{"id":308548,"date":"2025-08-22T12:22:16","date_gmt":"2025-08-22T12:22:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/308548\/"},"modified":"2025-08-22T12:22:16","modified_gmt":"2025-08-22T12:22:16","slug":"a-pessimists-guide-to-iowa-football-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/308548\/","title":{"rendered":"A Pessimist\u2019s Guide to Iowa Football 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m going to preface this by saying I am optimistically pessimistic about Iowa Football in the year of our Lord 2025, Kirk Ferentz\u2019s TWENTY SEVENTH (!) YEAR AS HEAD COACH OF THIS PROGRAM.<\/p>\n

The fact that this man wants to continue coaching in the age of revenue sharing truly astounds me. So far, it seems like he\u2019s been up to the challenge of the new landscape of college football from a program perspective, and I honestly really respect him for that. For a guy who seems like his brain is thinking about 1985 as much as it does 2025, the program has adapted to this new era swiftly and with ease from the logistical standpoint, and I applaud them for that. There is an alternate universe where Kirk Ferentz was like \u201cI don\u2019t want to deal with all this,\u201d and retired, and I\u2019m sure everyone would have understood.<\/p>\n

But in this world, he didn\u2019t. The entire landscape of college football has essentially been flipped on its head and yet Kirk Ferentz is still here, and he\u2019s going to do exactly what he has been doing for 26 years: give you a football season full of potential and the highest of highs, marred by a couple dud performances that shouldn\u2019t happen, with an end result featuring the number 8 or 9 in the win column.<\/p>\n

Now listen. There\u2019s unquestionably a lot to be excited about when it comes to this team.<\/p>\n

I wanted to hate Tim Lester. I really did. And goddammit, one season into his tenure as offensive coordinator, if he\u2019s the heir apparent to the head coaching gig, by god, I\u2019m all for it. The man did honestly more than he probably should have been capable of with the \u2018offense\u2019 he inherited from nepo baby Brian Ferentz. There\u2019s no question that we should see improvement from the returners, and the newcomers, particularly at QB and wideout, are undoubtedly improvements over their predecessors.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s all on paper. We have yet to see how any of it will actually play out against competition. I like the addition of Mike Gronowski, and again, think he\u2019s a definite upgrade over Cade McNamara or Brendan Sullivan\u2026on paper. He didn\u2019t exactly light up the world in the Kid\u2019s Day Scrimmage, and you\u2019re asking him to go into Ames in his second game ever as a Hawkeye and bring home the win? It\u2019s not impossible, but I\u2019m not going to say it\u2019s easy.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what I mean about being cautiously optimistic about this season. The offense has a lot of potential! The defense should hopefully be improved and able to make stops against deep passes! But look at the schedule!<\/p>\n

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Yes, it pains me a great deal that the Indiana Hoosiers made the College Football Playoffs before Iowa. It really does. But they did so thanks to an extremely easy schedule and did absolutely nothing against teams with a pulse. We should see improvements across the board for Iowa this year, but the reality is that Iowa\u2019s schedule is not really tailor-made for a team that is playing a 1-year rental at QB and coming off a season where the usually vaunted defense couldn\u2019t make stops to save their lives when they needed to most.<\/p>\n

At Iowa State, Friday night at Rutgers, at Wisconsin, at USC, at Nebraska? I\u2019m not saying I think Iowa will lose all of those but I certainly see at least one random loss in there that this team shouldn\u2019t, and that\u2019s before we\u2019re talking about Penn State or Oregon coming to Kinnick.<\/p>\n

The offense can show all the improvement in the world (and I think they will!), the secondary can be much improved (I think it will be too, but maybe not as much as we want), and yet, there\u2019s an extremely thin margin for error that can derail the W-L record quickly if Iowa is on the wrong end of some close games.<\/p>\n

What I think we\u2019re looking at is a season like many others at Iowa under Ferentz: a lot of really fun moments that make you think about how, if we didn\u2019t have that one terribly timed fumble, this team could have made some noise in the playoff\u2026otherwise known as business as usual in the Ferentz era.<\/p>\n

Do I think it\u2019s possible that Iowa makes the playoff in its current format? Probably, but I don\u2019t think this year.<\/p>\n

I just feel like everything would have to go right in every situation for this team to somehow eke out a 10-2 record. So instead, I\u2019m just going to do what I\u2019ve been doing for the last few years: go into the season believing no hype, with no expectation, and let the highs be highs and let whatever comes along with it happen.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t get me wrong, I want this team to succeed! I want them to go 12-0 and host a playoff game in Kinnick! But as always, I\u2019m going to hope for the best but prepare for the worst.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s just what pessimists do.<\/p>\n

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