Iowa Football 2018: 5 bold predictions for November

5. Defensive line continues to terrorize quarterbacks

Throughout all the ups and downs that Iowa saw in the month of October, the defensive line stayed constant as a dominating force. As a unit, the Hawkeyes defensive line has accumulated 22 of the defense 25 sacks, more than half of those sacks coming from A.J. Epenesa and Anthony Nelson, who sit at 6 and 6.5 sacks respectively. Parker Hesse, perhaps the glue of the entire Iowa defense, has 4 sacks of his own.

Looking ahead to Iowa’s next four opponents, each team has a sacks allowed rate higher than 4.3 percent, which is where Purdue sits. Northwestern has a sack rate of 4.9 percent, Nebraska at 6.8 percent, and Illinois at a whopping 9%. To give some context, Iowa has a sacks allowed rate of only 3.2 percent. This gives the Iowa defensive line a great chance to add more numbers to their stats and buff up the sack total.

Iowa will continue to dominate the line of scrimmage defensively, with seven or eight bodies they can rotate in at a time. They have caused fits all season long and will continue to into the home stretch of Iowa’s season.