Hawkeyes Wrap Up Spring Ball with High Hopes

Iowa Football Feels Good About Progress of New Offense

It was a typical spring for Iowa’s football team, coach Kirk Ferentz.

If springs can be typical anymore in the NCAA transfer portal era.

The 15th and final practice of the spring was held Saturday at Kinnick Stadium, and the next time the Hawkeyes will be there at the beginning of the upcoming season, they’ll look a lot different.

By then the installation of the new offense should be complete. Cade McNamara, the No. 1 quarterback on the depth chart, is expected to be healthy, as will mostly everybody held out of Saturday’s workouts.

And Ferentz and his staff will have at least scoured the transfer portal for help for a roster that is already overloaded.

But spring is spring, and this wasn’t any different, Ferentz said.

“Several (practices) weren’t very pretty,” Ferentz said. “That’s nothing that hasn’t changed over the last 25 years. But I think we made some progress.”

Progress is a good thing, especially in the offense of new offensive coordinator Tim Lester.

Lester, earlier this week, estimated that 85 percent of the offense has been installed. And while what was displayed on Saturday was likely a generic version of what will be seen when there is actually a game being played, the various motions and sets that Lester and the players have talked about with this offense were still on display.

“It’s a process,” Ferentz said of the offense. “It’s totally new. Basically, everybody is starting from scratch.”

McNamara has been extremely limited in the spring as he recovers from a knee injury, so second-string quarterback Deacon Hill and third-stringer Marco Lainez took the majority of snaps on Saturday. Hill, who didn’t show much progress last year in his nine starts in place of McNamara, threw a couple of interceptions and didn’t look nearly as sharp as Lainez, who just needs experience, Ferentz said.

“Marco really hasn’t played a lot,” Ferentz said. “Now, a new system on top of that, all sorts of things. His mind’s going a hundred miles an hour. That’s typical for a guy who hasn’t played a lot yet. My experience is, the next couple of months are really going to be big for him.”

Iowa’s defense, with eight returning starters, showed its experience and depth, and Ferentz noted the difference between the two sides of the ball.

“It’s a real contrast on our team right now,” Ferentz said. “We’ve got a new system offensively. We’ve got a system that’s been pretty similar for 25 years and more veterans on the defensive side, and we’ll consider that to be a strength. We still have stopped anyone from making a first down, we still haven’t made one. That’s where we’re at right now.”

Iowa wrapped up its spring workouts on the same week the transfer portal opened for the spring window. The Hawkeyes lost wide receiver Jacob Bostick to the portal, and as Ferentz noted with the transfer trends nationally, there could be more.

Iowa is four scholarships over its limit, but that isn’t stopping the coaching staff from scouring the portal for players who can provide some help.

“We have done our due diligence,” Ferentz said. “One nice thing about spring practice is we don’t have game prep. We have some hours outside of our meetings where we can kind of watch that stuff.”

Ferentz didn’t rule out a summer of transactions.

“We’ll do anything we can to help our team,” he said. “We’ll be looking at that, studying it, and if there’s an opportunity that presents itself that makes sense, we’ll consider it. If there’s something that will make us a better football team, that’s what we’re all trying to do.”