By Pat Harty

IOWA CITY, Iowa – Tristan Wirfs has come an incredibly long way since I first saw him on a hot summer day in 2013.

It was the summer before Wirfs’ freshman year of high school and he was playing first base for the Mount Vernon varsity baseball team.

Needless to say, I was amazed by his size and agility and remember thinking, ‘wow, this kid could be special.’

I was told that football was his best and favorite sport, and that he had enormous potential as an offensive lineman.

Fair to say that assessment was spot on.

Because the big kid who started at first base that summer day also started at right tackle in the Super Bowl for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Sunday.

Wirfs was part of an offensive line that protected legendary quarterback Tom Brady, and that carved out big running lanes for the ground attack during a 31-9 victory over the Kansas City Chiefs.

I isolated on the 6-foot-5, 320-pound Wirfs multiple times in Sunday’s game, and he more than held his own as a run and pass blocker.

And sometimes, he was dominant.

It probably is no coincidence that Tampa Bay often ran to its right behind Wirfs in the Super Bowl.

Wirfs showed since the beginning of training camp that he deserved to be a first-round pick, and that he was ready to start in the NFL at the age of just 21.

I’m hardly an authority on NFL offensive linemen, but it also doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that Wirfs is a force in the trenches.

He reportedly only allowed one sack in 799 pass-blocking snaps this season.

That signifies consistent dominance.

Tampa Bay might have gotten away with a steal by selecting Wirfs as the 13th pick overall because there were three offensive tackles taken before him in the first round, but none performed better than Wirfs did on a game-by-game basis.

Wirfs knew that he was helping to protect arguably the greatest quarterback in history, and he blocked like it, especially in the Super Bowl.

I’m not saying Wirfs is the second coming of Orlando Pace, but I do see similarities, namely their rare combination of size, agility and strength.

Pace twice was recognized as a unanimous first-team All-American at Ohio State, and was selected first overall in the 1997 NFL Draft by the St. Louis Rams.

Pace played 13 seasons in the NFL and was a seven-time Pro Bowl selection and made first-team All-Pro in 1999, 2001 and 2003.

He was inducted into to the College Hall of Fame in 2013 and the Pro Football Hall of fame in 2016.

So yes, it would be very premature to compare Wirfs with Pace at this point.

But Wirfs’ future looks so bright and that’s exciting because he’s a former Hawkeye, and his success in some ways is Iowa’s success.

Wirfs was among four former Iowa players who participated in the Super Bowl on Sunday. Anthony Nelson plays defensive end for the Buccaneers, while Anthony Hitchens and Ben Niemann both play linebacker for the Chiefs.

Regardless of the outcome on Sunday, two former Iowa players would leave the field as Super Bowl champions.

Wirfs was ranked as a four-star recruit by Rivals, but his recruitment never really took off because he committed to Iowa shortly after the end of his junior football season in Dec. 2015.

Like so many kids who grow up in Iowa, especially just up the road in Mount Vernon, Wirfs wanted to be a Hawkeye.

So he figured why wait?

He didn’t need the recruiting adulation, or the attention.

Wirfs knew exactly what he wanted, and he knew that Iowa was the best place for him.

And now barely five years after committing to Iowa,  Wirfs is a Super Bowl champion, and maybe, just maybe, the next Orlando Pace.