Iowa football: Week 10 PFF team has large Hawkeye representation

Despite losing, the Iowa football team had this year’s best representation on Pro Football Focus’ Week 10 B1G team of the week. Here’s who made the cut.

As we have discussed in weeks past, Pro Football Focus’ weekly team of the weeks do not have a real tangible impact on the players or the Iowa football program, but it is fun to see how well Hawkeye players did in one method of advanced metrics. This week is a little bittersweet with those lists as the Iowa football team had their best week of the year in terms of Pro Football Focus, but were still unable to secure a victory in West Lafayette.

Furthermore, how the representation was divided up will certainly cause some controversy among Iowa football fans considering the amount of players on the defensive side of the ball that made the cut.

This after Purdue gashed Iowa’s defense for 333 yards through the air and four plays over 25 yards throughout the game, but it’s important to note the isolated incidents of those plays and how well the defense performed otherwise.

When our of keys to the game was stopping DJ Knox and Rondale Moore, which Iowa did with a ton of success. Knox was held to just 34 yards on 9 carries while Moore was held to 31 yards on 6 receptions. Outside of junior college transfers Terry Wright and Isaac Zico, the passing game was largely held in check.

When you see the list below, it will begin to make sense why Iowa had three players named Pro Football Focus’ Big Ten Team of the Week in week 10.

Two defensive lineman, Anthony Nelson and Sam Brincks made the cut with grades of 83.9 and 80.6 respectively. Like we said above, the Iowa defense did a fantastic job of putting pressure on Blough when he wasn’t getting the ball out quickly and stopping running back DJ Knox.

In the secondary, safety Amani Hooker registered his best game of the season after turning in a five tackle performance and one interception that should have been a touchdown return as well. His 91.7 was good enough to qualify him as the first Hawkeye this season to make PFF’s National Team of the Week.

On offense, the team rebounded from their disastrous performance against Penn State, and it showed. A week after being heavily criticized by nearly everyone (ourselves included) for his terrible play at Penn State, sophomore tackle Alaric Jackson came back strong in week ten.

Jackson, along with senior guard Ross Reynolds both made the cut for inclusion on the Big Ten offensive team of the week this week.

Again, these teams of the week don’t factor into much. They don’t factor into scouts grades, they don’t go on the player’s resumes, and they certainly directly correlate to Iowa getting a win Saturday, but they are cool to see which Hawkeyes performed well according to a reputable advanced metrics site like Pro Football Focus.