Each and every year, Phil Parker, the Iowa Hawkeyes‘ defensive coordinator, goes into his bag of tricks and finds a new way to manufacture success for his defensive unit, which is always among the nation’s best.
This year, Iowa has been stonewalling teams, but the issue for them has been a lack of pressure and a lack of turnovers. Over the last two games, Iowa has changed its blitzing philosophy to help increase production in both of those areas.
When speaking with the media, Phil Parker elaborated on the shift in Iowa’s blitzing tendency.
“You look at different situations. It’s depending on who you’re sending on a blitzer. That’s one. Norm Parker also used to say, It’s not about the blitz, it’s about the guys that you are sending.
“We have probably brought more blitzes on different situations on second down, maybe, that I haven’t really done in the past, but I think it’s helped us a little bit and keep the quarterbacks a little bit off balance and uncomfortable, but when you blitz, you have to make sure that you cover guys. Sometimes it can get you. If you blitz, sometimes it can hit you one play like it did last week, but you have to live with that. You have to live with it and say, hey, the success that you had, we blitz on a couple of fourth downs and one, and we won a couple of those. I think it was three of them.
“So, there’s a trade-off, you know what I mean? The same thing with coverages in the back end. If you want to play press coverage or if you want to play two high in a shell, what do you want to do? Do you want to let them move the ball down slowly or four, five plays and then all of a sudden they hit a big play, and then hopefully you can hold them to a field goal.
So the philosophy hasn’t changed about the explosive plays. We’ve probably given up too many explosive plays so far (25 yards or more). So we’re still working on that and trying to make sure that everything is important, every play is important, and kids got to understand that,” Parker said about the defense blitzing more.
The blitzes are working. Iowa is getting more pressure and flustering quarterbacks as they did against Rutgers and Indiana, forcing a game-changing interception late in each game.
Through five games, Iowa has gotten home for 12 sacks and registered 11 QB hits. Defensive end Max Llewellyn leads the way with five sacks on the year, while Ethan Hurkett and Aaron Graves have each tallied two.
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This article originally appeared on Hawkeyes Wire: Iowa football DC Phil Parker elaborates on blitzing philosophy
