Michigan football secondary: You cannot take Iowa’s offense lightly
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Kinnick Stadium has been something of a house of horrors for top five teams, and while on paper Michigan should be able to go into Iowa City and get a win, that’s not how this team is approaching it.
There’s a big mismatch when it comes to the Wolverine defense vs. the Hawkeye offense, with Iowa having the 131st-ranked total offense in the country — dead last in all of college football. Meanwhile, Michigan enters the game with the No. 8 total defense.
However, ask Rutgers how it feels after having faced Iowa at home in Week 4. The Scarlet Knights currently have the No. 9 defense in the country, yet they lost to the Hawkeyes, 27-10 on Saturday. While the big part of that was due to two Iowa defensive touchdowns, Players in the Michigan secondary aren’t thinking this is going to be an easy matchup, by any means.
“You cannot take that team lightly or take them for granted,” junior safety R.J. Moten said. “So basically, our focus is just to stop the run this week and then get them to throw the ball. We know they’ve only got a certain amount of pass plays. We know who the quarterback favors and everything like that. So basically, we just want to stop the run and get them to those second and long and third and long situations where we can let the rushers rush and let us cover.”
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Iowa has run 229 offensive plays thus far through four weeks, and 95 have been pass attempts. Thus, the Hawkeyes, with 134 rushing attempts, want to run much more than pass. When QB Spencer Petras does pass, he’s completing just 51.1% of the time.
For the Michigan secondary, the challenge is, in part, staying focused, keying in on the run game, but being ready for when the Hawkeyes do want to work downfield.
“Just being able to run fit as corners,” Turner said. “Some guys might not have to tackle a lot, but there’s one of these games where you might have to fit in plays, and just execution and being disciplined. That would be the main thing.”
It was just six games ago that the Wolverines faced off against the Hawkeyes in the Big Ten Championship game, a game that Michigan won, 42-3. However, these two teams are different, with different personnel, of course.
Still, Moten says that while there are some new things this team didn’t see a year ago, there’s a lot that they can take away from the last meeting.
“A lot. I think they got the same OC or something like that,” Moten said. “So like everything is a little carryover — they’ve got some new things in there. So a different couple players have different couple positions, but I think most of them just carry it over.”
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