Iowa football ‘definitely going to look’ in transfer portal, Tim Lester says

IOWA CITY — When the transfer portal opens next month, Iowa football is “definitely going to look into it,” offensive coordinator Tim Lester said in his bye-week news conference on Tuesday.

“In this state of college football,” Lester said, “I think every position, every year, you have to look.”

Quarterback is an obvious position of note as Cade McNamara exhausts his eligibility and James Resar moves to wide receiver. The top three quarterbacks in 2024 would presumably be Brendan Sullivan, Marco Lainez and Jackson Stratton. That assumes no quarterbacks depart via the portal, though, and Iowa has lost at least one quarterback to the portal in the last three offseasons.

Quarterback, while the highest-profile position, is not necessarily Iowa’s only potential portal need. Fourteen of Iowa’s 22 Week 1 starters were either seniors or graduate students. Those 14 seniors or graduate students include both starting linebackers, three of the four defensive linemen and three of the five offensive linemen.

The calculus for Iowa in the transfer portal — or any other team at the FBS level for that matter — will be different because of the upcoming 105-player roster limits. Iowa currently has 128 players on its roster.

That means in the process of various offseason roster changes — graduation, draft departures, traditional recruiting, transfer portal recruiting, etc. — Iowa will need to downsize its roster by 23 spots.

“So there’s a lot of moving parts,” Lester said. “I know Tyler (Barnes) and Coach (Kirk Ferentz) have been working hard on that. I’m excited to have a meeting later this week to learn a little bit about all the work they’ve been doing for the past six months.”

The football transfer portal window will open on Dec. 9 and last until Dec. 28. Any portal planning “will not take away from the last two weeks” of the regular season, however.

“We got two more weeks to play, to get better and continue to teach,” Lester said.

Comments: john.steppe@thegazette.com

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