The Pessimist’s Guide to Iowa Football 2026

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As the resident pessimist here at Black Heart Gold Pants, I have a confession to make: I was greatly debating switching things up this year and writing the optimist side of this post after…I don’t know how many years of writing the pessimist version.

What changed? Well, nothing really. I think I’ve written a similar version of this argument before, but it bears repeating: after last year cemented itself as one of the biggest ‘What if?’ Seasons in the history of the Kirk Ferentz era, there’s a lot to be excited about this year. But with that excitement, there is an inverse that has me just as worried.

It finally seems like Tim Lester has absolute control of the offense and has the personnel in place to run the Shanahan-style offense he wants, hopefully to perfection. Another year of a very talented offensive line with plenty of returning talent from last year’s Joe Moore award-winning line, which should open up great lanes for an experienced running back room, headlined by senior running back Kamari Moulton.

And what’s this? Someone making a big splash at wideout? While wearing an Iowa uniform? That would be Tony Diaz, the transfer from University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, who racked up the awards last season as a redshirt freshman. Add in DJ Vonnahme as the next great Iowa tight end into the mix and…the Iowa offense could actually be really good?

This all sounds unreal! Sign me up!

But oh wait…who’s going to be throwing the ball?

Well, as I write this, we’re less than 24 hours away from the first depth chart of the season and…we don’t know. Hank Brown and Jeremy Hecklinski are allegedly neck and neck as of now in practice/scrimmages. Brown apparently had the better camp, but Hecklinski clearly had the better performance at the Kids Day scrimmage a few weeks ago. However, since then, his practice performances have once again slipped.

To make matters worse, Chad Leistikow reported today that the competition is extremely close, and that the coaching staff expects to play both quarterbacks for considerable time in next weekend’s home opener against Northern Illinois so the coaching staff can ‘get the decision right’ by the Big Ten opener at Michigan…in week 4.

WEEK FOUR? WE’VE HAD ALL OF SPRING AND FALL CAMP AND WE STILL DON’T HAVE A DEFINITIVE QUARTERBACK GOING INTO WEEK ONE!?

Now, you’re probably reading and saying to yourself “Well, it’s just week 1, we can ideally have this settled by week 2 at the latest. In game performance is going to matter the most.” And this is true. It’s very like that, should Brown or Hecklinski absolutely light things up from the start, they get the nod for the next week and that’s that. We know Kirk Ferentz loves to stick with his starting quarterback through thick and thin (for better, or worse, or way, way worse).

But my god, if we’re going into week 4 and there still isn’t a decision made as to who is the starting quarterback for this team, any chance of having this season be anything but average is out the window. What I worry the most is that Brown has the better game management in an unexpectedly tight game in one of these first three games, gets named the starter, creating Jake Rudock/CJ Beathard 2.0 and wasting what sounds like a great offense on paper.

For the record, my gut says that Hecklinski will get the first snaps. I just think there’s too much upside there to ignore. But there is definite cause for concern — or ‘questioning’ — if concern seems too panicky of a word right now.

On the other end of the ball, things overall seem business as usual for the defense. We’ve seen Phil Parker time and time again develop players that we don’t know much about heading into the season into household names across the Big Ten. I trust in Phil maybe more than anyone else on this coaching staff to have his unit prepared, particularly for conference play.

But the youth this year on defense, particularly on the defensive line, is certainly the second biggest question mark of this team behind the quarterback situation. The defensive line in particular has talent, but the talent exists only on paper at this point and not in game experience. Beyond that, depth on the line could be a cause for concern as again, there’s not a ton of game experience. Like I said, I think there’s talent and I think the group will be fine by the end of the season, but there’s reason to believe that there will be some growing pains in the September and maybe some of October slate of games while things get figured out.

Last but not least (and I’ll be brief, as the word count is racking up quickly here) is that special teams are also a giant question mark. Not only did the program lose longtime special teams coach LeVar Woods to Michigan State in the offseason, but the unit will also be replacing its place kicker, punter, punt returner and kickoff returner.

That’s a lot to replace at once for any team. But for a team like Iowa, where one bad punt or muffed return can make the difference between a win and a loss, the inexperience could be a dealbreaker in the close games that Kirk Ferentz loves for his program to play.

Add that all up and you have a season that, on the surface, seems poised for big things. Great offensive talent and a schedule that, while challenging, certainly could end with a double-digit regular season with the right breaks, are the sexy things to think about this season. But if you dig underneath the surface even a little bit, the question marks appear fast and the doomsday scenarios can add up quickly — especially for a pessimist like me.

It just seems like this year, more than any recent years, we have more question marks than we are used to having going into the season. It’s one thing to say, ok our corners are a little slow this year, hopefully Phil can gameplan for that accordingly. It’s another thing completely to have multiple areas of huge importance that are essentially tossups as of now.

So how do we handle it? Well, if you’re me, I’ll just do what I always do with Iowa football under Kirk Ferentz: expect the worst, see some of the worst come to fruition while also seeing some incredible things come to fruition as well, and live in dread with the possibility of losing the Cy-Hawk matchup for a third year in a row because of some stupid special teams mistake.

And yet, no matter what stupid thing happens, we’re always back the next week, watching again, waiting with dread hope for what’s yet to come.

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