Tim Lester’s new offense will be on display Saturday at Kinnick Stadium
By Pat Harty
IOWA CITY, Iowa – Kirk Ferentz eliminated the annual spring game years ago in favor of an open practice at Kinnick Stadium to conclude spring drills.
There is always some live contact, and a short scrimmage, but it is mostly just another practice except for the fact that fans and the media are allowed to watch it, as will be the case on Saturday at Kinnick Stadium.
We’re allowed to reach our own conclusions based on watching a two-hour practice that is held approximately five months before the season opener.
Spring is a time for hope and optimism, because as Iowa defensive coordinator Phil Parker pointed out Thursday, Iowa is undefeated in the spring, and always will be.
Spring is the time for individual player development, a time to improve fundamentally, and of course, a time to get bigger, stronger and faster without having to prepare for an opponent.
Spring is also the time for experimentation, and for position switches as the coaches look for the players that give Iowa the best chance to win.
But this spring is also different in Iowa’s case, because for just fourth time since 1999, Iowa has a new offensive coordinator.
Tim Lester was hired in late January to replace Brian Ferentz, who was fired with four games left in the 2023 season but allowed to coach for the remainder of the season.
The firing sent shockwaves throughout Hawkeye nation.
Many fans had been clamoring for Brian Ferentz to be fired, but when Beth Goetz actually did it in season, some of those same fans questioned the timing.
Kirk Ferentz obviously didn’t like the decision to fire Brian Ferentz, because for one, it’s his son, and Kirk Ferentz isn’t used to having football decisions made for him.
There was speculation that Kirk Ferentz might resign or retire in protest, but that never materialized.
Kirk Ferentz took his time in hiring a new offensive coordinator, and he said it came down to four candidates before Lester was hired.
Lester is now on the verge of completing his first spring practice, and his offense will be on display for the first time publicly on Saturday.
Well sort of.
Starting quarterback Cade McNamara still is recovering from knee surgery and is very limited, so what Iowa shows on Saturday will be far from a finished product.
That is always the case in the spring, and especially with a new offensive coordinator.
But without McNamara running Lester’s offense at full speed, it’ll be hard to get a clear picture of how it’ll look in the fall.
“It has been a joy to coach the group,” Lester said to the media on Thursday. “They have been working hard and learning a lot of new. I say we got about 85 percent of the playbook in. Now we are working on perfecting it. What to do is different than how to do it.
“We are stacking reps. It has been a fun group to coach. They have been working hard getting better. A lot to get better at. It’s a marathon and a sprint at the same time. Every time we can get out there and get another rep of executing a play with an adjustment as Coach Parker has brought a lot of different things and adjustments we are going to have to make quickly.
“It has been fun to watch our team get better. We have one more opportunity to get better before summer hits.”
The problem is that while the offense is stacking reps this spring, McNamara has mostly been limited to throwing, light drill work and watching as backup quarterbacks Deacon Hill and Marco Lainez stack reps.
“It’s been hard on Cade,” Lester said. “He wants to go so bad. He’ll get cleared here in the next couple months and be in his plan that he needs to be on. It’s been fun to do a couple individual drills with him, and he’s fighting through all the frustration of wanting to be out there.
“But with the rest of them, we have to get all 11 players ready to go, so I am calling plays that we’re going to call in the fall, and Deacon and Marco, whether they’re ready for those plays or not, that’s what practice is for.”
Players on both offense and defense have described Lester’s offense as having more pre-snap motion and movement than the previous Iowa offense. The purpose of pre-snap motion and movement is to confuse the defense.
“The biggest thing is if you ever let a great defense like the one we face every single day, you’re either going fast and then you don’t have to move a lot, or you’re going slow and you’ve got to change the picture on them because if you let them pin their ears back, it’s going to be a long day,” Lester said. “We have tried to move their eyes around a little bit and switch up their fits, pre-snap, post-snap, because a lot of times if you talk to defensive guys, which I have been one and I’ve worked with a couple defensive staffs last year, they never say — you’re never going to beat the defense, you’re just going to get them to misfit something.”
Speaking of the vaunted Iowa defense, it returns a bulk of the starters from last season’s defense that ranked among the best in the nation.
And with so many experienced starters coming back, Phil Parker has been able to limit their reps this spring and focus on developing some of the younger players.
Or, at least he’s tried to limit their reps.
“At the beginning of, we kind of told some of these guys that we’re going to make sure we cut the reps out because we needed some other guys to step up a little bit,” Parker said Thursday. “I think they’ve been pretty good, but after a while, after the first or second practice, these guys are standing on the sideline and they jump in there when they’re not supposed to be in there, or at least I didn’t think they were supposed to be in there.
“I think it’s good, and it shows a little bit of development, leadership for them guys. It’s hard to go out there and not practice for a little bit and then sit here and jump into a game situation. They want to keep fresh, too. They don’t want to get rusty, which is a good sign.”
Spring is always a time to showcase some of younger players that are performing well in practice.
Parker mentioned defensive backs John Nestor and Zac Lutmer as two players that have stood out this spring.
“The guy that maybe a surprise a little bit — not a surprise for us, but Lutmer has really improved at the safety position,” Parker said of the redshirt freshman from Rock Rapids.. “He’s made a lot of good plays, and he’s moving forward there.”
Fans will get their first glimpse of new Iowa punter Rhys Dakin on Saturday.
The Melbourne, Australia native has the daunting task of replacing 2023 Ray Guy Award winner and fellow Melbourne native, Tory Taylor, who started in each of his four seasons at Iowa.
Dakin is also three years younger than Taylor was when he joined the team in 2020.
“He and Tory are very different,” said Iowa special team’s coordinator LeVar Woods. “I think a lot of similarities are going to try to be put on them because they’re both from Australia. They’re both from Melbourne. They both came from the same coach. They’re very different.
“I think what we’ve seen so far with him is he’s a very talented young man, but he’s also young and green. You think about the differences, Tory came in at 22 years old, and a lot of us graduated college at 22 years old. He was beginning college.
“As you can imagine putting yourself back in those shoes at 22, you’re much more mature at that age than you are at 18 or 19 when you enter college. Rhys is entering college at 19, so some of those immaturity things in comparison show up. But I think Rhys is going to be fine. He’s incredibly talented. He has a very bright future.”
Saturday’s practice will also be a chance to evaluate Iowa kicker Drew Stevens, who was benched in the 2023 regular-season finale against Nebraska.
It obviously won’t be the real thing on Saturday, but there will be fans in the stands and members of the media watching Stevens kick.
“I think with Drew, what we’re seeing right now is a much more mature version of Drew, as it stands today, a much more humbled version of Drew,” Woods said. “He got humbled very hard last year. You guys all saw it and you all watched it, but I think he’s a different kid right now.”
Stevens addressed the peaks and valleys that come with being a kicker this past Tuesday when he met with the media.
“You’ve got to do the best you can do to stay on the same mental state at all times,” Stevens said. “It’s way easier said then done. It’s very easy to get in your head.
“I’m not going to lie, in practice I’m guilty of it, sometimes.
Saturday’s practice will start at 10:45 AM and there is no cost for admission.
The gates to Kinnick Stadium will open at 9:45 a.m.