It's championship week everybody! And that means it's time for an extra week of FFFF, the first ever to discuss a Michigan football game in Indianapolis. We're in uncharted waters for the stakes and situation, but very much not in uncharted waters for the opponent: the Iowa Hawkeyes are the same old bland Iowa team they've always been. Today we're tackling the defense first, unlike the normal format, because we had to wait until yesterday to find out who the starter at QB would be for the Hawkeyes and your author starts on this column on Monday. Iowa boasts the 4th best defense in SP+ but is that spiked by poor competition? Let's see: The Film: This was rather difficult, because when it comes to offense, Iowa Ain't Played Nobody. The best offenses they have faced per SP+ are Iowa State, which happened at the season's beginning, limiting its usefulness, and Maryland, a game that featured seven Terrapin turnovers (!), rendering it basically unusable. That left us grasping for shreds of competency. Iowa faced PSU but only half of that game saw Sean Clifford healthy. I decided to zero in on a good rushing offense as a decent comp. for Michigan, which is Wisconsin. Iowa faced the Badgers after Wisconsin found its new guy at RB in Braelon Allen, and by that point were a very competent rushing offense. So, I decided to use Wisconsin as the game for me to use for the pressure metric, but I also watched the entirety of the Purdue game, because that is arguably the best passing offense Iowa has seen recently. This was the result of me being dissatisfied by the Wisconsin tape, because while the Badgers are a good rush offense, they play dinosaur football and are so passing-averse that their ability to be a decent comparison for Michigan's offense is not great. Therefore, I'm basically just gonna splice this piece together, using clips from different games, one against a team who can run but can't pass and one against a team who can pass but can't really run. B1G West everybody! Personnel: Seth's chart (Updated: click for big)
After last week's paving of Ohio State, our offense graphic looks quite a bit different than preceding weeks. And yes, that's a star you see around Cade McNamara. Go crazy, ya filthy animals. Iowa has a pretty consistent collection of starters on defense, with the exception of the defensive line. At defensive end you have Zach VanValkenburg as the pretty consistent starter opposite John Waggoner. Waggoner was around last time Michgan played Iowa in 2019, but was listed as a DT on our chart back then. He rotates at the end spot with Joe Evans, while Devontae Craig gets some snaps here or there at the position too. Defensive tackle sees a consistent rotation between four players. The starters are Logan Lee and Noah Shannon, both of whom will get mentioned in this article. They're backed up by Yahya Black and Lukas Van Ness. There's a bit of a gap in the distribution of snaps between the starters and the next two, but it's not a large one and all four see the field a lot. There's also not much of a gap in the quality of play between any of the four, either. Iowa runs with two traditional linebackers, and they have two locked in starters at that spot. Jack Campbell (not the Toronto Maple Leafs' goalie) starts at the MLB position, and he's a player I liked a lot in my viewings, particularly in run defense. I didn't fancy the play of WLB Seth Benson quite as much, but he's also got a starting spot firmly secured. Neither Benson nor Campbell come off the field much, but for the sake of throwing a backup name out there, let's go with Jay Higgins. The Hybrid Space Player role in this defense is called the "LEO" or the "CASH", and is manned in a starting capacity by Dane Belton, who also receives a star on this graphic. Jestin Jacobs is the backup, though it should be noted that Belton is more DB sized and Jacobs is more LB-sized. The secondary sees standout corner Riley Moss slated to start opposite Jermari Harris, due to the injury of Matt Hankins. If you go off of PFF's data, that's a huge loss. I'm less certain, because Hankins was good against the "we refuse to ever pass it" Badger offense, but then was ripped to tatters by David Bell and the Purdue offense in the second game I watched. Terry Roberts is banged up at corner, but has a role to play if he can go on Saturday, and Xavior Williams is also a depth corner. Safety has two consistent starters in Jack Koerner (who was a starter in 2019!) and Kaevon Merriweather. I was a decent fan of Koerner's play compared to him being cyan'd in 2019. Neither of those two safeties come off the field much at all, but we will throw Quinn Schulte out as a depth name. [AFTER THE JUMP: clips!]