See which legends of defense made the cut in our all-time Iowa Hawkeyes football roster.
The Iowa Hawkeyes have a rich history with some of the game’s titans suiting up in the black and gold. Hawkeyes Wire is taking a look back at Iowa’s finest offensive playmakers, defensive standouts, specialists and coaches from its entire history.
Now, it’s time to take a glance at the Hawkeyes’ defensive history. Which defensive linemen have frustrated opposing quarterbacks? Who are the Iowa linebackers that have snuffed out the opponents’ running game? In the secondary, which ball Hawks find their way onto the all-time list?
Here’s a look at our Iowa Hawkeyes all-time defensive players two-deep.
How many Iowa Hawkeyes have made the College Football Hall of Fames? Here’s a look at Iowa’s comprehensive list of inductees.
A pair of former Iowa Hawkeyes recently found their names included on the 2023 ballot for the College Football Hall of Fame. Former Iowa tight end Dallas Clark and Hawkeye offensive tackle Robert Gallery were listed on the National Football Foundation’s ballot for the College Football Hall of Fame.
Of course, Clark finished his career in 17th place on Iowa’s career receiving list with 1,281 yards on 81 receptions in his two seasons in Iowa City playing tight end. The Twin River Valley High School product from Bode, Iowa, helped the Hawkeyes to a share of the 2002 Big Ten title and the program’s first-ever 11-win season.
He also holds the record for the longest pass reception in school history, hauling in a 95-yard touchdown grab against Purdue during the 2002 season. In 2002, Clark was a consensus All-American and the recipient of the John Mackey Award, which is presented to the country’s top tight end annually.
Clark was selected by the Indianapolis Colts with the 24th pick of the first round in the 2003 NFL draft. In his 11 seasons as a professional, Clark reeled in 505 passes for 5,665 yards and 53 touchdowns.
Meanwhile, in 2003, Gallery was a consensus All-American and awarded the Outland Trophy, which is bestowed annually to the nation’s top interior lineman. He was a two-time first team All-Big Ten selection and helped anchor Iowa’s offensive line during its undefeated trek through Big Ten play in 2002. Gallery also helped lead Iowa to another 10-win season in 2003.
After being drafted by the Oakland Raiders with the No. 2 pick in the 2004 NFL draft, Gallery played eight seasons in the NFL and started in 103 of the 104 games he appeared in.
That duo will hopefully see their names called into the College Football Hall of Fame soon and join an illustrious list of former Hawkeyes that already have their seat at the table.
How many former Iowa Hawkeyes have been inducted into the College Football Hall of Fames? Here’s a look at the complete list below of National Football Foundation and Helms Athletic Foundation College Football Hall of Fame inductees.
The quarterback sack became an official statistic in 1982. Now, we know the names of the great players who had the most sacks before then.
One of the most unfortunate statistical issues in pro football is that there are no official sack numbers before 1982. This obviously leaves a lot of the game’s greatest players out of the loop when it comes to determining their historical importance. Pre-1982 unofficial sack totals have been floating around for years, but Pro Football Reference has taken the giant step of putting those totals from 1960 through 1981 on their website. John Turney of Pro Football Journal has been renowned for his work in this regard (Paul “Dr. Z” Zimmerman pointed out Turney’s work a long time ago), and it’s Turney’s work, along with that of Nick Webster, both members of the Professional Football Researchers Association, that has cleared the gap.
This new information presents quite the alternate history of pro football. All-time greats like Deacon Jones, Jack Youngblood, Alan Page, and Jim Marshall finally get their due, and lesser-known names like Al “Bubba” Baker (who now holds the single-season sack record with 23.0 in 1978), Coy Bacon, and Elvin Bethea find their profiles where they always should have been — right up there with the all-timers.
How much does this mean to the players who have been overlooked? Al “Bubba” Baker, who is finally revealed at the NFL’s single-season sack leader with 23 in the 1978 season (his rookie season, to boot) said on the Around the NFL Podcast that it was quite an emotional experience.
“For some reason, and I’m not kidding you, without any prompting, tears just started running down my eyes,” Baker said, via Lions Wire’s Jeff Risdon. “And my wife was inside, I opened up the patio doors. And my wife, first thing she said was, ‘What’s wrong?’ And I said, nothing’s wrong and I said come look at this. And, you know, we hugged and then I lost about an hour and a half, two hours. My daughter called. It was really emotional for my family. I guess at 6-foot-8, 290 pounds, that doesn’t sound really tough, but, we were all crying.
“You know somebody tells you you’re a sack leader and what do you do, you start crying. And I guess it’s because none of us really sat around like some players and, ‘We want this and we want that.’ We hadn’t thought about it for at least, for at least, I’m not kidding you, 20 years.”
Baker, who led the league in sacks in both 1978 and 1980 (with 17.5), and now has 131.0 sacks shown for his NFL career, is one of so many whose excellence is now more obvious to football fans of any stripe.
With that in mind, here are the top sack artists in professional football from 1960 through 1981 — presenting a far clearer picture of those players who contributed the most to quarterback disruption before the numbers became official. There were 13 players who had at least 100 sacks before the sack became an official statistic, and here they are.
The record the Steelers are chasing for the most consecutive games with a sack is going to take a bit longer than they thought.
When Steelers defensive lineman Stephon Tuitt sacked Jaguars quarterback Jake Luton on Sunday, forcing a fumble and recovering it for good measure, that brought Pittsburgh ever closer to what is acknowledged as the NFL record for sacks by a team in consecutive games. Tuitt’s takedown brought Pittsburgh’s streak to 67 games, while the Buccaneers had a sack in 69 straight games, a streak that ended in 2003.
Here’s the problem with that “record.” It’s not accurate. Individual sack numbers are filmy at best before the league started tabulating them as an official statistic in 1982 (though historians like John Tunney have done a lot of excellent, detailed work to get accurate numbers before then), but there are team sack numbers that go back decades before.
And with that, we can be sure that the Steelers are not chasing the Buccaneers — they are chasing two other teams. Per Chase Stuart of the indispensable Pro Football Reference site:
Love my man @ScottHanson who is the best in the business, so I hate to inform him that's he's got some bad info. The all-time record for consecutive games with a sack by a defense is 76, set by the Roger Brown/Alex Karras/Wayne Walker/Joe Schmidt Detroit Lions, from 1960 to 1965.
And if you include the playoffs, the Harvey Martin/Randy White/Too Tall Jones/Jethro Pugh Cowboys also had a 76 game streak, stretching into week 14 of the 1980 season.
Hanson, who hosts RedZone for the NFL Network and is indeed the best in the business, isn’t the only one getting this wrong. It’s universally acknowledged that the Buccaneers hold the record the Steelers are trying to break, but with more detailed research of the pre-1982 time period, we have more and better information.
The Lions of that era did indeed put up two double-digit sack games against Bart Starr and the Vince Lombardi Packers — an 11-sack game in a 12-7 win on November 7, 1965, and a 10-sack game in a 26-14 win on November 22, 1962. In the 1965 game, Starr lost 109 total yards, and got just four passes off in the second half, losing 93 yards in the final 30 minutes.
“There was a general breakdown up front,” Lombardi said. “We couldn’t handle their defense, and that was the story of the game.”
After one of the 11 sacks, Lombardi called a play in which halfback Paul Hornung took the ball from center, and promptly threw it to Lions defensive back Bruce Maher. Another of Starr’s sacks resulted in a safety.
Plus, Karras played Mongo in “Blazing Saddles,” which is cooler than anything he did on the field, and the man is a Hall of Famer.
(Maybe the Packers should have signed Sherriff Bart).
As for the Cowboys of their era… well, yeah. Dealing with Harvey Martin and Randy White (the co-MVPs of Super Bowl XII) along with Ed “Too Tall” Jones and Jethro Pugh was no fun at all.
It’s a shame that there aren’t detailed and official individual sack numbers for the NFL’s entire history, because that would give us a far more comprehensive sense of defensive value for players who never got their just due — sackmasters of the past like Coy Bacon, Al “Bubba” Baker, and Richard “Tombstone” Jackson. So, the very least we can do is to get the team sack stats right when we have them.
