Iowa offensive line ‘hungry to get better’ in spring practices

IOWA CITY — Logan Jones knows he is not the best at grilling on Iowa’s offensive line.

“I don’t grill,” Jones said.

But who is? Nick DeJong, without hesitation, said it’s “me.”

“I’m the oldest guy we got,” DeJong said. “Experience really is under my belt.”

Connor Colby is confident about his grilling skills, too, although his teammates are less convinced from their frequent meals together.

“I don’t know if he’s the best griller, but he probably thinks he is,” Jones said.

The other linemen, Colby contends, simply “don’t like how I cook it.”

“I like it a little raw in the middle,” Colby said. “Not everyone’s a big fan of that.”

Colby’s preferred grilling method also serves as a metaphor for the state of Iowa’s offensive line last football season.

With four offensive linemen making their first career starts in 2022 — Jones, Beau Stephens, Gennings Dunker and Tyler Elsbury — Iowa’s offensive line was raw in the middle too.

“We had a lot of guys getting their first starting experience,” Colby said. “That’s kind of learning by getting thrown in the fire.”

Jones not only made his first career start on the offensive line, but he took his first snaps — in practice or in games — on the offensive side of the ball after moving from the defense.

“There’s a lot of learning that I had to go through,” Jones said. “Going into that season, we didn’t play with each other very much other than that fall camp.”

Colby, DeJong and Mason Richman were the only offensive linemen available in 2022 who had already started games in an Iowa uniform. Plus, Colby’s past experience was at guard rather than tackle, where he played for the first half of the season.

“If you got a bunch of guys who weren’t experienced, it’s hard to expect them to get the job done every single time,” DeJong said.

The results were representative of the position group’s lack of experience.

The analytics website Football Outsiders measures line yards per carry, which estimates how many yards the offensive line is responsible for per rushing play.

Iowa ranked 128th out of 131 FBS teams in the statistic last year, ahead of only Arkansas State, Temple and Boston College.

“We weren’t as fundamentally sound as we’d like to be, and we weren’t communicating as well as we needed to out there,” Colby said.

Looking ahead to 2023, Iowa’s offensive linemen — and grilling aficionados — are “hungry to get better,” Colby said.

“We got to develop as a unit and raise the standard of the entire room to what it has been in the past,” Colby said.

Colby said “getting everyone on the same page” has been a focal point of the spring this year.

“Sometimes we were on different pages as a unit out there,” Colby said. “That’s never good.”

The offensive line’s efforts to be “on the same page” are despite several players being out with injuries.

“They’re still in meetings,” Colby said. “So everyone’s learning the same stuff at the same time.”

Injuries have opened the door for younger offensive linemen to compete against the first-team defense. DeJong credited redshirt freshmen Jack Dotzler and Kale Krogh with how they’ve stepped up.

“Sometimes it goes good, sometimes not so much,” DeJong said. “But I think it’s just their willingness every single day to come out and be able to expose those weaknesses and then work on them.”

As for some of the first-team linemen who are healthy, DeJong has been “kind of moving around” between tackle and guard. Colby has been working at left guard.

Colby, now in his third spring after early-enrolling in 2021, is “not as overwhelmed as I was maybe my first year of spring ball.”

“You can kind of see the bigger picture more,” Colby said.

At center, Jones now has the benefit of having a “fundamental base” following a year of learning how to play on the offensive side of the ball.

“I’m not perfect,” Jones said. “But I understand what I have to do and why I have to do it, versus last year, just kind of going out there and playing.”

The offensive line already is more “comfortable with each other” than last year, Jones said.

“We know how to play with each other,” Jones said.

Colby and DeJong’s grilling time with the other linemen — although the verdict still is out on who’s better — appears to have a role in that, too.

“The more guys want to spend time together, the better,” DeJong said. “Because that’s kind of a sign of guys that are truly invested and bonded with each other.”

Comments: john.steppe@thegazette.com