Tim Lester’s Iowa offense showed remarkable improvement in 2024. What could be next in 2025?

IOWA CITY — As Tim Lester implemented his Shanahan-style offense in 2024, the Hawkeyes “were drinking through a fire hose the entire first year.”

“Last year, the first time I turned on the Cyclone defense — they do a heck of a job — it was like four days before the game, or five, whatever, one week before,” Lester said on The Gazette’s Hawk Off the Press podcast. “And I’m like, ‘What is going on? Who’s that guy in the middle, the star?’ Because you just didn’t have time.”

Now that Lester and Co. have time — not enough time for the offensive coordinator to get through his summer reading list yet, but enough to make further tweaks to the system — the Hawkeyes have a chance to build on a remarkable one-year improvement from 2023 to 2024 again in 2025.

Iowa went from averaging 15.4 points game in 2023 to 27.7 in 2024 — an eye-popping 79.9 percent increase. Iowa’s third down efficiency rose from 29.4 percent in 2023 to 41.3 percent in 2024. Iowa’s red zone efficiency climbed from 80 percent in 2023 to 90.3 percent in 2024.

Perhaps most impressively, Iowa went from averaging 3.3 rushing yards per attempt and 115.9 rushing yards per game in 2023 to 5.1 yards per attempt and 197.2 yards per game.

“Obviously having Kaleb Johnson emerge really helped, especially with some of the injuries we had at the quarterback position, our wideouts learning the whole system,” Lester said. “It’s not easy to play wideout in this system, but it’s very valuable once you learn it.”

Even in the passing game, Iowa improved its completion percentage from 48.9 (129th out of 130 FBS teams) in 2023 to 62.7 (52nd out of 133 teams) in 2024. It was the first time Iowa completed more than 60 percent of its passes over the course of an entire season since 2015.

The Hawkeyes still ranked 100th or worse, though, in team passing efficiency, passing yards per completion, passing yards per attempt and total yards per game.

“I knew it wasn’t going to be perfect in Year 1,” Lester said. “I really feel like you need to be efficient at something before you can become explosive. Coming in here a year ago, I felt like we were efficient running the ball, not necessarily explosive. We were able to make that jump. We weren’t very efficient throwing it. I think we made a step. It’s not a great step, but it’s step toward being efficient.”

Now, Lester no longer has the benefit of consensus All-American Kaleb Johnson being in the backfield. (Johnson was a third-round pick in the 2025 NFL draft after having by far the best season of his career in Lester’s system.) The same goes for four-year starting offensive linemen Mason Richman and Connor Colby.

Other challenges exist, too.

The 2025 schedule includes two teams that could start the year in the top 10 of preseason rankings and a third that also went to the College Football Playoff last year. That is notably different from Iowa’s 2024 schedule, which included only one ranked opponent in the regular season.

But Iowa has many factors in its favor as well.

That has particularly been the case since Iowa landed two-time FCS national champion quarterback Mark Gronowski via the transfer portal in January. He has started 55 games at the college level while completing 63.6 percent of his passes and throwing 93 touchdowns versus 20 interceptions.

“When you have a veteran quarterback in this system, there’s a lot of freedom,” Lester said. “Freedom that I haven’t always given everybody, especially last year. … Not only do you have to be ready, the O-line has to be ready if you want to make changes, and the wideouts have to be ready. And in no way, shape or form were we even close to being able to truly take the gloves off offensively.”

The offensive line ahead of him returns three starters from a Joe Moore Award semifinalist group and adds Division II All-American Bryce George. Addison Ostrenga and Zach Ortwerth lead a tight end room that has proven options. Even without Johnson in the mix at running back, Kamari Moulton and Jaziun Patterson have both demonstrated their reliability and big-play ability.

Jacob Gill became the first Iowa wide receiver since 2019 to record 35 receptions in a single season although no other wideouts had 15-plus receptions in 2024. Lester has plenty of optimism about the wide receiver position as a whole ahead of the 2025 season.

“They’re running,” Lester said. “They’re not really thinking about what they’re going to do. They’re thinking about how they’re going to run this route in this coverage vs. this leverage. It’s just fun to talk to our wideouts right now. There’s probably, I would say, seven to eight of them competing right now for jobs, and that’s exactly where you want it to be.”

From a coaching standpoint, Iowa’s addition of former Wake Forest offensive coordinator Warren Ruggiero as a senior offensive analyst has understandably captured headlines. But Iowa also added former New York Jets offensive assistant coach Billy VandeMerkt as an analyst.

“He worked for Mike (LaFleur), and he played for Mike in college,” Lester said, referencing the Los Angeles Rams offensive coordinator and fellow believer in the Shanahan-style system. “So he knows the system forwards and backwards.”

The Hawkeyes also have the one commodity that Lester lacked after getting the job in late January 2024 — after the main December transfer portal window and with a limited window to implement the scheme before spring practices.

Time.

“Guys just need time,” Lester said. “Time on task is a big thing. Do I ever feel like we were really running the whole system the way it should? No. We had to figure out what we could be good at.”

As for this year’s Cy-Hawk game, Lester is already a little more prepared ahead of the 2025 season for the Week 2 rivalry than he was ahead of the 2024 season.

“I think I have the first three games already game-planned for next fall,” Lester said.

Comments: john.steppe@thegazette.com

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