The 2024 college football regular season is right around the corner, which gives us an opportunity to put down a few predictions for how the Iowa offense will perform in terms of statistics. Improvement is the goal for 2024, given the rock-bottom levels the offense has hit the last few years, but what does improvement look like? What sort of impact does new offensive coordinator Tim Lester have in his first year on the job? That's not easy to quantify, but we'll take a shot, starting with the QB and RB positions.
QUARTERBACK
It isn't clear who Iowa's starting QB will be this fall -- Cade McNamara appears set to get the first crack at the lead role, but whether he can stay healthy and/or hold off Brendan Sullivan are very big questions for the 2024 season. Given that, let's look at the QB position as a whole when it comes to predicting stats for 2024.
The only teams that threw the ball less than Iowa last season were Navy, Army, and Air Force, three triple-option teams that only throw the ball out of desperation or as a change of pace. Surpassing the 2023 passing totals should be the lowest of low bars for Iowa's passing game in 2024.
As a reminder, last year Iowa QBs posted these numbers over 14 games:
170-of-348 (48.9%), 1661 yards (4.8 ypa), 9 TD, 11 INT
So what is a realistic expectation for Iowa's pass offense in 2024? Iowa has only averaged 200+ yards in a season three times over the last 10 seasons (2019 -- 227.0 ypg, 2018 -- 219.4 ypg, 2015 -- 200.6 ypg). The Hawkeyes have only thrown for 20+ touchdowns in a season twice in that time span (2018 -- 27, 2017 -- 27).
In addition to the uncertainty around McNamara and Sullivan, an added wrinkle to predictions for the 2024 season is the presence of a a brand-new offensive coordinator in Tim Lester. Iowa's passing game declined under Greg Davis and deteriorated under Brian Ferentz, his successor, but it's unclear what Lester's impact will be in Year One.
2024 PREDICTION: 197/323 (61%), 2100 yards (6.5 ypa), 16 TD, 8 INT
Those numbers would represent a notable improvement over Iowa's passing game production over the past two seasons -- while still being very modest overall. 2,100 passing yards would have ranked 119th in the NCAA last season.
The major improvement, then, would be efficiency, and Iowa had nowhere to go but up after finishing with a disastrous, dead-last-in-the-nation team passer rating of 91.2 in 2023. The projected stats above bring Iowa's passer rating up to 127.0: not great, but it would have been good enough for 87th in FBS last year, not 134th.
So the pass offense enters 2024 in a "prove it" mode. The 2023 totals don't represent a freak one-year plunge; they were the continuation of a trend of decline for the Hawkeye pass offense, and what happens when a system that can't afford a disaster suffers one anyway.
The 2024 pass offense, then, will almost certainly be better than it was a season ago. But how much better the pass offense is will depend on the ability of Lester, McNamara and/or Sullivan, and the pass-catchers to provide positive answers to the host of questions surrounding the pass game this fall.
RUNNING BACK
Iowa has had two running backs with 100+ carries in seven of the last 10 seasons. In other words, running-back-by-committee -- or at least running-back-by-duo -- has been the norm, not the outlier, in Iowa City. Even two of the three exceptions need their own asterisks:
2021: Tyler Goodson, 256 carries (1151 yards, 4.5 ypc); Gavin Williams, 65 carries (305 yards, 4.7 ypc)
2020* : Goodson, 143 carries (762 yards, 5.3 ypc); Mekhi Sargent, 76 carries (432 yards, 5.7 ypc)
2017**: Akrum Wadley, 252 carries (1109 yards, 4.4 ypc); James Butler, 91 carries (396 yards, 4.4 ypc)
* Iowa played a COVID-shortened schedule in 2020 and only had 8 games. Sargent was on pace to easily eclipse 100 carries over a 12+ game season.
** James Butler only played in 9 games in 2017; over a full 12-game regular season, he was also on pace to surpass 100 carries.
Which is to say that there's really just one season -- The Tyler Goodson Show in 2021 -- in which Iowa leaned heavily on just one running back to the exclusion of the other options in the running back room. Splitting the load between two (or more) running backs has been common for Iowa over the last decade and, given the talent currently in that room, it's a trend that looks very likely to continue in 2024.
Over the last two seasons, Kaleb Johnson and Leshon Williams have alternated the hero/sidekick roles for the Iowa running game. Johnson was the primary option in 2022, leading the team with 151 carries, 779 yards, and 6 TD, with Williams adding 117 carries, 413 yards, and 2 TD as the backup. The roles flipped last year, with Williams leading the team with 170 carries and 821 yards (though his lone rushing touchdown did not lead the team), and Johnson backing him up with 117 carries, 463 yards, and three scores.
Williams' ascension was partly due to his own improvement, but also partly due to a preseason leg injury that hampered Johnson for the year -- he missed four games entirely and recorded seven or fewer carries in three other games. Either back is eminently, provably capable of being Iowa's lead running back in 2024, and health will probably be the deciding factor in which back leads the team in carries and yards this season.
2024 PREDICTION: Johnson -- 160 carries, 850 yards; Williams -- 120 carries, 560 yards
I do think Johnson has the higher upside of the two; if both stay healthy, he'll get the slight nod as RB1 this season and lead the team on the ground. Would it be surprising if Williams was RB1 instead? Absolutely not. He performed well last year and both guys should get a very healthy number of opportunities this fall.
Kamari Moulton and Jaziun Patterson are definite X-factors in this debate; Patterson had 58 carries last year, while Moulton had 27 rushes and both have the talent to be effective rushers for the Hawkeyes this fall. But Iowa hasn't really shown an appetite for spreading the ball among three or more backs, so I think it's more likely that they'll just see limited reps and be on the outside looking in at the running back rotation.
