Tim Lester spoke with the media for the first time as Iowa's offensive coordinator on Tuesday afternoon. From the jump, he caught the attention of everyone in the room with his plans to lead the offense for the Hawkeyes.
"I can tell you right now that we're going to be physical, disciplined and aggressive," he said. "We're going to be aggressive in everything we do from the run game, to the pass game, to keepers, RPOs and tempos. One thing I've learned in my time as a former quarterback, QB coach, offensive coordinator and head coach is that it's about putting your players in the best position to succeed."
Later in the presser, Lester took questions from the media for roughly 20 minutes, and he addressed a variety of important factors regarding how he and the offense will operate during his tenure in Iowa City.
One of the first things Lester addressed was the usage of wide receivers in his offense.
"Wide receivers are a huge part of the offense no matter what you're running schematically," he said. "Putting them in position is the biggest key. Through my time in coaching, I think we've been around quite a bit of pretty good ones, and we've been able to find ways to get the ball in their hands. There are a lot of ways to do that -- whether it's screens, straight drop back, or putting them in the backfield, the flexibility of an offense is key."
"I want to make sure the quarterback knows that we're going to spread the ball around and that he's going to read his keys as he's supposed to. It's my job to make sure one of the first couple options is the guy that we want it to be. I've had some success with that, and I'm going to plan on keeping it going."
Part of Iowa's offensive struggles over the last several seasons has been the routes that the receivers have been asked to run. Lester first hit the involvement of the QB and ensuring he’s prepared.
"When it comes to route concepts, you've got to understand the timing of the quarterback's footwork, and we can build -- it's kind of like piecemeal every week," he said. "You're building the concepts."
"There's some full fields where we're going to call it, he's going to know his progression and we're going to go to work. We'll have four, five or six of those that he's comfortable with. ... It might look like a different route combination every week, but we will change them based on coverages and what we're seeing, but I want to get the quarterback comfortable with the same thing over and over again. The key is to have him do the same thing over and over again and have the defense think it's a different play."
Then, it was about how the quarterback and his receivers can attack opposing defenses.
"We like these two or three things against this coverage and we like this on the backside against this coverage and you can mix and match them and you get five on the front, five on the back, and the iterations of those two, and then you add shifts and motion to it, you can really put a guy in a comfortable situation where he knows what's going on," he said.
"It might not look like that to the defense. That's the plan. But it all starts with what we're getting and what he's comfortable with. So, we've got to get it installed, figure out what he's comfortable with, and then we can build it from there."
"I've got 600 pages of pass plays in there, figuring out what he's good at and getting good at something, jack-of-all-trades, master of none is not what we need to be about. We need to figure that out so we can get really good at something."
Much like Lester indicated that he's comfortable adjusting the offense's route trees based on what opposing defenses do, he also said that he's comfortable tailoring the offense to his quarterback's strengths.
"You have to make him comfortable, number one," Lester said of working with assumed starter Cade McNamara. "Everybody is comfortable doing different things. I think sometimes quarterback coaches, they have things they like to do. I'm not married to anything. ... I have to figure out what he's good at, and I have to put him in those situations as much as possible."
"I've watched a little bit of film on him, not enough that I can comment on any of that. But the things that I need him to get better at, we have to focus on. You get what you emphasize."
So, though he hasn't gotten to know McNamara's areas of proficiency yet, he remains confident that they'll be identified and implemented into the Iowa offense.
"We're going to make sure that he can do the things that I think this offense should be able to do well, and if there's things he's really good at, we're going to do them," Lester continued. "I've got to get to know each guy and what they do well so that we can call the offense to have the most success when he's in there. But that's on me to make sure I can figure that out and put them in good position to have success."
Lester appears to be willing to try anything and everything on offense. Whether those schemes and ideas are actually implemented is up to Kirk Ferentz. How will Lester approach the marriage of his RPO-heavy scheme and Ferentz's pro-style offense?
"It's a process that started a couple days ago, but it's an exciting process," Lester said. "To get everyone's opinion in and I have all kinds of playbooks, what's going to jive with what they know and where we think we can improve."
"There's a lot to choose from, and I hate to keep going back to this, but I can't wait to see what we have. But I definitely know how to tie them together, and a lot of the formations, how we're going to build it and what gets called will be dependent on kind of what we see in the spring and what we see as the guys move around here in the next couple months."
Say what you want about the Lester hire -- for a while, it appeared there were better candidates for the position. But the former Western Michigan head coach looked the part of a successful offensive coordinator who's willing to adapt to his player's strengths, spread the ball around and learn. Those are all things that Iowa's offense needs badly and having a coordinator willing to implement those basic ideas is a good first step to improving Iowa's rock-bottom offense.
