ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Iowa may not be much to look at, but it never is. And it’s usually a winning team, capable of taking down the big dogs across college football if they’re not on their Ps and Qs.
The Hawkeyes have struggled in the early going, with a loss to rival Iowa State in Week 2 after beating South Dakota State in Week 1, 7-3. That first game of the season wasn’t a product of the offense scoring a touchdown, either. The defense scored two safeties while special teams added a field goal.
Defensive prowess is where Iowa comes to play. Rutgers managed 300 yards through the air this past week, but the Hawkeye offense, which only managed 277 yards, didn’t need to do much, thanks to forcing turnovers and scoring two defensive touchdowns.
Naturally, Michigan football head coach Jim Harbaugh is on high alert for what the Wolverines will encounter on Saturday when the team travels to Iowa City for the first road game of the season.
“It really goes back to the early 80s, with Norm Parker, coach at Michigan State, defensive coordinator, their defensive coordinator for 30-some years. That’s where this defense originates,” Harbaugh said. “And he happened to coach a defensive back by the name of Phil Parker, at Michigan State. And then in 1999, Kirk Ferentz went to Iowa, hired Norm Parker as the defensive coordinator, and Phil Parker, as the secondary coach. That system has been in place since 1999. Phil Parker was the secondary coach there for 13 years, and then took over as the defensive coordinator.
“And it’s been, ever since, it’s a system. It’s a way of playing, it’s the Parker way. And it’s really good. Everybody knows what to do. Everybody’s playing the proper leverage, the proper technique, the proper fundamentals at all times. Opportunistic. The challenges that it presents are if you are inaccurate with the throw — overthrow, underthrow, tip ball — it’s highly likely that it’s going to result into a turnover. If you’re not as sound as you can possibly be, then you’re in for a rough one.
“But it’s a scheme that’s flawless, everybody where they’re supposed to be when they’re supposed to be there — playing the techniques, they’re supposed to be there. So the challenge is that it makes you on offense be really tight, tight. Not the time to lighten up. It’s the time to tighten up in every aspect of our offensive technique and fundamentals, alignments, and assignments. So it’s, yeah –it’s been, it’s been 48 hours of looking at that and look at it every possible way that we can improve ourselves.”
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Not only will the Hawkeyes themselves be tough to contend with, but so, too, will the environment.
In 2016, Michigan football went to Iowa City ranked No. 3 in the country. After jumping out to a 10-0 lead, the Hawkeye defense clamped down, and unranked Iowa ended up winning in walk-off fashion, 14-13. The Wolverines haven’t won in Iowa City since 2005, but they’re hoping this Week 5 contest will be similar to last year’s first road trip at Wisconsin when Michigan broke a similarly long drought.
“As they say, it’s where top five teams go to die,” Harbaugh said. “I think the biggest thing is just how good the team is. You turn on the offensive tape and yeah, it’s a Kirk Ferentz-coached offense. I mean, everything is detailed, everything’s precise, same fundamentals, and they just get so good at what they’re doing that they beat you with execution. It’s wide zone, it’s a tight zone. It’s play-action off the boots and nakeds. They just out-fundamental you, they’ll out-technique you, and they aim to out-execute you.
“So same thing. You can’t have blown coverages, you got to be in the right technique, you got to be in the right gap. You’ve got to be just as good, you’ve got to match that execution. And that great environment that they have at Kinnick Stadium. But I think it’s more the team that’s on the field. And they produce one that’s really good every single year.”
Last year, when Michigan faced Iowa in the Big Ten Championship game, the Wolverines managed 42 offensive points while holding the Hawkeyes to just three. However, this is a much different Michigan team than the one that went to the College Football Playoff, flying high after beating Ohio State the week before heading to Indianapolis.
The maize and blue have a new starting quarterback in J.J. McCarthy, though he did play against Iowa a year ago in spot duty. Harbaugh says he’s pleased that his team was able to come away with the 34-27 victory over Maryland in Week 4, but there are a lot of fixes that the Wolverines need to make if they want to emerge from the house of horrors that is Kinnick unscathed.
“We’ll see. It’s good that we won the game (last week). But there’s a lot of things to coach from our last game,” Harbaugh said. “So we’ll see how our players respond to that coaching and see how — all the areas that we can make better, fix even. How well we do that. I’ll have a better feel for that as the week goes on. I predict that we can, fixable things just kind of require taking the coaching and continuing to then go practice it and then be able to, once you’ve practiced, be able to do that in the game day. And then the game day environment in a hostile stadium, loud stadium, and all those things are gonna take some work.
“If you want to get better at something, you just work a little bit harder at it. And there’s definitely things for us to narrowly focus in on this week.”
Michigan and Iowa will kick off at noon EDT at Kinnick Stadium. The game will be broadcast nationally on Fox.
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