David Bell vs Iowa

[Knight78]

The thought did go through my mind but I find it hard to believe that the loss of 1 DB results in 378 passing yards. I was under the impression that there would not be a huge drop off from Moss to Roberts.

Our depth must really suck if 1 injury can cause that much damage to our defense.

We replace a 3 year starter with a situational backup (mostly dime packages) against a team that has historically carved up our pass defense, especially one player that Moss likely would have had primary responsibility for defending. I firmly believe their passing yards would have been somewhere around 25% less (284 yards or so) with a more experienced defender in a critical position against their best receiver.

Yeah, Roberts is talented but do you really think that all the experience doesn't matter?

And I also point out that our O-line was subpar leading to little running room and no pass protection.

 

[ssckelley]

We replace a 3 year starter with a situational backup (mostly dime packages) against a team that has historically carved up our pass defense, especially one player that Moss likely would have had primary responsibility for defending. I firmly believe their passing yards would have been somewhere around 25% less (284 yards or so) with a more experienced defender in a critical position against their best receiver.

Yeah, Roberts is talented but do you really think that all the experience doesn't matter?

And I also point out that our O-line was subpar leading to little running room and no pass protection.

No, I don't think that at all but was Roberts the one that was being asked to cover Bell? They let Bell run loose with zone coverage and he burned them repeatedly over and over. It was a terrible defensive game plan, force Purdue to make someone else beat you, not the guy that been tearing up our secondary for the past 2 years.

But the most glaring stat wasn't even the yardage, it was the zero turnovers. This is where Moss probably makes the biggest difference. Purdue almost played mistake free football (had the 1 fumble on the pylon) and Iowa couldn't overcome it. Going into this game O'Connell had thrown 5 interceptions, zero last Saturday.

 

[hawkfan2679]

I haven't seen the entire game (couldn't watch live and haven't brought myself to go back to the entire thing) but in the snippets of highlights I've seen where Bell was making catches, most of them were in situations where Hankins would have been on him anyway as the field corner. However, I did note a couple of different occasions where we flipped Hankins to boundary corner because Bell lined up to the boundary (a sign of an adjustment from Parker that just didn't work). Purdue did a good job isolating him as the "1" in 3x1 sets and we didn't do enough to make sure that there was a bracket or high/low on him and O'Connell was on target more often than not.

Also, at some point zone coverage turns into man coverage and Bell is just better than anyone we have. Period.

 

[thedukeofearl]

I haven't seen the entire game (couldn't watch live and haven't brought myself to go back to the entire thing) but in the snippets of highlights I've seen where Bell was making catches, most of them were in situations where Hankins would have been on him anyway as the field corner. However, I did note a couple of different occasions where we flipped Hankins to boundary corner because Bell lined up to the boundary (a sign of an adjustment from Parker that just didn't work). Purdue did a good job isolating him as the "1" in 3x1 sets and we didn't do enough to make sure that there was a bracket or high/low on him and O'Connell was on target more often than not.

Also, at some point zone coverage turns into man coverage and Bell is just better than anyone we have. Period.

A wise man wouldn't watch that game

 

[Northside Hawk]

Teams like Purdue are completely content with throwing 4 yard passes over and over. Same with Northwestern. Almost all other teams run an offense with some short plays mixed in with deeper shots, and Iowa takes advantage of those risky deeper plays. Iowa's DBs almost always give a 5-8 yard cushion on the line. It's just a horrible formula for Iowa against these dink and dunk teams.

Now if Iowa would switch up to a tight man to man when playing these teams it would be a drastically different game. That's why these bad teams get blown out by everyone else in the Big with any talent. They get tight up on the receivers and against average to below average QB and receivers they just suffocate all of the short crap. Now a receiver like David Bell can still get open but you just double him.

I think it really comes down to Iowa being stubborn and not changing their strategy against these teams.

TOP

	Purdue	Iowa
2017​	26:17:00​	33:43:00​
2018​	26:03:00​	33:57:00​
2019​	24:22:00​	35:38:00​
2020​	30:11:00​	29:49:00​
2021​	34:46:00​	25:14:00​

I'm surprised with those time of possession stats. I thought they would have a noticeable edge on us in that department.

 

[Northside Hawk]

Not that it makes any difference, but did Bell flip his verbal with us or was he never committed and we finished as the bridesmaid?

 

[Fryowa]

Our depth must really suck if 1 injury can cause that much damage to our defense.

Our depth always sucks to be honest. That’s part of being Iowa (and other teams like us).

We don’t recruit like a blue blood so injuries are always going to be extra impactful. At an OSU etc. there’s 2-3 guys at each position that would start at Iowa. Even Penn State had a complete disaster when their QB went down.