One of the stories of the early portion of the Iowa football season has been the lack of quarterback sacks for the Hawkeyes. Last year, for example, they had 35 sacks on the season.<\/p>\n
This year, Iowa has a grand total of one sack and that was in the first game of the season by Deontae Craig. It is worth noting that Iowa does have seven quarterback hurries, led by three by Joe Evans.<\/p>\n
But, are we concerned about the lack of sacks two weeks into the season? How many will they have on Saturday and who leads the way?<\/p>\n
Those are the questions of the week that will be answered by our esteemed staff.<\/p>\n
KYLE HUESMANN<\/strong>: No, I don\u2019t think there is any reason to be worried about the pass rush at this juncture. Yes, they only have one sack through two games, but that hasn\u2019t caused any issues with the overall performance of the Phil Parker defense. It is also important to note that both Utah State and Iowa State did not take a lot of time to get passes out of their quarterbacks hands.<\/p>\n In the opener, Cooper Legas completed 32 passes and had just 76 air yards on those completions (2.4 ypc). Last weekend, Rocco Becht totaled just 279 air yards on 44 pass attempts (6.3 ypa). Despite the quick pass attempts, the Hawkeyes have totaled 30 pressures on 95 dropbacks and have the #28 ranked pass rush grade by Pro Football Focus.<\/p>\n The unfortunate news is that the opponent this week, Western Michigan, likes to get the ball out quick as well. Their three QB\u2019s have racked up just 131 air yards on 46 completions (2.8 ypc), while their pass catchers have been able to turn that into 391 yards (8.5 ypc). I think the Hawkeyes get a couple of sacks and are led by Joe Evans. He has generated a team leading ten pressures and will finally get home for his first sack of the year.<\/p>\n BLAIR SANDERSON<\/strong>: Nah. Joe Evans was consistently putting pressure on Iowa State\u2019s QB, but the Cyclones did a good job of getting the ball out quick and avoiding any sacks.\u00a0 Evans ended up with five QB pressures in the game with two QB hits and three hurries.<\/p>\n Right now, Evans ranks No. 2 in the Big Ten and top 15 nationally in QB pressures with 10 through two games, so he\u2019s winning his one on ones and getting the job done even if it hasn\u2019t resulted in a sack for him individually yet. Aaron Graves is also up there in the top 20 of the Big Ten rankings.\u00a0 Maybe you\u2019d like to see a little more from Deontae Craig (two pressures, one sack) since he was pretty quiet at Iowa State, but it will come with time.<\/p>\n Western Michigan doesn\u2019t throw the ball downfield much at all, so I would expect something similar to the Iowa State game.\u00a0 Through two games, Western Michigan has thrown 80% of their passes less than 10 yards downfield with an average distance of 4.4 yards.\u00a0 So they\u2019ll look to get the ball out quick as well, which is fine. Iowa\u2019s defense can make a living on that all day.<\/p>\n DENNIS SCHEIDT<\/strong>: Sitting at 2-0, the only concern I have about the low sack total so far this season is that it just isn\u2019t our normal! Thankfully the defense continues to play at a high level even without the sack totals we are all accustomed to. It seems as though, once the opponent gets through their first series of scripted plays, the defense really locks down and doesn\u2019t give up anything cheap.<\/p>\n Sure, there were the 3 or 4 draw plays late in the game from Utah State that you\u2019d like to have back and the late TD the Cyclones had on the nifty one-handed catch in the end zone. But, overall confidence in the defense is high. Clearly, the departure of Lukas Van Ness, Jack Campbell, and Seth Benson have had a noticeable impact on the sack count but not the performance of the defense as a whole.<\/p>\n However, it will be important to have a pass rush become more significant as we get further into the season. I am concerned that maybe the Hawks don\u2019t have that elite edge athleticism on the roster this year. The DL as a whole is disruptive. Joe Evans has been supplying some QB pressure and has had a couple of near misses in both games. I expect Evans and Aaron Graves to be the dominant pass rush forces going forward. Both have high motors and when the stakes get higher the intensity will ratchet accordingly. I look for Joe and Aaron to each have a sack against Western Michigan on Saturday.<\/p>\n TOM KAKERT<\/strong>: I will be on the side of being concerned. Not severely concerned, but monitoring and watching at this point. Iowa has been really fortunate over the last five to ten years, the Hawekyes have had some great players coming off the edge. Lukas Van Ness, Anthony Nelson, A.J. Epenesa, and others. It\u2019s been a really strong run.<\/p>\n I think this group is solid and filled with really hard working players. Self-made type guys who have earned their spot in the lineup. There\u2019s no better story on the team than Joe Evans, who worked his way from walk-on linebacker to rush defensive end to three down standout and scholarship player. \u00a0<\/p>\n One thing I think going into this week is that getting Jermari Harris back will help the pass rush. He\u2019s likely better in coverage than Deshun Lee and it also allows Phil Parker to be a bit more aggressive with his pressure schemes. One of the keys for Iowa is they need to get opponents behind the sticks on first and second down to be able to dial up the pressure. This week I think Craig and Evans end up with two sacks each.<\/p>\n The post Question of the week: Concerned about lack of sacks?<\/a> appeared first on On3<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One of the stories of the early portion of the Iowa football season has been…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16619\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.wztzfm.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}