Iowa football: Pro Football Focus showing Hawks the love after week four

The Iowa football program played a tough game Saturday night and that effort was recognized by football analytics company, Pro Football Focus.

As we have mentioned in a few articles this week, there are a lot of positive takeaways from the Iowa football team’s loss to Wisconsin Saturday. There were numerous players who had outstanding games Saturday night including junior quarterback Nate Stanley who appeared to take the next step in his development. After each week, football analytics company, Pro Football Focus, provides highlights from the previous weekend of top performers and top teams in the country.

Needless to say, after a strong performance Saturday, the Iowa football team was well represented.

The Hawkeyes saw one player named to the Week 4 Big Ten Offensive Team of the Week, and multiple players come pretty close to making the list. Furthermore, the Iowa football program found themselves ranked as a team according to PFF.

First and foremost, offensive tackle Alaric Jackson was named to the Week 4 Big Ten Offensive Team of the Week. This is the fourth straight week a member of the Iowa football program has made the team of the week according to PFF.

Jackson, a redshirt sophomore from Michigan, was suspended for the season opener after entering 2018 with high expectations. As a redshirt freshman, Jackson started in all twelve regular season games and was named a First Team Freshman All-American as well as being named to the Big Ten Conference All-Freshman team. Against a solid Badger defense, he allowed zero sacks on quarterback Nate Stanley and helped pave the way for an Iowa football team that averaged 4.8 yards per carry on 31 rushes. 

Jackson, however, was not the highest graded player for Iowa Saturday night. That honor belonged to sophomore tight end TJ Hockenson who had a 84.9 PFF grade, which just barely cost him a chance at making the PFF Team of the Week for the second time this season.

As we alluded to earlier, Nate Stanley had himself quite a game after struggling through the first two weeks of the season. Purely ranked as a passer, Nate Stanley was the third highest graded passer behind Wisconsin’s Alex Hornibrook and Ohio State’s Dwayne Haskins.

All of this great play has helped the Iowa football program find a spot in the Pro Football Focus top 25 rankings as well. Although these rankings don’t directly correlate to anything, it bodes well when the College Football Playoff committee compiles their initial rankings as a portion of their ranking is based on the eye test and how “good” a team is outside of their win-loss record.

With the Hawkeyes on a bye wee this weekend, there will be no Iowa players on this list in week five, but with two weeks of rest the Hawks will likely see a few names adding week six after facing their longest rival, the Minnesota Gophers.

For more grades, advanced statistics and more at Pro Football Focus, subscribe to PFF’s EDGE or ELITE subscriptions at ProFootballFocus.com.