.

4. Injuries. The secondary is where they were really feeling it. I gave FS Jack Koerner a cyan because he had two –4 events in this game. The first was getting suckered by a trick play:

That's bad, but understandable. Not knowing the rules of Cover 2 as a safety for Iowa however is GERT OFF THE FIELD:

I didn't think the picked-on cornerback, Johnson, was as responsible for these events as the announcers did; the way to defend scissors in Cover 2 is to exchange because the exchange turns the break-off point into an interception event. On the other event, Johnson has the edge when the #2 receiver gets the ball in the flat, with the safety responsible for the deep half.

Johnson is small and a redshirt freshman, but has his job down. The weirdness to me is the coaches insisting that Koerner's going to start even if Merriweather is 100 percent. That could be B.S. and Merriweather will be back there all athletic and boring and stuff. Or it could mean Merriweather's really rusty and they don't trust him. Or that he's not as back as they're representing. Or they're going to move Niemann to WLB full time and put Merriweather back on the field. It does appear that is the end of the list of guys they'll trust out there right now. Cover 2 when you're not covering it with lots of other coverages is doable if you know all the little tricks. Right now I'm not sure Iowa can put a secondary together that's going to meet their normal standards. As the premier research university in this conference, I believe it falls to us to find out.