Iowa expected to hire Tim Lester as next offensive coordinator

IOWA CITY — The biggest question mark of the Iowa football offseason now has an answer.

Iowa is expected to hire former Western Michigan head coach Tim Lester as its next offensive coordinator, according to reports by ESPN’s Adam Rittenberg and FootballScoop.com.

Lester most recently was a senior analyst for the Green Bay Packers following his six-year tenure at Western Michigan. Hired to replace P.J. Fleck, Lester was 37-32 as a head coach and took the Broncos to three bowl games before getting fired in 2022.

Kirk Ferentz said on his radio show ahead of the 2023 game against Western Michigan that he was “a little curious about the coaching change.”

“Tim Lester had been up there, and they had a really nice program going with him,” Ferentz said at the time.

The Broncos finished 40th or better in points per game in five of Lester’s six seasons as head coach at Western Michigan, including as high as a tie for ninth in the COVID-19-affected 2020 season.

The exception was Lester’s final season with the Broncos, when they finished 118th in points per game and 124th in yards per game en route to a 5-7 season.

The Western Michigan alum also had stints on the Syracuse and Purdue staffs as quarterbacks coach. He was Syracuse’s offensive coordinator as well in 2014 and 2015.

Syracuse was tied for 118th nationally in points per game in his first season as offensive coordinator and improved to 77th in 2015. He was not retained with the Orange staff when head coach Scott Shafer was fired.

Other candidates for Iowa’s offensive coordinator vacancy included former Duke offensive coordinator Kevin Johns, who traveled to Iowa City to meet with Kirk Ferentz late last week.

Sunday’s news marks the end of a nearly-three-month period of uncertainty at the offensive coordinator position, which began with Beth Goetz’s Oct. 30 announcement that Brian Ferentz will not be retained after the 2023 season.

The completed search, while taking longer than Kirk Ferentz’s previous timeline of finishing it by the third week of January, still gives Iowa’s new offensive coordinator more than a month to acclimate before spring practices begin.

Lester will be looking to improve an offense that ranked dead-last in yards per game and yards per play last year. The Hawkeyes also were 120th or worse in points per game, completion percentage, third-down efficiency and other key metrics.

Lester will be Iowa’s fourth offensive coordinator during the Kirk Ferentz era, following Ken O’Keefe (1999-2011), Greg Davis (2012-2016) and Brian Ferentz (2017-2023). Lester joins Davis as the only other person to have FBS experience as an offensive coordinator before taking the Iowa job.

Lester will benefit from the expected return of quarterback Cade McNamara, tight end Luke Lachey and several experienced offensive linemen along with the addition of former Alabama offensive lineman Kadyn Proctor.

The Hawkeyes still have one assistant coach position open after wide receivers coach Kelton Copeland’s contract was not renewed.

Comments: john.steppe@thegazette.com