By John Bohnenkamp

IOWA CITY, Iowa – Mark Gronowski is only handing off to imaginary running backs and throwing Nerf balls during Iowa’s spring practices, but what that means is offensive coordinator Tim Lester is getting to know the other quarterbacks in a position group that looks a lot different than last year.

Of the four quarterbacks currently on Iowa’s roster, only Jackson Stratton was with the team all of last season. Gronowski, the expected starter this season, transferred from South Dakota State in the offseason. Hank Brown came in from Auburn and was with the team during practices for the Music City Bowl, as was incoming freshman Jimmy Sullivan.

Lester wasn’t on the road recruiting in the late winter and early spring, so he used that time to have daily meetings with Gronowski, Brown and Sullivan to get to know them.

“They were all in different lifting groups, so (Sullivan) was 8:00 to 9:30 or whenever he left, and Hank would roll in, and he would be there for a couple of hours,” Lester said on Wednesday. “Then Mark would roll in, and he would be there. It would be 1:00 before I knew it. The next day we would do it again and again, and all the way through Friday. It happened for almost two months.”

The QB room has seen a considerable shift since the beginning of last season, Lester’s first with the Hawkeyes. Cade McNamara is gone, as is Brendan Sullivan, who entered the transfer portal last week.

Gronowski has arrived with an impressive resumé that includes two FCS national championships at South Dakota State. But offseason shoulder surgery has limited his work with the Hawkeyes in the spring, limiting him to what Lester calls “mental reps.”

“Back there, there’s no pass rush, so he’s really comfortable back there standing there hopping up and down,” Lester said. “It’s been good for him just to get reps because there’s a muscle memory to everything you do. He’s doing all the fake handoffs to nobody, him and his imaginary team back there. He’s having a blast doing it, and when he actually gets out there and he has to bring all the motions and do all the movements, we’re just trying to shorten the curve really so when he gets out there, we can start seeing a more comfortable version of a guy who has played — I don’t even know how many games he’s played. A lot. I know how many (yards) he’s thrown for, so that has to be a lot of games.”

That’s opened more snaps for the rest of the quarterbacks in camp.

“Hank is doing a great job right now,” Lester said. “He’s been the most efficient out there. Jackson is getting better. He has hot and cold days. We need to have less cold, more hot. Then Jimmy, you’ve just got to wait.”

Brown and Stratton have the most experience. Brown made two starts at Auburn last season, while Stratton played in three games, with two starts, for the Hawkeyes.

“Hank obviously already played in the SEC, so he had experience,” Lester said. “He needed to learn what we were doing. Jackson was on the scout team until, what, the last four weeks of the season, three weeks of the season. He needed a lot more reps of running what we’re running.”

Jimmy Sullivan has the most to learn, Lester said, which is to be expected considering he was an early arrival out of high school.

“Jimmy should be going to senior prom right now, and he’s here with us,” Lester said. “He’s had really good weeks, and then he’ll have a day where he gets lost and can’t get himself out of just forgetting to motion a guy, having the running back on the wrong side, not moving him. But he’s way ahead of where he would have been. That six days (of practice before the Music City Bowl) and going to the bowl game and being a part of it and being a part of the team, being here for six months before the rest of his class comes is really giving him a chance to compete because it’s going to be obviously competition.”

Lester said his second spring with the Hawkeyes is “a different animal” than the first, which is why not being on the road was also beneficial for the rest of the offense.

Lester also did the same sort of film study with the entire offense with optional meetings every day.

“It was huge for us,” Lester said. “I had a chance to sit and watch film with the offensive unit if they wanted to watch, and we got to kind of watch them cut up as a whole. It’s always great when the O-line hears what I’m telling the quarterback, and the wideouts hear what I’m telling the O-line.

“Just having them all in a room a couple of times a week was big. They couldn’t always make it because it’s optional, but it really was galvanizing for what we were trying to do last year. We watched every game we lost and the things we didn’t do well and talked through what we needed to change to move forward.”