Iowa’s defense is boring. Every year they are very affective and they hardly ever give up points on big plays but let’s face it they are boring.
They rush four and only four on every play. And those four are always the line men. They are very good at what they do. Teams normally don’t get a ton of yards and if they do, they don’t do very well in the red zone.
Year in and year out they are a definite asset to the team.
But man is the defense boring to watch. And when they play a really good team like Ohio State that isn’t overmatched or mistake prone, then it is really hard for the defense to create an advantage. They can normally keep Iowa in the game, like against OSU when they were down 14 and driving with the ball before Chandler fumbled. But in the end, they don’t often make the big exciting play to change the nature of the game. Sure, they held Syracuse on 7 tries from the 2 to win in overtime, but that was just grunting it out in a goal line stand.
The defense is good at that. They do not get the big monster hit from a blind side safety blitz. They don’t often get the fumbles because the players rush in trying to strip the ball even if it means missing a tackle every now and then. They don’t get interceptions by crowding the receivers even if it means getting burnt on a pump fake now and then for a deep touch down.
I’m not asking or even wanting the coaches to change anything, but sometimes it is more exciting to go for the monster plays then to make sure that no mistakes are made. I know that Iowa doesn’t have the team speed to survive many blown plays on the defense but every once in a while it would be nice to rattle the quarterback on the other team by throwing everybody at him on a couple series in a row.