The 2024 college football regular season is right around the corner, which gives us an opportunity to put down a few predictions for how the Iowa will perform in terms of statistics. We already tackled the offense:
READ: 2024 Iowa Football Stat Predictions: QB and RB
READ: 2024 Iowa Football Stat Predictions: WR and TE
Last up: the defense and special teams.
TACKLES
SPOILER: a linebacker is going to lead Iowa in tackles in 2024.
That's hardly a bold prediction -- a linebacker has led Iowa in tackling in eight of the past 10 seasons. The only outliers were 2018 (Jake Gervase, 89 tackles) and 2014 (John Lowdermilk, 103 tackles). In seven of those eight linebacker-led seasons, Iowa's middle linebacker led the team in tackles.
That's not coincidence, of course; the Phil Parker defensive scheme is designed to funnel tackle action to the linebackers and relies on them to make the stops. Iowa's been fortunate to have several extremely high-level players at MLB over the last decade, including Josey Jewell, Jack Campbell, and now Jay Higgins.
Given that the defense is set up to allow linebackers to rack up tackles, we know what position unit should lead Iowa in tackles this year — pending good health, of course. But which linebacker?
As the returning starter at MLB, Jay Higgins is the obvious (and correct) favorite to lead the team in tackles. Nick Jackson absolutely has the ability to lead Iowa in tackles, and neither he nor Higgins figures to spend many plays on the sideline -- but just from a schematic perspective, Higgins figures to get so many tackle opportunities that it will be hard for a healthy Higgins to not to lead the Hawkeyes in 2024
2023 tackles
Higgins: 171 (79 solo)
Jackson: 110 (51 solo)
2024 stat predictions
Higgins: 140 tackles
Jackson: 105 tackles
Higgins averaged an incredible 12.2 tackles per game in 2023. The only other Iowa players to top 10.0 tackles per game in the last decade were Jack Campbell in 2021 (10.2 tackles per game) and Josey Jewell in 2017 (11.3 tackles per game). One of the reasons Higgins was able to amass so many tackles last season was because the defense spent so much time on the field -- 970 plays in total.
That said, Iowa has averaged 68-70 defensive snaps per game in each of the last three seasons. In other words, the defense has routinely been spending a lot of time on the field -- but Iowa hasn't routinely had a player putting up tackle numbers quite like Higgins did last year. The prolific Campbell led Iowa with "only" 128 tackles in 2022 and 143 tackles in 2021.
The bet here is that Higgins won't hit 170 tackles again, but he's still going to put up very big numbers. The cerebral, physical senior All-American is a magnet for opposing ball-carriers, and it's hard to see a scenario where he regresses as a player in his second year starting.
Jackson won't have quite as many tackles as his partner at linebacker, but assuming both a second-year improvement under Parker and more efforts by the defense to neutralize Higgins, Jackson should at least see his numbers stay closer to 2023's production.
SACKS
Last year Joe Evans led Iowa with 9.5 sacks over 14 games. He finished well ahead of the player with the second-most sacks, Nick Jackson with 4.0 sacks. No other defensive end had more than Deontae Craig's 3.0 sacks in 2023.
Evans has departed Iowa City now, which means there will be a new face atop Iowa's sack charts in 2024. His absence also opens up playing time opportunities for Iowa's young pass-rushers, such as Ethan Hurkett (replacing Evans in the starting lineup), Max Llewellyn, and Brian Allen. Kenneth Merrieweather and Caden Crawford serve as pass-rush options a little further down the depth chart.
Craig looks like the best bet to replace Evans as Iowa's sack leader -- it would be his second time doing so, after posting a team-high 7.5 sacks in 2022. His total dipped last year while dealing with a few injuries, but that shouldn't affect his 2024 production.
Hurkett wasn't credited with any sacks last year, but he did finish with 6.0 tackles for loss, second-most among Iowa's defensive linemen (behind Evans' 13.5 TFL). Llewellyn had 2.5 sacks in a reserve role last year; the junior from Urbandale, Iowa could be primed for a breakout in 2024 with more snaps.
It's not a guarantee that a defensive end will lead Iowa in sacks, either. A defensive tackle has twice led Iowa in sacks over the last 10 years -- Daviyon Nixon tied Chauncey Golston with 5.5 sacks in 2020, while Jaleel Johnson was a dominant force with 7.5 sacks as a senior in 2016. Last year, Yahya Black finished with 3.5 sacks, while Aaron Graves had 2.5 sacks. Could either see his sack total jump in an All-Big Ten caliber season in 2024?
2024 stat prediction: Deontae Craig (7.0 sacks)
Iowa hasn't had a player finish with double-digit sacks since A.J. Epenesa had 11.5 sacks in 2019 and 10.5 sacks in 2018. There aren't any Epenesa-level pass rushers on this Iowa defense, and the pass rush looks like it should be more of a committee attack than superstar-led. That means it wouldn't be too surprising for one of several different players to lead the team in sacks in 2024.
As the most-experienced option -- and a player who's actually done it before -- Craig seems like the safest pick.
INTERCEPTIONS
The Doughboyz had a "down" year in 2023 -- as a team, Iowa finished with just 10 interceptions last year, and defensive backs were credited with only eight of those picks. CASH Sebastian Castro led the team with three interceptions.
From 2017-21, Iowa recorded 20+ interceptions three times; that's when the Doughboyz earned their reputation as fearsome ballhawks. Interception totals are a bit variable from year-to-year (though not as much as fumble recoveries); Iowa recorded 54 passes defended in 2023 but had just 10 interceptions, while 50 passes defended in 2021 led to 25 interceptions.
10 interceptions is an abnormally low total, though -- especially for as often as Iowa defenders were able to get hands on the ball last year. It seems reasonable to think that Iowa will have more than 10 interceptions in 2024. I'm betting that Iowa finishes with 15-20 picks this fall.
2024 stat prediction: Xavier Nwankpa (4.0 interceptions)
Iowa has had a player finish the year with more than five interceptions in a season just twice in the last decade -- Desmond King in 2015 (8 interceptions) and Josh Jackson in 2017 (also 8 interceptions). It's more likely that interceptions get spread around among the secondary this season.
Cornerbacks have led Iowa in interceptions six times in the last decade, with safeties and CASH players leading the Hawkeyes the other four times. In recent years, the interception leader has tilted toward a safety or CASH: Castro last year, Dane Belton in 2021 and Jack Koerner in 2020.
The pick here is Xavier Nwankpa, who seems poised for a breakthrough year in his second year as a starter. The game has slowed down for him now, which should enable his playmaking ability to really shine.
PUNTING
Rhys Dakin is not going to be Tory Taylor this season -- let's be clear on that. To be more precise, he's not going to be what Tory Taylor was in 2023. Last year, Taylor had a staggeringly prolific season for a punter -- 93 punts for an NCAA-record 4,479 yards (48.2 yards per punt) -- en route to winning the Ray Guy Award as the nation's best punter.
No one -- Ferentz included -- wants to see Dakin punt as much as Taylor did last season. If he does, it means Tim Lester's offensive rebuild has been a complete failure. To set expectations for Dakin, it's more useful to look at some seasons other than Taylor's stunning 2023 display.
2022: Tory Taylor (82 punts. 45.4 yards per punt)
2021: Tory Taylor (80 punts, 46.1 yards per punt)
2020: Tory Taylor (40 punts, 44.1 yards per punt)
2019: Michael Sleep-Dalton (58 punts, 41.7 yards per punt)
2018: Colten Rastetter (53 punts, 38.9 yards per punt)
2017: Colten Rastetter (55 punts, 37.8 yards per punt)
2016: Ron Coluzzi (75 punts, 41.1 yards per punt)
2015: Dillon Kidd (59 punts, 40.2 yards per punt)
2014: Dillon Kidd (46 punts, 38.5 yards per punt)
It's worth noting that even in the years where Iowa's leading punter only had 50-60 punts, there were often other players getting in a few punts each season as well. As a team, Iowa has pretty consistently averaged 5-6 punts per game over the last decade, though that average dipped to 4.5 over 2018 and 2019 and jumped up to close to seven punts per game in 2022 and 2023.
2024 stat prediction: Rhys Dakin (72 punts, 43.0 yards per punt)
As noted, averaging around five punts per game has been pretty common for Iowa over the last decade. Iowa's offense has some pretty significant ground to claw back to get back to those rates, but 72 punts gets to both 5.5 per game in 13 games (i.e. Iowa makes a bowl game) or 6 per game in 12 games.
It's harder to predict how long those punts might go, but Dakin's Kids Day performance should keep expectations on the higher end. While it's likely premature to assume Dakin can match Taylor's distance -- as a freshman, anyway -- an average in the low 40s seems within reason for the Melburnian's debut season as a Hawkeye.
