By Pat Harty

IOWA CITY, Iowa – I want to believe Kirk Ferentz when he says that the Iowa offense will look different under new offensive coordinator Tim Lester.

“Yeah, I think it’s going to look different, but I think philosophically we’re in line,” Ferentz said Tuesday in a press conference to update spring practice. “Not that it was a prerequisite, but he’s been a head coach, and I think he understands how all three things function together.”

The problem with believing Kirk Ferentz in this case is that we’ve been in this position before where he hires a new offensive coordinator and fans and the media assume that changes and upgrades are coming, and yet very little has changed on that side of the ball.

The offense didn’t change much when Greg Davis replaced Ken O’Keefe as the offensive coordinator in 2012, or when Brian Ferentz replaced Davis in 2017.

There were subtle changes, but the style and approach mostly have stayed the same because the buck stops with Kirk Ferentz.

It’s his offense and always has been. And why would he make significant changes in preparation for his 26^th season as the Iowa head coach?

This narrative seems to surface each spring in which the hope for changes on offense gets blown out of proportion to where some almost present it as fact.

In no way am I suggesting that Kirk Ferentz is being disingenuous or dishonest when he says the offense will look different.

It’s just that his idea of looking different might differ from mine, and from Iowa fans that are hoping for sweeping changes to an offense that performed woefully in each of the past two seasons, so bad that Brian Ferentz was fired as the offensive coordinator in season by then interim athletic director Beth Goetz.

Iowa, which is coming off an 10-4 season, doesn’t have the kind of personnel on offense that would allow for sweeping changes.

So, perhaps Lester, a former college quarterback at Western Michigan, will bring a new mindset in which he will be more aggressive and more imaginative as a play caller.

Maybe he will try to stretch the field more than what Davis and Brian Ferentz tried to do as the player caller.

But most of the personnel on offense will be the same as last season, and it’s hard to envision Iowa’s personnel playing in an offense that looks noticeably different.

Kirk Ferentz often says that improving on offense mostly comes down to better execution and doing what Iowa does better rather than making sweeping changes.

There is only so much that Iowa can accomplish on offense this spring since starting quarterback Cade McNamara is limited to just throwing following season-ending knee surgery.

“He can’t really do much physically right now other than throw a ball, just stand and throw,” Kirk Ferentz said of McNamara, who started the first five games last season before suffering a season-ending knee injury. “They don’t want him running around or doing any sudden movements.

“But he’s throwing the ball just fine. That’s not an issue. Then the good thing is he has game experience and positive game experience. He’s played well when he’s healthy, and unfortunately, we never really saw him at full speed last year.”

I would love to be wrong in this case.

My hope is that Kirk Ferentz will give Lester the freedom to make changes because another season like the previous two on offense would make it almost impossible for Iowa to be elite, despite having a rock-solid defense, and would be a public relations disaster.

But again, I’ll believe it when I see it.

Lester was the head coach for Western Michigan from 2017 to 2022, so he clearly has more experience than what Brian Ferentz had when he was promoted to offensive coordinator by his father.  Lester also has coached quarterbacks and been a play caller.

But even with all that experience, it still is hard to believe that the offense will look much different under Lester.

Kirk Ferentz also was asked Tuesday if he was surprised by Kadyn Proctor’s recent decision to transfer back to Alabama after having been enrolled at Iowa for just two months.

“Surprised, no,” Kirk Ferentz said. “Somewhere in the first year, my first year being a head coach at the University of Maine, I can’t remember what happened exactly, but I told my wife, I went home that night and said if I ever come home and say I’m surprised by anything, just hit me with a baseball bat. I try not to get too surprised by anything.”

Proctor, a former five-star recruit from Southeast Polk, started all 14 games for Alabama at left tackle last season as a true freshman.

He transferred to Iowa shortly after Nick Saban retired as the Alabama head coach, but apparently it just didn’t work out for Proctor in Iowa City.

So, now he’s headed back to Alabama mid-semester.

“It’s probably a reflection of the system frankly and where we’re at right now,” Kirk Ferentz said. “As you know, a couple lawsuits have come into play when it comes to the transfer portal and also NIL, so probably the biggest concern of this whole thing is just learning boundaries.

“There’s no structure, no framework, and that part makes it interesting in the fact that I don’t know if it is sustainable.”