The Iowa football team’s defense dominated Northwestern on its home field.
By Ian Murphy
EVANSTON, Illinois — Most defenses would be happy to hold their opponents to 10 points on the road in a conference game against a ranked team.
Iowa’s defense is not most defenses, and linebacker Josey Jewell is not one of those linebackers.
“I mean 10 points still is a little [too many]; it kind of hurts a little, we have some mistakes to fix,” he said.
Those mistakes are mostly minor, as the Hawkeyes played arguably their best defensive game of the season, limiting Northwestern to just 198 total yards and no scores after halftime.
But on a day on which the offense line and running backs stole the show, for Jewell and others, those 10 points mean there’s work to be done.
“The first half, we made some mistakes,” junior Desmond King said. “We came back and played shutout defense.”
A decade ago, a Bob Sanders-led Hawkeye defense called themselves the bullies of the Big Ten, and there’s an argument to be made the 2015 iteration of the Hawkeyes are approaching such status.
Northwestern redshirt freshman quarterback Clayton Thorson was rattled all day, finishing with 17 completions on 35 attempts for just 125 yards. Further, highly touted Northwestern running back Justin Jackson was held in check, to the tune of 30 yards (his second-lowest total of the year) on 10 carries.
Jackson entered with 661 rushing yards on the season, an average of more than 100 yards per game, but he had no such success against the Hawkeyes.
“We had seen that, and we’ve also been pretty dang successful against power-run teams,” senior linebacker Cole Fisher said.
Fisher noted the hype surrounding Jackson and said the Hawkeyes were ready to embrace the challenge.
“This is the next big deal going around the Big Ten right now, let’s see how we do about this,” he said.
Tack on King snagging his Big Ten-leading sixth interception of the season, 2 sacks by a defensive line that more than handled its first game in life after senior Drew Ott, and total of 198 total yards allowed, the defense should feel good about its body of work.
Iowa recovered 2 fumbles along with King’s interception, connected on 3 sacks for a net loss of 32 yards, and aside from cornerback Greg Mabin blowing coverage on a 34-yard reception by Mike McHugh late in the second quarter to set up Northwestern’s touchdown, Iowa did not fall prey to the big-play bug. At one point, Thorson missed on 10-consecutive pass attempts.
Part of the lack of offense from Northwestern, which favors a strong running game rather than Oct. 17’s air raid, was because Iowa’s offensive explosion in the second half.
The Hawkeyes took a 23-10 lead with 6:42 left in the third quarter, not quite enough to put the game away but enough to force Northwestern to abandon the run in order to conserve clock.
The youth at quarterback exposed itself, and the Hawkeye defensive line lived in the backfield from that point until the end of the game.
“We were able to kind of pin our ears back and play the pass because they were kind of left-handed from then on out,” said redshirt freshman Parker Hesse, who replaced Drew Ott.
The Hawkeyes improved to 7-0 for the first time since 2009 with the Oct. 17 win, and with a defense playing its best football of the season, the ceiling looks high for the Hawkeyes.
“I had a great time out there,” Fisher said. “The mindset we had going into this year, it just feels different.”
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