Hawkeye Report Podcast 707

In this edition of the Hawkeye Report Podcast we are joined by our regular football podcast partner, Chuck Long, as we spent more than an hour talking Iowa football with second year offensive coordinator Tim Lester. Both Long and Lester were raised in Wheaton, IL, so we open the show discussing growing up there and how the community has changed, plus which high school was really the blue collar school.

Then we dive into the Iowa offense and start with a look at the quarterback position. We get Lester's thoughts on Mark Gronowski and how he has progressed since the spring. We also get his thoughts on what he has seen from Hank Brown and the rest of the quarterback room, including the freshmen.

Lester gives his thoughts on the wide receiver room, which is much deeper and more talented than it was a year ago. He has a few players that seem to be on the rise heading into the summer months. We also talk about the entire running back room and Lester has some interesting comments about a couple of younger backs at Iowa. Finally we talk about the tight end group and how that group has a pretty good diversity of talent, starting with the veterans and a group of young talented veterans.

We gets Lester's thoughts on quarterback recruiting and retention in today's environment and how Iowa handles that and the impact of the use of development periods that can help. We discuss headset communications between coordinators and quarterbacks and building chemistry by using it. We also discuss why more college programs don't run the Shananhan offense and why it could be appealing to NFL teams since half the league seems to run that offense. 

Finally we wrap up talking about Lester having a pair of senior analysts at his disposal and how that have already paid off for game prep moving forward and how they might be used during the season on game day with one potentially coaching on the sidelines.