In hindsight none of us should have been expecting a major blowout last night. It should have been predictable that there was no way this team was going to maintain the kind of intensity we saw last week against CU. There was going to be a bit of a let down. It is human nature. And Northern Iowa is a good lower level team. One of those kinds of lower level teams capable of beating some upper level teams. Just ask Iowa.
The silver lining in all of this is that this is the wake up call our defense in particular needed. After all of the hype and praise after the CU game they needed a good kick in the balls to remind them that they can be had. They did a good job of keeping NIU out of the end zone and holding them to 3 points. But to me they still had some of the defects of the 2023 defense. Good at keeping the score down but not so good at getting off the field on 3rd down and not so good at getting pressure on the QB when facing a solid offensive line. They took poor tackling angles and there was a lot of sloppy tackling in general. And the weaknesses of the 3-3-5 came into view when a big running back got 3 -6 yards after initial contact from a smallish linebacker and/or safety. How many times did we see a running back get hit after a two yard gain where it appeared to be a good stop only to have the back gain another five damn yards dragging the defender(s)?
This will serve as a wake up call to our back 8 that they need to improve in their run tackling before we face Illinois and the rest of the B1G. Allowing those extra leaky yards after contact is directly related to not getting stops on third down. Some people on here think playing against running teams is our strength. It isn't. It is our weakness. And it has to improve. I think it will.
The silver lining in all of this is that this is the wake up call our defense in particular needed. After all of the hype and praise after the CU game they needed a good kick in the balls to remind them that they can be had. They did a good job of keeping NIU out of the end zone and holding them to 3 points. But to me they still had some of the defects of the 2023 defense. Good at keeping the score down but not so good at getting off the field on 3rd down and not so good at getting pressure on the QB when facing a solid offensive line. They took poor tackling angles and there was a lot of sloppy tackling in general. And the weaknesses of the 3-3-5 came into view when a big running back got 3 -6 yards after initial contact from a smallish linebacker and/or safety. How many times did we see a running back get hit after a two yard gain where it appeared to be a good stop only to have the back gain another five damn yards dragging the defender(s)?
This will serve as a wake up call to our back 8 that they need to improve in their run tackling before we face Illinois and the rest of the B1G. Allowing those extra leaky yards after contact is directly related to not getting stops on third down. Some people on here think playing against running teams is our strength. It isn't. It is our weakness. And it has to improve. I think it will.
