Pro Football Focus Grades: Iowa Defense

In the previous two games the turnover faucet that the Hawkeyes had turned on for the first six games was slowed to a trickle. On Saturday night it was turned on again in Evanston as Iowa intercepted three passes, including a pair by Dane Belton, as the Hawkeyes held off Northwestern, 17-12.

Overall, Iowa allowed 363 yards of total offense, with 270 of that coming in the air and quite a bit of it came in the fourth quarter when the Hawkeyes struggled with their footing and tackling.

We take a look at the grades according to Pro Football Focus, for the 79 snaps that they faced.

Table Name

	SNAP	RUN D	PASS RUSH	OVERALL

Joe Evans	48	72.1	76.6	79.9
John Waggoner	40	65.2	66.8	69.1
Logan Lee	35	65.6	63.0	66.7
Lukas Van Ness	43	64.8	69.7	65.2
Noah Shannon	36	55.2	70.2	63.9
Deontae Craig	15	65.6	53.7	60.6
Zach VanValkenberg	61	69.4	55.5	59.8
Yahya Black	31	47.8	58.5	50.9

One thing that jumped out this week was the snap counts. I have been wondering if they were going to try and take some of the workload off some of the starters and other than Zach VanValkenberg, they certainly cut it down a bit of the starters. In particular the snap count for John Waggoner is down a bit this week. On the other side of the equation, Lukas Van Ness saw a pretty significant leap in his workload.

All three of Iowa's sacks came from defensive linemen. That was Noah Shannon, Lukas Van Ness, and Joe Evans. By the way, this was a really good game for Evans, who led the entire Iowa defense in PFF grades this week.

LINEBACKERS

	SNAPS	RUN D	TACKLING	OVERALL

Jestin Jacobs	41	64.0	72.5	68.7
Seth Benson	74	80.2	62.2	67.3
Jack Campbell	79	58.9	54.3	60.7

Once again this week a decent amount of three linebackers on the field as Jestin Jacobs performance merits him being out there. Jacobs was especially good in tackling and Seth Benson was very stout against the run. Kind of an uncharacteristic average performance from Jack Campbell, who appeared to some trouble with his footing on the sometimes slippery grass at Ryan Field.

DEFENSIVE BACKS

	SNAP	COVERAGE	TACKLING	OVERALL

Jermari Harris	79	76.6	63.5	71.9
Dane Belton	79	67.7	79.4	70.2
Keavon Merriweather	51	67.1	78.3	67.6
Jack Koerner	79	60.6	55.3	60.7
Matt Hankins	79	48.4	62.3	48.5

The Iowa secondary had three interceptions in this game. Two by Dane Belton and the first in the career of Jermari Harris. Pretty impressive to see Harris right up at the top of the entire defense in his grades this week after making just his second college start. It is kind of surprising to see Belton have a coverage grade below 70 given that he had two picks. The second one was thrown right to him, but the first one was a very good play on the ball down the field. It is surprising to see Matt Hankins grade out so low again this week.