West Virginia understands the challenges of going against the Iowa State defense under veteran coordinator Jon Heacock.
Heacock, who’s been in his position with the Cyclones since head coach Matt Campbell arrived in 2016, once again has his unit positioned as one of the best in the nation at No. 6 in scoring defense permitting just 10 points per game and No. 13 in total defense allowing just 271 yards per contest.
“They’ve got a system that’s in place and they’ve been doing it for a number of years. He’s got answers. Does a really good job with countering within a game,” head coach Neal Brown said.
While Heacock started his career in Ames with a traditional 4-3 look, in 2017 the Cyclones used a bye week to change their defense to a 3-3-5 with a unique twist.
It’s a spin-off a base nickel look, but the extra safety is essentially a hybrid linebacker that lines up behind the linebackers and between the other two safeties on the field and is asked to do a lot of different things on any given play. The linebackers also must have versatility.
The defense is known for presenting light boxes against the run with their placement of that star position and their linebackers but in actuality the defense uses those positions to fit the run. In the pass game, it allows Iowa State to drop eight men in coverage at any time in order to make things difficult on the spread offenses that are all across college football.
“So, we have to account for that run-fit guy. That's primarily, you know, the key for us is being able to account for him. And it's tough sometimes in terms of O-line identification and whatnot,” offensive coordinator Chad Scott said. “That's why we got to be simple in what we do and not do a lot.”
That will be a focus this week for West Virginia but fortunately the coaching staff does have experience squaring off against this defense multiple times in the past in the league.
Because the Cyclones have used the system for so long, they are constantly tweaking things in order to be able to react to what opposing teams throw at them.
“They're a lot better statistically in the second half than the first half. And that tells me, because of coaching, they're able to fix things that the offense may be taking advantage of them. The other thing, too, I think that as offenses have become more multiple and there's more pre-snap movement and stuff, when you play that front, there's not a whole lot of box movements,” Brown said.
That means that conversely as a playcaller, Brown needs to be able to have answers for what the Cyclones and Heacock are able to throw at him during the course of the game. It’s a back-and-forth chess match of sorts in order to put yourself in the best position to succeed.
“You’ve got to have a counter and he’s got great answers,” Brown said.
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