Iowa DC Keeping Focus on Oregon Over Bye Week

A bye week always serves as an opportunity for a football team to get themselves together, answer pressing questions and prepare for whatever opponent awaits them next. For the Iowa Hawkeyes as they are currently, the mid-season pitstop couldn't come at a more opportune time.

Flying High

Not only are the Hawkeyes on a three-game winning streak - all three, of course, coming in conference play - but the team is about to go into arguably their most important game of the season to this point in next week's duel with the #6 Oregon Ducks.

Taking place in Iowa City, the bout is between the third-ranked (Oregon) and tied-for-fourth-ranked (Iowa, in addition to the Michigan Wolverines) teams in the B1G. Whichever squad comes out on top will gain a serious advantage in top three positioning in the conference, as well as an undoubted boost in national rankings.

For the Hawkeyes specifically, a win over Oregon would represent their first over a ranked team this season. To boot, it would draw their overall record up to 7-2; just one notch away from their total win number from one season ago, yet with four more games still to go.

It's a chance for Iowa to set themselves apart, and as far as the team's defense goes, coordinator Phil Parker is spending the week off preparing his team for the highly anticipated battle.

Iowa Hawkeyes defensive coordinator Phil Parker | Julia Hansen/Iowa City Press-Citizen / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

"It gives us an opportunity"

"Well, I'm kind of a routine guy so I'd like to have no byes and just keep playing, but there's a bye. It gives us an opportunity, it gives our kids an opportunity to rest a little bit, refresh, and I think it kind of worked out perfect," Parker said. "You have five, you have three, and then there's the home stretch in there. I think the guys needed it."

If any team has earned the chance to catch up on rest for a week, it's the team on a nationally impressive win streak that has drawn them attention in many ranking-relevant conversations.

"I think it's all going to be played in between the white lines, the strategy," Parker said of the game against the Ducks. "I think the biggest thing is how do they take advantage of this week and how do they prepare to be ready for the game. That's the most important thing. How do they process. I think we have a lot of mature kids that understand what it takes."

Whether or not the Hawkeyes' understanding of the task translates to their completion of it is yet another week away, but as most of the rest of the B1G brawls this weekend, Iowa can comfortably kick back and stand secure in their placement in the conference's upper echelon; at least, for now.

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