The Iowa secondary has been lax with a lead, highlighted in the win over Purdue.
By Courtney Baumann
Iowa’s most recent game against Purdue showed a few things — the rushing offense has emerged as a force to be reckoned with, the offensive line is really holding its own, and the rushing defense is solid.
However, it also showed some issues in the secondary. Purdue quarterback David Blough passed for 458 yards against Iowa, the most the Hawkeye defense has allowed in the past 16 years.
The game against the Boilermakers was the only time since the first game of the season that the defense allowed more than 200 passing yards.
Here are a few statistics about Iowa’s passing defense so far this season.
Passes broken up/interceptions: 32/5
The last time Iowa nabbed only 5 interceptions through the first seven games of the season was 2005. There have been only three times in 10 years in between that Iowa has had fewer than 9 interceptions to start the first seven games.
On a positive note, Iowa is on pace to break up nearly 55 passes through 12 games, which is more than it has had in six of the past eight years.
However, the team is only on pace to actually catch 8, maybe 9 of those broken-up passes. If this were to happen, it would be the fewest grabbed by the Iowa defense since it caught only 9 in 2000.
In the past, the Hawkeyes have been much more efficient when it comes to the broken-up passes-to-interceptions ratio. Through the first seven games, Iowa has caught only 15.6 percent of the passes it has gotten a hand on. In the eight years prior, the lowest that number dropped to was 25.6 percent.
Passing yards against when winning by 14+ points: 727
Sure, this is mainly because by the time the Hawkeyes are up by more than 14 points they put in their second stringers, but the number is a bit jarring considering how many passing yards Iowa has given up in total.
Opponents have only thrown for 1,533 against the Hawkeyes all season.
The Hawkeyes have been up by more than 14 points for only 1:47:00 out of the seven hours of total game time this season, yet opponents have thrown for almost half of the total passing yards in this amount of time.
Of course, when a team is down by more than two scores it is more likely to throw the ball rather than run, but the statistic makes it seem as though Iowa’s secondary becomes more lax when the team is ahead by a healthy margin.
Penalties/Yards: 35/261
This is one thing that looks very promising for Iowa so far this season. The Hawkeyes have only gotten flagged 35 times for 261 yards in 2016. If the trend continues, Iowa will end its regular season with only 60 penalties for 447 yards.
So far, the team has only given up 7.5 yards per penalty, which is the lowest average over the course of the past 16 years.
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