Yeah, watched Minnesota just a bit ago. This team is definitely odd. Non-traditional by Iowa standards yet still overly conservative.
The Iowa teams we’re used to seeing all win the same way offensively. Establish the run game early, use it to set up the play action and some of the bootleg stuff they used a lot with Stanzi and Beathard, win down the seam and along the short hash then once they have a lead into the late third/fourth quarter, run the ball hard and let the big maulers grind you down. That’s how Iowa has always done it. They are unable to do that right now. They have really struggled in the phone booth. All of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and Iowa State got tremendous pressure along the interior and it’s forced them into a rushing offense that now relies almost solely upon misdirection and space to move the football. This is where they are non-traditional and it’s going to force us to be very, very disciplined outside if we want to try to contain them. Lining up heavy and crashing gaps the way we did against Wisconsin won’t help us.
As for their overly conservative nature, you still see a pass game that reeks of Kirk Ferentz. The Iowa guy, Brew, said they “wing it around” a lot now. But they don’t, at least not by the accepted definition of that term. It’s true they are throwing the football more than they ever have. During the Beathard days, the year they went to the Rose Bowl, the offense averaged around 25 pass attempts per game. This season they’re on pace for over 30 but when it comes to the routes they’re calling, this offense very closely resembles that time. A lot of short to intermediate seam, a lot of short hash and a lot of short to intermediate slant. That’s pretty much their tree in it’s entirety. A lover of the high octane passing offense would call it “boring”. For me, it’s simply conservative which goes back to their ability to prevent turning the football over. Nate Stanley himself is a big part of this as well. I obviously don’t know which is correct, I’ve never sat and broken down film with the kid but Stanley definitely, 100% shows a high propensity to either diagnose coverages well post-snap or simply understand when he doesn’t know the coverage and do the savvy, senior thing by making the safe throw. Jack Coan threw us the ball late in the 4th quarter because he misread the coverage. Jack Plummer threw us a pick 6 because he misread the coverage. Brian Lewerke threw us a pick 6 on a risky throw because he ignored an underneath route to try and play for the first down on 3rd and 10. Nate Stanley is unlikely to make these mistakes. He’ll either read our coverage and avoid it or he’ll admit to himself that he doesn’t understand what is happening and avoid it. Either way, the throws we BEG QBs to try against us likely won’t be thrown. If push comes to shove, they’ll settle for a FG (This team on tape seems to kick a lot of FGs) or punt the ball away and let their defense do the heavy lifting (And they’re pretty good at it). Very conservative.
Iowa is beatable (All dude respect, I don’t see a top 10 team. You need to consistently move the football to be a top 10 team) but not in the way we’ve been beating teams. Lovie claims Betiku is close to coming back but that worries me. His gap awareness is really low. We can’t lose contain against Iowa. I’d rather we played a lesser pass rusher who could hold the edge. We’re also going to have to consider going to heavy sets offensively. Minnesota had success chipping Epenesa...until they didn’t. They have a lot of kids who can get after the QB and they love to be aggressive with the backers. Heavy TE sets and a chip back on passing downs might limit us to an extent but it may be a necessary evil. Our OL won’t win these battles man on man.