By Hawk Fanatic

IOWW CITY, Iowa – The Iowa football team recently lost its running back coach to the NFL, but has since added a senior offensive analyst for the 2025 season.

Warren Ruggiero, who spent the previous 11 seasons as the offensive coordinator for Wake Forest, is being hired to help second-year Iowa offensive coordinator Tim Lester coach the quarterbacks, and to hopefully fix Iowa’s ailing passing attack.

The news was first broke by 247Sports Monday night and comes barely a week after Ladell Betts resigned from his job as the Iowa running backs coach to accept the same position with the New York Giants.

The Iowa running game improved significantly in Lester’s first season as offensive coordinator as it ranked No. 2 in the Big Ten in rushing yards and averaged 5.12 yards per carry this past season.

The performance of the passing passing attack, on the other hand, left much to be desired as Iowa only averaged 131.7 passing yards per game and had just nine touchdown passes.

Ruggiero comes to Iowa with extensive coaching experience, and with a reputation for building high-scoring offenses.

He was a finalist for the Frank Broyles Award in 2021, which goes to the nation’s top assistant coach.

Wake Forest averaged a school-record 41.0 points per game in 2021.

The Demon Deacons were also the only ACC team to average at least 30 points per game in every season from 2017 to 2022.

So, from an experience standpoint, the 59-year-old Ruggiero certainly checks all the boxes.

He became available when new Wake Forest head coach Jake Dickert chose not to keep Ruggiero on his staff.

Ruggiero will join an Iowa offense that currently has five quarterbacks on the depth chart, including South Dakota State transfer Mark Gronowski, who led the Jackrabbits to FCS national titles in 2022 and 2023.

The other four quarterbacks are senior Brendan Sullivan, who transferred from Northwestern last summer, junior walk-on Jackson Stratton, who started two games this past season, Auburn transfer Hank Brown, and true freshman Jimmy Sullivan, who has enrolled in school for the spring semester.

Sullivan played in nine games last season with two stars. He passed for 344 yards and two touchdowns and rushed for 144 yards and four scores.

Stratton started the final two regular season games after Sullivan injured his ankle in a loss at UCLA.

Lester was hired by Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz shortly after the 2023 season.

The offensive coordinator job became available when Brian Ferentz, who is Kirk Ferentz’s son, was fired as the Iowa offensive coordinator with four games left in the 2023 season.

Iowa has since added five new quarterbacks to the roster, and now has a new senior analyst on board.