Pre-summer defensive line outlook

Recently the fact has been circulating on the message boards that no college team has more defensive lineman in the NFL than Iowa does. To me that is an astounding fact given that Iowa runs the kind of defense that they want the lineman to plug holes and allow the linebackers to flow and make plays. What it has a lot to do with is the fact that Iowa has great coaches and when a player leaves Iowa he is fundamentally sound and knows how to play the game the right way.
The three starters that the Hawkeyes lost from a season ago amassed an astounding 483 combined tackles, 90 tackles for loss, 42.5 sacks, and 38 quarterback hurries. Bottom line is that the players that left from last year’s team produced when they were on the field. Gone is Adrian Clayborn, Karl Klug, and Christian Ballard, who were all drafted into the NFL.

In a lot of ways, the 2011 defensive line will resemble the 2005 one that had to replace Matt Roth, Jonathan Babineaux, Tyler Luebke, and Derreck Robinson. Most of those players were unknown, but turned out to be Kenny Iwebema, Bryan Mattison, Matt Kroul, and Mitch King, who have all cashed NFL paychecks. Point being, just because you don’t recognize their name now, doesn’t mean they won’t be great players.

Defensive End-

It is never a good thing when you lose one and half starters (I consider Ballard ½ because he started at DE half the time last year) and it’s no different for Iowa. Returning for Iowa will be Broderick Binns (6-2, 261), who by all accounts had a down year after a promising sophomore campaign. As a sophomore he accumulated 58 tackles and 6 sacks, while last season he only tallied 36 tackles and no sacks. With this being his last season, it is put up or shut up time for a player that has shown flashes of great play over his career.
Looking to break into the starting lineup opposite of Binns will be LeBron Daniel (6-2, 250), the Ohio native will be going into his final season in a Hawkeye uniform looking to make the most of his chance to finally start.
Behind Daniel is more unproven players in senior Joe Forgy (6-4, 260), junior Joe Gaglione (6-47, 250), sophomores Dominic Alvis (6-4, 250) and Scott Covert (6-2, 240) , and redshirt freshman Mike Hardy (6-5, 270). Of these players Alvis has been singled out by defensive coordinator Norm Parker as a player he thinks will make an impact. Along with Dominic I think Mike Hardy could make an impact in his redshirt season.

Defensive Tackle-

Returning as the full time starter for Iowa will be Mike Daniels (6-1, 280), or Diesel, as his teammates call him. Daniels is a guy who burst onto the scene last year and instantly won the affection of the Iowa fans with his high motor and energetic celebrations. Mike started in 8 games last season and accounted for 40 tackles and 4 sacks.
The starting position next to Mike will be up for grabs in the fall, Thomas Nardo (6-3, 270) and Carl Davis (6-5, 310) figure to be the front runners. Nardo is a veteran looking for his chance to make an impact while Davis will be a redshirt freshman who is maybe the biggest defensive tackle Iowa has had in several years. This could be a situation where Nardo will get the start to begin the season, but I fully expect Davis to be in the starting lineup before the end of the season.
Behind the three other defensive tackles will be junior Steve Bigach (6-3, 272) and red-shirt freshman Louis Trinca-Pasat (6-3, 250) and Donavan Johnson (6-3, 265). Don’t be surprised if the redshirt is also burned on incoming freshman Darian Cooper (6-1, 290). The high touted high school teammate of Marcus Coker chose Iowa over the likes of Michigan, Michigan State, and Penn State. Cooper, like Carl Davis is coming to Iowa with a Big Ten ready body and could contribute in his first season on campus.

ISU Game Analysis- Defense

DL- Once again the D-line played a solid game, against teams like UNI and ISU you aren't going to see a whole lot of stats from the line. I thought that they put good pressure on the Cyclone quarterbacks all game long and basically had their way with a larger offensive line. What concerned me was the amount of rushing yards ISU got in the game. Part of that was due to the scheme that ISU uses, that zone read running play coupled with the wider OL splits will cause the vanilla Iowa defense fits all season. Binns led the charge with 9 tackles and Klug had the only TFL for the DL. Overall grade: B

LB- After last weeks poor performance the linebackers stepped it up this last week. However they still missed too many tackles. Most of the time it was the basic fundamental of not wrapping up the ball carrier. The LB play on the option was for the most part good, I thought that their decision to make Arnaud carry the ball was well played by Edds most of the game. In pass coverage the LB's did all right against a bevy of crossing patterns, but still showed room for improvement. Overall grade: B

DB- Well after saying that the safeties played a sub-par game against UNI, they brought their A game against ISU. Sash and Greenwood both had multiple INT days with Sash being Arnaud's second favorite target with three grabs. The entire defensive backfield had a stellar game, William Lowe got the start at the corner opposite Spievey and was hardly picked on at all. It appeared that Iowa played more man coverage on Saturday than they normally do and they played it exceptionally well. Everyone wants to talk about the bad passes Arnaud made, but there was little room to get the ball to his receivers as they couldn't get any separation from the Iowa DB's. Overall grade: A

Defensive notes:
Team did a great job of gang tackling
Arnaud still does not know that Iowa plays a cover 2
Looked shaky against the run at times
6 TO's is going to win you a lot of games