Iowa Defense Not at Best Against Michigan

Wolverines Find Running Room Saturday

IOWA CITY, Iowa - Seven runs, four passes and six points on the game’s opening drive.

That’s how long it took No. 4 Michigan’s football team to get the upper hand on Iowa in Saturday’s 27-14 victory at Kinnick Stadium.

Those 11 plays, culminated by Ronnie Bell’s 16-yard touchdown run, came against an Iowa defense that had kept this season moving forward with the offense was stuck in spin cycle.

“We did a really good job mixing the run and the pass,” Michigan Coach Jim Harbaugh said.

“That’s how you start a game. It was an impressive drive, and the game was impressive all around.”

The fact that Michigan was moving the ball well, against an Iowa defense that had allowed no rushing touchdowns and 73 yards on the ground through the first four games, set an ominous tone.

“We couldn’t get off the field, and if you can’t stop the run, it’s tough,” Iowa Coach Kirk Ferentz said. “It’s easy to call plays when you can run the ball.”

Michigan also had a pair of 13-play drives that resulted in field goals for a 13-0 halftime lead. The lone non-scoring drive lasted eight plays. Michigan had the ball for more than 20 minutes of that first half, and ran 43 plays from scrimmage to 18 for Iowa. Twenty of those 43 Wolverine snaps resulted in gains of five yards or more. Seven of them went for 10 yards or more.

When Michigan made it 20-0 with its first possession of the second half, a 10-play, 67-yard march, it had run 54 plays from scrimmage to 21 for Iowa and had an edge in total offense, 303-90.

The Wolverines finished the game with two rushing touchdowns and 172 yards on the ground against Iowa. Blake Corum had 29 of their 42 carries for 133 yards and a touchdown. And quarterback J.J. McCarthy completed 18 of 24 passes for 155 yards.

“(Corum’s) an outstanding back, first and foremost,” Ferentz said. “A really good football player. That didn’t surprise us. You look at the film, you can see that. And then they’re good up front. The other part of the equation is that they threaten you outside. They have really good receivers and a quarterback that can get it to them. You have to choose your poison a little bit defensively, and if you load up too much in one area, you’re going to be vulnerable in another spot.”

Michigan finished with 327 yards of total offense against an Iowa defense that was ranked sixth nationally, allowing an average of 236.2 yards. The 27 points came against a defense that had led the nation by allowing 5.8 points per game. The 23 total points allowed over the first four games was the fewest by a Hawkeye team in 66 years.

“What we need to do is learn from this loss and make sure these mistakes don’t show up next week,” said linebacker Jay Higgins, who got the most extended time of his career. “Coach Ferentz’s best teams, they always get better throughout the season. If we don’t get better from this week to next week, we aren’t going to be a good team.”

The same could be said for the offense, which ended a 13-quarter touchdown-free streak against Michigan when Kaleb Johnson scored on a 2-yard run on the first play of the fourth quarter. The Hawkeyes had a chance to set up an interesting finish on its next possession, but it ended on downs at the Michigan 2 with more than 5 minutes to play.

“As crazy as it may sound, from where I stood, I thought our guys played hard and I saw some growth from our football team,” Ferentz said.

Iowa’s running game accounted for just 35 yards in 24 carries. That included four sacks of quarterback Spencer Petras for minus 31 yards. With Iowa’s passing game in flux, defenses have often loaded the box to put the ground game in neutral.

The growth Ferentz spoke up needs to accelerate rapidly if this team is to have a postseason life.

The Hawkeyes travel to Illinois, where former Iowa player and assistant coach Bret Bielema has things going in the right direction.

Bielema’s team won Saturday at Wisconsin, where he was the head coach from 2006 to 2012, by a 34-10 margin to improve to 4-1 on the season. Chase Brown led the Illini with 129 yards in 25 carries. But the Illinois defense was the story, holding the traditionally running-rich Badgers to just 2 yards in 24 carries.

Iowa has won 13 of the last 14 games in the series, including eight straight. Making that nine straight will be much more challenging.

The Big Ten West is up for grabs, but there could be a changing of the guard with some new faces making significant improvement. Illinois, Purdue and Minnesota are serious contenders in a West Division that has seen Wisconsin (four times), Iowa (two times) and Northwestern (two times) play in the Big Ten Championship game since the league went to the current format in 2014.