IOWA CITY — With all due respect to Iowa's 2023 non-conference slate, the Hawkeye defense is in for its biggest test of the season on Saturday with a trip to Happy Valley to face No. 7 Penn State.
The more unexpected part is that the previous biggest test might have been last week's opponent.
Western Michigan busted multiple big plays on the Iowa defense in the first half of the Hawkeyes' 41-10 victory, including a 64-yard touchdown to cap a 96-yard drive that needed just four plays to get into the end zone. Iowa tied the game in the second quarter, only for the Broncos to break a 43-yard pop pass on the first play of the ensuing drive en route to a chip-shot field goal to retake the lead at 10-7.
"We didn’t make any new calls, we didn’t get new personnel, it was player-driven that something needed to happen," linebacker Jay Higgins said Saturday. “We literally looked at each other and said, ‘guys, let’s just do our job’."
Iowa defensive coordinator Phil Parker's defense then made its most decisive statement of the young season by allowing the following drives the rest of the way:
Own 1-yard line: 3 plays, 0 yards, punt
Own 25-yard line: 3 plays, -2 yards, punt
Own 20-yard line: 1 play, 2 yards, end of half
Own 25-yard line: 3 plays, -1 yards, punt
Own 22-yard line: 3 plays, -7 yards, punt (blocked for safety)
Own 25-yard line: 3 plays, -8 yards, fumble lost
Own 25-yard line: 6 plays, 14 yards, punt
Own 20-yard line: 3 plays, 5 yards, punt
Own 25-yard line: 4 plays, 8 yards, turnover on downs
Own 25-yard line: 1 play, 2 yards, end of game
That's 13 total yards gained by Western Michigan on its last 10 possessions of the game, without the ball even crossing the Broncos' own 40-yard line.
"We're playing good football right now, and we want to keep the momentum going," linebacker Jay Higgins said Tuesday. "There's definitely carryover week-to-week."
On some level, the end result was to be expected; no defense is impenetrable, but it's generally not a lower-tier MAC team that can expose the seams in a Phil Parker defense for 60 minutes.
"We understood that it was us beating ourselves at that point," Higgins said. "When problems are extremely solvable, anxiety never got high, guys never pointed fingers, so we were in a good spot mentally.”
Penn State, on the other hand, poses exactly that existential threat to the Hawkeye defense, with 4-star sophomore quarterback Drew Allar commanding a backfield with playmakers Kaytron Allen (42 rushes, 208 yards, 2 TD) and Nicholas Singleton (36 rushes, 154 yards, 5 TDs) and a big-play threat in KeAndre Lambert-Smith leading the receiving corps.
"We've just got to know how they can get the ball to those guys," Higgins said Tuesday. "They've got a lot of threats across the board, so just doing a good job of bending not breaking."
"They've got a good offense," defensive back Sebastian Castro said Tuesday. "They've got a big O-Line, they like to run the ball, they always have good athletes. We just have to be prepared for all of that."
For Iowa, that means not only limiting the big plays that Western Michigan was able to generate early on, but staying "on schedule" as soon as the series starts.
"For us, it's just winning first down," Higgins said. "If you get into 2nd and 3, it's going to be really hard to keep those guys from gaining three yards when they have two plays. If you can get a second-and-long, you're on track to get off the field on 3rd down. We just want a third-and-long situation, making them call a good play."
Then, of course, there's the game environment itself. Penn State plays in 106,572-seat Beaver Stadium, second in capacity only to Michigan Stadium (107,601 seats).
That's not just second-biggest in the Big Ten. Not just second-biggest in college football. Not even second-biggest in the USA. Second-biggest in the Western Hemisphere.
Add in a nighttime kickoff and Penn State's legendary Whiteout atmosphere — a bit familiar to the Iowa coaches — and the Hawkeyes even debuting a special road uniform set for the occasion, and it promises to be a big-game atmosphere up there with, well, anything in the Big Ten — including PSU's trip to Iowa City two years prior.
Not that the experience will — or should — intimidate the Hawkeyes.
"It's just another game, to be honest," receiver Seth Anderson said. "It's going to be a fun atmosphere, but it comes down to what's on the field."
"We've played in that type of environment before," Castro said Tuesday. "At the end of the day it's another game, but a lot more fans, a lot more hype. We'll just have to stick to our fundamentals."
The players' characterizations of Happy Valley may sound a bit blasé, to the point that it might trip some sensitivity to the dreaded "bulletin board material," but the confidence needed to look past the hype is an integral part of being a Hawkeye.
"We have to [have that confidence]," Castro said. "We're going to be shooting ourselves in the foot if we don't have that mentality every single week."
