After allowing 29.4 points and 427.5 total yards per game last season, ISU coach Paul Rhoads is unsure how his defense will look in games this season.

While there was uncertainty about where his defense is, Rhoads said with certainty on Monday, Aug. 27, at the news conference that the unit is improved and, more importantly, smarter than it was a year ago.

“We’ve coached things a lot less as we’ve gone through this training camp than we have in the past,” Rhoads said.

Pressure on the opposing quarterback has been a main point of emphasis after struggling with it a year ago — the team only tallied 1.31 sacks per game, which ranked 107th among Football Bowl Subdivision teams.

“I thought a year ago that our pressure on the quarterback coming out of camp was going to be much improved,” Rhoads said. “As we got through the season, it wasn’t.”

Rhoads said the plan for the defensive line, which has been tabbed as the weakest unit on the defense in terms of talent, is to rotate 10–12 players during games to keep players fresh in hopes of maintaining pressure on the quarterback.

Also critical for the defensive line is maintaining its success in third-down stops. Last season, the ISU defense allowed opponents to convert on third down 36 percent of the time — 37th best in the nation.

“It’s really substantial and significant,” said defensive end Roosevelt Maggitt of third-down stops. “Getting off the field on third down, that’s one thing we really strive for.”

Third-down stops are even more critical in the Big 12, which is laden with teams that pride themselves in running no-huddle spread offenses. These offenses give opposing defenses little, if any, time to make adjustments on the fly.

“You’ve got to be able to capitalize on unique situations such as turnovers and anything like that in getting third-down stops or forcing field goals if you get in a bad situation down in the red zone if they turned it over,” said senior linebacker Jake Knott.

Knott said defending the run is not the problem for the team, but adjusting to run-heavy offenses in the span of a week after facing spread offenses can cause difficulty.

“Playing physical isn’t the problem,” said sophomore end David Irving. “We mainly stop ourselves.”