Iowa football has ‘chance to have a good offense’ as 2024 season looms 3 weeks away

IOWA CITY — Tim Lester has the numbers saved on his computer.

Iowa football’s new offensive coordinator did not specify which numbers from last season, but all of them on that side of the ball were bad — 130th (out of 130 FBS teams) in yards per game and yards per play, 129th in points per game, 126th in third-down efficiency and 129th in completion percentage.

Lester’s “realistic” goal? “Let’s cut everything in half.”

“Whatever we were last year, I’d like to be halfway there,” Lester said while noting that he will not look at the numbers again until the end of the year. “I kind of look at where we were nationally in a couple stats, and if we’re 120th, I want to be in the 60s this year. And if we were 50th, I want to be 25.”

One does not need to look far around the outdoor practice field that Lester was standing on during Iowa’s annual media day Friday to see reasons for his and the rest of the Hawkeyes’ optimism about the 2024 offense.

Iowa has a deeper quarterback room than in recent years. Behind Cade McNamara — a former third-team all-Big Ten quarterback himself — the Hawkeyes have ex-Northwestern quarterback Brendan Sullivan, who started four games last year for the Wildcats. Sullivan, head coach Kirk Ferentz said, has “done a really good job out there” in his first week-plus of fall camp.

“The room overall is a lot more competitive than it was certainly at the end of last year, last December,” Ferentz said. “And that was the goal — try to get a room where you've got good competition.”

The offensive line returns four of five starters from last year’s team, and another three linemen have started at least one game for the Hawkeyes in their careers. With that experience, Ferentz believes “we're finally at a place maybe where we can play at the pace we would like to play.”

“When our line plays good and our quarterback plays good, we have a chance,” Ferentz said, looking back at his past 25 seasons as head coach at Iowa and previous nine years as an assistant under Hayden Fry. “We have a chance to have a good offense.”

Every running back who had at least one carry last year is back this year.

Wide receiver has experienced significant attrition, and it’s no secret that the room did not have much production last year. But Lester showed plenty of optimism about the young position group.

“The trajectory opportunity is huge,” Lester said. “They’ve really taken advantage of it. … They’re probably the one group that’s been the most fun to watch because it is leaps and bounds of improvement every day.”

As Iowa’s offense pursues its ambitious goals, it does not hurt that the team is “a little bit healthier than we've been the last couple years.” Running back Leshon Williams is among the “four or five guys” who are out with soft-tissue injuries, Ferentz said, but it’s “nothing long-term.”

Of course, the improvement that Lester is seeking is no small task. Then-offensive coordinator Brian Ferentz noted a “fleeting sense of contentedness in the evening” at last year’s media day before proceeding to direct the last-place Iowa offense and losing his job.

“Nothing that happened in the past matters,” Lester recalled telling the team earlier this year, “unless you want it to matter.”

The defense, meanwhile, is coming off back-to-back seasons of leading the country in yards allowed per play and exudes experience again this year. Eight starters return from last year’s team, including All-America linebacker Jay Higgins.

“We know and understand the preparation that it takes to be a really good team in the Big Ten,” defensive end Deontae Craig said.

The Hawkeyes are No. 25 in the preseason coaches poll, with the more-often-cited preseason Associated Press Poll coming out next week. (Should the offense operate at the level Lester and Co. believe it can, the Hawkeyes’ rankings will surely rise above No. 25.)

“I'm pretty sure Ohio State is really good,” Ferentz said when asked about the poll. “Pretty sure Georgia is. … But outside of that, that's what's great about college football. Nobody really knows. I just know this: I like the way our team is working. I think we have potential.”

Could that potential lead Iowa to a berth in the 12-team College Football Playoff?

“That is a very realistic goal for this team,” said McNamara, who was the starting quarterback on Michigan’s 2021 CFP team. “I think — just the overall experience and the amount of talent that we have on both sides of the ball — that if we weren’t to have that goal, we’d be holding ourselves short.”

Comments: john.steppe@thegazette.com

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