Cedar Rapids native Connor Colby not perfect, but developing quickly on Hawkeyes’ offensive line

IOWA CITY — Iowa offensive line coach George Barnett used kitchen appliances Wednesday to explain the gradual results that come with teaching a young offensive line.

“If you're a fan of the microwave, you're probably not going to be an offensive line coach,” Barnett said. “You're more of a conventional oven type of guy, and you realize things take time.”

If standard offensive line growth is akin to how an oven cooks food, freshman Connor Colby’s development might look — at least from a distance — a little more like a high-end air fryer because of how fast it’s happened.

The Cedar Rapids Kennedy grad joined elite company as a true freshman starter on the offensive line in 2021.

The four other offensive linemen to start as a true freshmen, albeit in fewer games than Colby, during the Kirk Ferentz era — Tristan Wirfs, James Daniels, Bryan Bulaga and Mike Jones — all signed with NFL teams after their Iowa careers were over.

Colby’s performance resulted in freshman All-America recognition from the Football Writers Association of America and Maxwell Football Club.

It wasn’t perfect, though.

“I was just overthinking a lot of stuff,” Colby said. “That's normal when you don't really know what you're doing all the time.”

Now Colby is working on “simplifying” what he’s doing, he said, and already is thinking “a lot quicker” than he was during the season.

“Sometimes when you’re young and you get thrown in that fire, like he did last year, sometimes it's a little bit of survival mode,” Barnett said. “There are some quirky things that he’s done technique wise because he was trying to survive.”

Now Barnett said he and Colby are “cleaning some of those things up.”

At the same time, Barnett said he recently reminded Colby, “Buddy, you’re a freshman, and that’s OK,” to keep expectations at a manageable level.

“What happens is he could come in the beginning of spring practice, and think he has to be perfect and everything has to be smooth, and he’s got to figure it out,” Barnett said. “In reality, he doesn’t, and that’s OK.”

The veteran offensive line coach has been particularly impressed with Colby’s recent play in practices.

“What I've seen from him is a lot of improvement in the last seven days,” Barnett said. “He’s made a nice little jump.”

That comes against an experienced defensive line, too. The Hawkeyes returned seven of the eight defensive linemen from last year’s depth chart.

“You’ve always got to show up ready to go every day or else you're going to get beat,” Colby said. “Going up against Noah Shannon every day is definitely going to help me out a lot because he’s so quick off the ball.”

At first, Colby was practicing entirely at guard, but Barnett has played him recently at tackle as well. He has experience at tackle from his time at Cedar Rapids Kennedy High School, but the opportunity with the Hawkeyes in 2021 came at guard.

“Inside, everything happens a lot quicker,” Colby said. “So when you go back out to tackle, you’re used to people being on you quick.”

In 2021, Colby had the benefit of working with two veterans at the other two interior offensive line spots on the first-team offense — Tyler Linderbaum and Kyler Schott, who also were from the Corridor.

“They would always help me out,” Colby said. “If I didn't know what to do, I definitely knew that they knew what I was supposed to do.”

Now, Colby can focus more on how instead of what he needs to do on the offensive line. That includes playing with “a little more personality,” Barnett said.

“Any time you get a player to do that, especially an offensive lineman, I think he’s going to get better faster,” Barnett said. “So I'm excited to see that as time goes.”

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