Anonymous Big Ten coach offers two ways to view Iowa in 2025

The Iowa Hawkeyes have become one of the most interesting teams in the Big Ten in recent seasons, given the juxtaposition between their struggling offense and elite defense. Now, in 2025, head coach Kirk Ferentz wants to find a way to improve on offense and compete for a conference championship.

Opposing coaches around the Big Ten have taken notice of Iowa. One, who spoke anonymously to Athlon, shared that there are basically two ways to view the Hawkeyes in 2025. Either this is an Iowa team capable of surprising people, or it’s another failed season for the offense.

“You can look at them two different ways,” the Big Ten coach said. “The first is, this is the kind of roster where [Kirk] Ferentz surprises opponents, and they come out more cohesive and physical than you expect because that’s Iowa football, especially on defense. We’ve seen rosters like these where you look up and Iowa’s winning 10 games, and that didn’t seem possible.”

2025 is going to be the second at Iowa for offensive coordinator Tim Lester. Hoping to find a capable quarterback, the Hawkeyes brought in South Dakota State transfer Mark Gronowski. He’s going to bring plenty of experience and a proven track record of winning at the FCS level with him. At the same time, this is a major jump in competition to the Big Ten for him.

“The second is that they’re still really struggling on offense,” the coach continued. “To the point where [Tim] Lester and that staff have everything riding on an FCS transfer quarterback [Mark Gronowski] who didn’t play in the spring at all. We’ve seen this work before at a lot of different schools, but it could also fall apart.”

Other Big Ten coaches continued to point out those issues on offense, particularly at wide receiver. Still, if Gronowski works out, then the Hawkeyes could show some improvement in 2025 and become a contender again.

Kirk Ferentz has been the head coach at Iowa since 1999. During that stretch, he’s won the Big Ten twice but not since 2004. Still, they’ve played for a conference championship as recently as 2023. They’ve won double-digit games under Ferentz every other season going back to 2019, which would line 2025 up as another double-digit win season if the trend holds.

Iowa opens the season on August 30th against Albany. They’ll then open up Big Ten play on September 19th with a road trip to play Rutgers.