In the 1999 classic film 10 Things I Hate About You, Gabrielle Union’s character has the surprisingly philosophical line, “I know you can be overwhelmed, and you can be underwhelmed, but can you ever just be whelmed?”. Kirk Ferentz answered that question today with a resounding no, you can’t be whelmed. Ferentz naming Tim Lester his new offensive coordinator is the most whelming thing he could possibly do. I had absolutely no reason to think Ferentz would hire some brilliant young offensive mind to transform his offense. I had every reason to believe he would hire some retread coach that no one else really wanted. My expectations were set exactly where we ended up. And yet, I’m completely underwhelmed.
He hired a former MAC head coach who had been fired from his job over a year ago. A guy who had some very good offenses at Western Michigan but it was at Western Michigan. He had taken over that program from PJ Fleck who had won 11 games and left as a rising star when he left for the Minnesota job, and he promptly made Western Michigan…fine. They topped out at 8-5 and were a good offense but not revolutionary. Lester worked his way up from high school coaching, to Division III schools like Elmhurst College and North Central College. He was a QB coach and then a offensive coordinator for a year at Syracuse, they weren’t great and the head coach got fired. Then he was QB coach under Darrell Hazell at Purdue for two years, Hazell also got fired. Then Western Michigan needed to replace Fleck and Tim Lester was a Western Michigan legend (he’s in their Athletic Hall of Fame) from his playing days, and they hired him. He was good for most of his six-year run and then the wheels came off in 2022, the team went 5-7, and the new athletic director wanted to hire his own guy.
Tim Lester is exactly who we all should have expected Ferentz to hire. Maybe not by name but by coaching profile. There is nothing remarkable about him, there is nothing that makes me think he’s transformational. The one thing he did at Western Michigan that we can hope Ferentz will let him integrate into Iowa’s offense is the run-pass option (RPO) offense (I’ll hold out hope as long as possible). That would get Iowa caught up to around the early 2000’s with their offense. Rich Rodriguez was experimenting with the RPO stuff as a variation of his read-option offense at West Virginia, way back in the day. It’s a common misconception that you need a mobile QB to run the RPO, you need a mobile QB to run the read-option, not the RPO. A mobile QB adds another dimension to an RPO offense but it’s not a requirement. Anyway, Lester ran the RPO stuff pretty heavily at WMU. One thing we can all hope is that he can develop some WRs like he had at WMU. He coached Skyy Moore, who was awesome in college (don’t hold his Kansas City Chiefs tenure against him), Dwayne Eskridge (also not a great pro but a good college WR) and even Corey Crooms (who eventually transferred to Minnesota) and any of them would have been the best WR at Iowa in the last five years. All that said, I still feel underwhelmed, I should be whelmed but I’m not.
This is probably because the other finalist for the job was Kevin Johns, the former offensive coordinator at Duke. Johns’ background would have made for a more likely noticeable change to the offense. I would have preferred him because he spent time as OC at Indiana under Kevin Wilson, at Texas Tech with Kliff Kingsbury, at Memphis under Mike Norvell, and coincidently at Western Michigan for a year under Lester. Wilson, Kingsbury, and Norvell are three of the smartest offensive minds you’ll find when it comes to the passing game and that is something Iowa sorely needs to fix. Johns didn’t run a pure spread offense at Duke like those guys do but he understands how construct a passing game while also using the running game. I’m not saying Lester can’t do it, I just have less clear schematic evidence that he can help Iowa in the passing game. Johns has more power five level experience than Lester and the thing I really liked about Johns is that he’s had good offenses everywhere he’s been while doing it with players at a similar talent level as Iowa. He was never coordinating an offense full of four and five-star offensive skill players yet he always found a way to make the most of what he had. At Indiana, even with a head coach who was a spread guy, the offense used Tevin Coleman and Jordan Howard to the tune of over 1000 yards rushing each of their respective years. At Duke, he had a talented QB who was mobile so he used a lot of RPO and read-option to use Riley Leonard’s athleticism. I don’t know if Lester can take the talent Iowa does have on offense (and there are talented players) and find the best way to use them because he’s really only had success at a place where he was the head coach and he was working with the players he picked for his system.
I hope like hell that Lester has some brilliant ideas for this Iowa offense and hopefully Kirk doesn’t restrict those ideas, like I said there is talent to work with. The running backs are good and really deep. The TE group has two excellent pieces in Luke Lachey and Addison Ostrenga. I actually think Kaleb Brown and Seth Anderson can be good WRs if they are used correctly (feed them the ball like they’re Moore and Eskridge). Hopefully Lester can help Brown, Anderson, and the rest of the young WRs develop into actually useful players. This offensive coordinator hire will define the end of the Kirk Ferentz era. Did his stubbornness stop him from finding greatness at the end of his Iowa career or does Lester improve the offense to point that Iowa can actually compete with the big boys? I don’t get the overwhelming feeling that Lester is going to change Iowa’s fortunes that much and it makes me sad to think Kirk is okay going out with a whimper. I never knew you hope to be whelmed but I’m certainly tired of Iowa’s offense underwhelming me. Good luck coach Lester, you’re going to need it.
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