Iowa extends new QB offers
After missing out on a couple of early quarterback targets, the Iowa coaches didn’t waste any time throwing their hat into the ring with several other prospects this week.
It wasn’t a surprise that Iowa jumped in when they did with a number of targets. Early on, the Hawkeye coaches had made four star QB Max Duggan their focus. When he picked TCU, they turned their attention to Sam Johnson, who last week selected Boston College over Iowa and Michigan.
Iowa quarterback coach Ken O’Keefe has been out during the most recent evaluation period watching several prospects that the Hawkeyes had been monitoring. With the evaluation period wrapping up this past week, O’Keefe returned to Iowa City with his findings and the offers started rolling out.
Traditionally, Iowa likes to sign at least one quarterback in every class. It’s even more important that the Hawkeye coaches find a signal caller in this class due to the fact that they are down to only three scholarship quarterbacks for the 2019 season after Tyler Wiegers and Ryan Boyle opted to use their graduate transfer option this spring.
The first new offer went to Zach Calzada, a 6-foot-3 and 190 signal caller from Sugar Hill, Georgia. He has emerged as one of the top quarterback prospects in Georgia in the Class of 2019 and thanks to a strong spring on the camp circuit, he was recently invited to the Elite 11 Camp in Los Angeles.
Iowa joined the race late in the week and they have plenty of competition. Along with the Hawkeyes, follow Big Ten schools Maryland, Minnesota, and Northwestern have extended offers. Also on the offer list for Calzada are Missouri, North Carolina, North Carolina State, Oklahoma State, and Pittsburgh.
As the quarterback dominoes start to fall this spring, it will be interesting to see if more SEC schools get involved in his recruitment. Right now, the recruitment for the three star prospect seems wide open.
On Sunday, the Iowa coaches extended three new offers within a relatively short period of time, including two to prospects from the state of Texas.
The first went to three star quarterback Maverick McIvor from San Angelo, Texas. The 6-3 and 195 pound quarterback is the son of Rick McIvor, who played for the University of Texas. Iowa recruited Rick McIvor when fellow Texan Hayden Fry led the Hawkeye program.
The Hawkeyes join the Gophers as Big Ten schools in pursuit of McIvor in the Class of 2019. Also in the mix from high major schools are: Ole Miss, Texas Tech, North Carolina, and Washington State. Houston and Texas are listed as schools that are of interest to McIvor. If the Longhorns were to extend an offer, they would be hard to beat.
The other Texan to pick up an offer from Iowa on Sunday was Jacob Clark, a 6-foot-4 and 210 pound pro style quarterback from Rockwall. He’s also a three star prospect with an offers from Minnesota, Syracuse, Vanderbilt, Washington State, and TCU from high major conferences. It would be unlikely that TCU would continue to pursue him after they received the commitment from Duggan.
Both McIvor and Clark had impressive performances at the Rivals 3 Stripe Camp in Dallas in late March.
The final new offer on Sunday went to Connor Bazelak, a 6-foot-4 and 205 quarterback from Dayton, OH. The three star pro style quarterback has been piling up offers this spring with the latest coming from Iowa, where he attended a camp last summer.
In addition to the Hawkeyes, Bazelak has a long list of high major offers. Those included scholarship opportunities from: Georgia, Duke, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, North Carolina, North Carolina State, Pittsburgh, Purdue, Rutgers, and West Virginia.
Now the jockeying begins for Iowa and other schools for all four quarterbacks. The best guess is that perhaps as soon as later this month or early next month, they begin to narrow their lists and potentially start to take official visits this spring and summer.
Kirk Ferentz mentioned this past week at the I-Club event in the Quad Cities that he expects to host a fairly significant official visit weekend in June and it’s likely that one or more of these quarterback targets will be extended an invitation to Iowa City.