Halfway through the season, the Cyclones get a break this Saturday as they are finally on their bye week. Coming off a loss to BYU and now having a .500 record on the season, sitting at 3-3, this team has a lot to fix heading into the second half of the season. Most people would say their biggest issue is coming from their offensive passing game, and that's not wrong, but a bigger issue has been forming over the past couple of weeks, and that is the defense.

Iowa State Cyclones defense led by Jesse Bobbit began the season with a very impressive start holding teams to an average of 11 points per game and only giving up a total of 679 yards to their opponents in the first three games. They put up three straight great defensive performances by limiting Southeast Missouri State to 10 points, Iowa to 16 points, and Bowling Green to just 7 points.

The secondary performed well to start the season, giving up only 126 passing yards per game and keeping opponents below 150 yards through the air in all three games. They where also able to get hands on the ball forcing five takeaways with three being fumbles  and two being interceptions.

The Cyclones were also great at getting teams off the field on third down, as opponents converted on under 30% of their third-down attempts against them over the stretch. This helped Iowa State Cyclones open the college football season with a hot 2–1 record, with their only loss being to Iowa in a game where the Cyclone defense played great.

An uptick in competition has led to a downfall in production defensively. The Cyclones have played nothing but Big 12 opponents over the last three games, and they have struggled mightily, going 1-2 in conference games.

A big reason for this is their struggles defensively. Over the past three games, the Cyclones' defense has allowed almost triple the number of points as they did at the start of the season, allowing 32.3 PPG, and more than double the amount of yards to offenses, allowing 1,396 total yards to opponents.

This has been the product of one huge thing…tackling. This team has struggled to bring down ball carriers. A team that was once one of the better units against the run at the start of the season has now become terrible at stopping it. They have been getting bullied on the ground by both running backs and quarterbacks. In the past two weeks alone, they have allowed over 250 rushing yards to quarterbacks. We know Michael Hawkins Jr. and Bear Bachmeier are mobile, but allowing that type of production to quarterbacks is not good and needs to be fixed if this team wants to have any chance of success in the second half of the season.

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