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By Cameron Kiszla
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The Iowa Hawkeyes under longtime head coach Kirk Ferentz play a very particular brand of football.
The offense may be lacking, especially in the pass game, but they boast excellent special teams play, a physical defense and they're strong at the line of scrimmage.
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Because of that identity, ESPN's Rece Davis expects that the Hawkeyes will compete in the Big Ten in 2026. After all, as many have forgotten, they nearly made a run last year.
"If you think about for just a second how close Iowa came to being in the College Football Playoff or at the very least being in contention last year, they lost four games by a grand total of 15 points," Davis said on the "College GameDay" podcast. "They did not lose a game by more than five points all year."
Of course, "there are guys that they have to replace coming back from that," but the hallmarks of Iowa football remain the same, Davis explained.
"They have guys to replace, but if it's a Kirk Ferentz team, the winningest coach in Big Ten history, he's made his bones, the old offensive line coach, on the offensive line," he said. "And they've got some returning starters coming back, they brought in some veteran transfers, and they'll always put together a stout offensive line. Phil Parker as defensive coordinator. No matter what they have to replace, they'll be representative. You're not going to go in and just run over Iowa."
Davis also freely admitted that there are questions as quarterback after the departure of Mark Gronowski, and the unexperienced Jeremy Hecklinski and Hank Brown are fighting for the job.
"Most of the preseason prognostications — and as we're recording this, you're just now starting practice — it seems that
most expected to be Hank Brown, but this is going to be about defense," he said. "If Iowa is going to be a little bit of a sleeper, if they're going to fight their way through, they'll have to figure out their quarterback and they'll have to get their new defenders settled in time for a three-game stretch, which starts the final Saturday of September at Michigan, home against Ohio State, at Washington ... That's a that's a tough stretch."
That said, the Hawkeyes have proven their bona fides, including by beating Vanderbilt in the ReliaQuest Bowl on New Year's Eve 2025.
"If we're going to draft, I'll take consistency," he said. "I'll take a team that was closer than most people realized to being in contention a year ago, and a big reason why you can't totally dismiss the so-called upper middle class of the Big Ten as being every bit as tough as the SEC."
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