For the third straight year, we get B1G Championship Game Fee Fi Foe Film! For the second time in three years, that FFFF will be breaking down Iowa. Each year that I've analyzed Iowa tape, it seemed like we said "this is as bad as a P5 offense on a respectable team can get" and each year it's somehow gotten worse, even as the team's record is unchanged. Iowa is 10-2 and B1G West Champions this season, yet possess the 124th-ranked offense in SP+. Every narrative about them is 100% true, so get ready to cover your eyes: 

 

The Film: The best defense Iowa faced was PSU, but that game was back in September before all the injuries befell Iowa's offense. Given the current conditions of the unit, I had to pick a recent opponent and it was rather convenient that the B1G West defense I like the most outside of Iowa is Nebraska, who happened to play the Hawkeyes last week. So I'm rolling with the Nebraska-Iowa game, which my Nebraska football expert Daniel Thompson dubbed "the greatest football game ever played". At the very least, the most B1G West football game ever played. 

Personnel: Click for big. 

Hope for Iowa this offseason hinged on the talent infusion they were getting on offense via your MICHIGAN WOLVERINES. Namely Cade McNamara at QB and Erick All at TE, who was poised to replace last year's star pass-catcher Sam LaPorta. Unfortunately for Iowa, both of those players are out for the season. Quarterbacking duties have instead fallen to Deacon Hill, a one-time 3.5* 2021 recruit of Wisconsin who transferred to Iowa back in January. I'm not sure if Hill is as bad as Spencer Petras, but he's firmly in the Spencer Petras Zone. Sub-50% completion speaks for itself, but he is far from the only problem on this offense and is not helped by the other disasters around him. 

The RB position has been missing a Dude since the likes of Akrum Wadley and Tyler Goodson departed the backfield, which remains true for this season. Leshon Williams and Kaleb Johnson get the lion's share of carries and they're mostly fine. Not good, not bad, just fine. They get what the offensive line and the scheme give them, which isn't much. They have both ripped off a few explosives this year, but on a down-to-down basis, this running game isn't terribly effective. Jaziun Patterson is the third back and I have few notes on him... he played only one snap against Nebraska. For what it's worth PFF likes him less than Williams or Johnson. As always, Iowa does have a fullback and this year's FB is the spectacularly named Hayden Large, a walk-on transfer from "Dordt University" in Sioux Center, Iowa. 

Brian Ferentz's general ineptitude gets most of the attention, but more focus should be given to the horrendous state of the Iowa wide receivers. They are arguably as big of a problem to this offense as Ferentz, incapable of getting open or catching the ball. Nico Ragaini is by far their most used receiver this season- he has a 54.9 PFF grade and I charted him for two drops against Nebraska. Kaleb Brown, a transfer from Ohio State, has become their second-most used WR in recent weeks. He's probably an upgrade over the other options like Seth Anderson and the banged up Diante Vines (not sure on his status for Saturday), but all of these guys suck. There's a reason that Erick All is still Iowa's most productive receiver a month-and-a-half after his injury. 

The other reason that All is still the most productive receiver is the injury to the equally talented TE Luke Lachey, the one good returning player off last year's Iowa offense. With both All and Lachey down for the count, Iowa has had to dip further into its endless bag of tight ends to pull out a host of names you've hopefully never heard of. The new TE1 is Addison Ostrenga, who plays nearly every snap. He's okay. The geriatric one-time Lafayette transfer Steven Stilianos is now TE2, who is probably a little worse than Ostrenga but neither guy is anything special. Those two players avoid the cyan, but TE3 and TE4 aren't so lucky, Johnny Pascuzzi and Zach Ortwerth. Those two players being weak links is not surprising when you remember the injuries to the positional group- Pascuzzi and Ortwerth started the season as TE5 and 6 on the depth chart (Ortwerth is a true freshman). If Iowa didn't make 3 TE sets a cog of their offense, you wouldn't see these players on the field. 

The decline of Iowa's offensive line has been an oft-underlooked part of the multi-year offensive calamity in Iowa City, but I actually came away more impressed with the Iowa OL than I expected to be. Consider that a statement about my extremely low expectations than anything else, as this unit is still an issue. The left side is particularly weak, LT Mason Richman (who wasn't cyan'd last year, but was in 2021) and LG Rusty Feth both getting the cyan. Injuries are a story at this positional group as well, with G Beau Stephens and C Nolan Jones injured. I haven't heard much on Stephens and Jones' status at this time. Neither are star players, with Jones likely not much different than C Tyler Elsbury, who has been starting in his place. Elsbury avoids the cyan despite being given the business against Nebraska by NT Nash Hutmacher. Hutmacher is a great player and Elsbury's PFF scores indicate that was a relative outlier, so I kept it off him. 

The right side of the line consists of RG Connor Colby and RT Gennings Dunker (we've got quite a few great names in this piece). Colby is a multi-year starter and is probably the best player on this line, while Dunker isn't bad himself. Dunker got banged up against the Huskers but it sounds like he'll be good to go on Saturday. In his place was Nick DeJong, a player I've charted for three seasons now and he's been a subpar performer every season. Iowa is much better off with Dunker at RT than DeJong. 

[AFTER THE JUMP: welp]

Spread, pro-style, or hybrid: Iowa remains the archaic definition of "pro-style", but they are starting to show a bit more spread. Last season I charted them at over 70/30 under center to shotgun, but this year it's closer to a 50/50 split: 

Formation	Run	PA	Pass	Total
Shotgun	11	3	18	47%
Under Center	26	8	2	53%

They were more run than pass against Nebraska, but not a major tilt. Over the two previous seasons I charted Iowa, they had a problem with formation telegraphing play. The problem has been less flagrant each year since 2021, but it still remains. When Iowa goes under center, they usually run it, and when they are shotgun, they usually pass it. Play type by down:  

Down	Run	Pass
1st	16	10
2nd	15	7
3rd	5	14
4th	1	-

Run early, pass later. 

Base set: Iowa has varied their base sets a decent bit over the past few weeks. The game against Nebraska featured their usual 12 personnel, but also included lots of 13: 

However, just a week earlier against Illinois, they played in 11 a lot. Here's a picture of their 11 against Nebraska: 

The safest bet is for 12 to be the base against Michigan, as the midpoint between the two: 

Like last year, they do go empty sometimes: 

And of course the I-Formation (and offset I) is still around: 

Basketball on Grass or MANBALL: Iowa has traditionally been a stretch zone team, but I didn't chart a ton of it against Nebraska. They were still Basketball on Grass, but running a lot more split zone/wind back sort of concepts than stretch. When it came to their gap plays, Iowa was still firmly counter (with a bit of power trickled in) as their go-to complement. 

Hurry it up or grind it out: Perhaps not as glacially slow as Iowa has been at times in the past, but they are still a Ferentz team, so the Hawkeyes are firmly in grind it out territory. If they happen to have the lead, the purpose of the offense in those circumstances is to get the game over with, running the ball and milking all the time off the clock as physically possible.  

Quarterback Dilithium Rating (Scale: 1 [Navarre] to 10 [Denard]): Deacon Hill has 37 rushing attempts for -90 yards with sacks included. Taking out sacks, you're looking at ~2 rushing attempts per game for very minimal yardage. In other words, the non-sack rushing attempts that Hill gets are scrambles for few yards. Hill, listed at 6'3"/258(!!!), is a chunky boy and not the most fleet of foot, playing in an offense that has never emphasized mobile QBs. He had one non-sack carry against Nebraska and it was a scramble: 

Not terrible looking! But it doesn't feature much in Hill's game and his general lack of exciting athleticism makes me give Hill a 2, as I did to Spencer Petras last year (and would've given to Cade McNamara). This is the norm for an Iowa QB. 

Dangerman: N/A. Not giving out a star or naming a Dangerman because when you're a bottom 10 FBS offense, that's what you get. 

HenneChart: Things were not going great with Cade McNamara at QB for the Hawkeyes, but the injury forcing Deacon Hill to ascend to the starting job made the state of play unequivocally worse. Hill's stat line for the season is grisly, 48.3% completion for 4.9 Y/A, 5 TD to 6 INT. His downfield success rate chart is not good: 

Iowa vs. Neb.	Good				Neutral			Bad					Ovr
Quarterback	DO	CA	SCR		PR	MA		BA	TA	IN	BR		DSR	Screens
Deacon Hill	1	8	1		3	5		1	-	4	4		53%	2

But perhaps maybe a tad better than you may have expected, which is in part because the problems with Iowa's offense run far deeper than just one bad QB. He is not set up in a position to succeed, but at the same time you cannot be a successful offense with Deacon Hill as your QB. He did make one throw that surprised me: 

But otherwise Deacon Hill's performance against Nebraska was pretty much in line with my expectation. Hill threw a number of decent, catchable balls, but his accuracy wasn't particularly good, with quite a bit falling into that marginal category. The median Iowa passing play looking something like this: 

Not a perfect ball by Hill, but that ball can and should be caught if you're a P5 scholarship WR. Hill's dismal stats are a multi-part problem, the receivers being an issue of not rewarding the QB when he throws a good or even okay ball, but there are plenty of times when Hill doesn't do that, which is the other half of the problem. The accuracy breaks down into uncatchable territory more than you'd like: 

Hill's decision-making isn't good either. He displayed a tendency against Nebraska to hold onto the ball a long time, only to speed up and make a concerning decision with the football. Given the game-state, Hill cannot throw this pass into double coverage and he's lucky that Nebraska's just-as-bad offensive ineptitude didn't punish the mistake by winning the game: 

That ball is intercepted because it's underthrown. If it's thrown properly, the safety over the top reading the QB's eyes intercepts it instead. Hill is not great at reading defenses or making sharp decisions, his accuracy is up-and-down, he's not particularly mobile, and and even when it goes right on his end, there's a decent chance the receivers will drop the ball. Deacon Hill isn't the sole problem with the Iowa offense, but he is a big one. 

 

Overview 

Iowa's offense, the subject of infinite college football memes, is indeed as bad as all the memes suggest. Their SP+ ranking, deeming them bottom 10 in the entire FBS and worst in the P5, is fair. The results speak for themselves, just 18.0 PPG and that's with a significant boost provided by having a defense and special teams unit that are elite at generating points. Iowa is also dead last in total offense, gaining just 247.3 yards per game this season. Their passing game is entirely nonexistent and they are not efficient running the ball. 

Statistically, there is nothing Iowa does well on offense, which is why they were stripped of having a Dangerman. When you break it down by the individual parts, the picture isn't any better. We've already addressed the Deacon Hill sized hole in this offense, but the picture wasn't much better when Cade McNamara was healthy and that's a testament to how rotten this entire unit is. 

Since I mentioned it several times in the HenneChart section, we can start with the receivers. My biggest takeaway from watching Iowa's offense is how bad the wide receivers are. I would call it unbelievable if we didn't have multiple seasons worth of evidence making it completely believable. These receivers cannot get open, they cannot get separation, and they cannot catch the ball consistently once it is thrown to them. Nico Ragaini, the leading target at the position, was a dud against Nebraska and his PFF grades do not indicate that he has been any better the rest of the season. On the first possession of the game, Decaon Hill targets Ragaini on 3rd down, gives him a catchable ball, drop: 

Iowa punts. The drop I clipped in the HenneChart section was Kaleb Brown, who grads out a bit better on PFF than Ragaini but I saw very little good from him as a receiving target against Nebraska. He does feature a bit as an end-around option, but nothing moved the needle in the passing game. Way too often you see clips like this next one where no one is open: 

Keep in mind that Iowa was facing Nebraska, a team far from the No Fly Zone reincarnate. They have an imposing run defense but this is the same defense that allowed Katin Houser to go 13/20 for 165 and a score. When you're not getting any separation against the Nebraska secondary, that's a very bad sign. Another note about that clip: Hill targets Ragaini on this play, who is his go-to for situations where no one is open. The phrase "Nico Ragaini is the go-to when no one is open" is all you really need to know about the state of the Iowa passing offense. 

More devastating to the pass game than the McNamara injury were the injuries to Luke Lachey and Erick All, both of whom would be significantly better than any pass-catcher Iowa currently has. In past years we went into the Iowa game saying "the WRs suck but they do have this one good TE". In 2021 and 2022 it was current Detroit Lion Sam LaPorta, and by the end of last year Lachey was looking like he had a shot to be the Next One. Then Iowa added All and they seemed to be in a great spot in terms of TEs.

With both injured, Addison Ostrenga has become the top option, but he's not special. Ostrenga has 22 catches, second-most on the team besides Ragaini, but he is the dink-n-dunk master. Ostrenga has an average YPC of 5.8(!) with a long of 13(!!). Most of his targets are stuff like this: 

Yet despite the milquetoast targets he gets, I charted Ostrenga with a drop against Nebraska too. The other TE they throw to is Steven Stilianos, but he's also getting thrown waggle-ish targets and isn't anyone you have to be concerned about. 

Pass protection remains an area of concern for Iowa. You may remember back in 2021, Iowa's plan for David Ojabo and Aidan Hutchinson was "cut-block and throw screens or fades on every play". Don't think that will necessarily be the plan this time, but I don't anticipate the Iowa OL to fare much better. The left side of the line is a weak spot, LT Mason Richman and LG Rusty Feth. This play from Richman was Karsen-Barnhart-vs.-Penn State-esque: 

If you scroll back up to the clip of Hill scrambling, you will notice it was a left side stunt by Nebraska that had blown up the pass protection and forced Hill on the run. Iowa's pass blocking is not a catastrophe, but it does break down from time to time and I expect it will a not-insignificant amount against Michigan on Saturday. In summation, in the passing game Iowa has a bad QB who is not terribly accurate, mobile, or adept at reading defenses, playing behind a so-so pass protecting line on a team where the receivers cannot get open and when they are open, they drop the ball a noticeable amount. But other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln? 

The rushing game has not been good, but it has been marginally better than the calamity that the passing game is. Iowa's crucial wins have generally included one run of significance that gets a chunk to win them the game. They had one truly explosive run early against Nebraska: 

Interior OL does a nice job to open the hole, C Tyler Elsbury hitting the final block, and terrible LB/S play from Nebraska does the rest. That was Nebraka's One Long Run for that game, but they hit another chunk that won them the game at the end: 

Nick DeJong and Connor Colby hammer a double team, but again, extremely poor safety/linebacking play from Nebraska is the biggest problem here. The theme of one or two explosive runs per game was clearly demonstrated in the Nebraska box score. Leshon Williams gained 53 and 15 on those two clipped plays and otherwise rushed for 3.1 YPC on his 14 other carries. This is not a Nebraska-only phenomenon like Runza, it's something that's been the case across the entire season for Williams. He has had runs of 82, 53, and 53 yards this season, totaling 188 on just three carries. His other 152 carries have gone for just 3.89 YPC. Iowa is not an offense that is going to churn you at 5 YPC on the ground. It's not creative enough and the OL is not good enough. 

Leshon Williams, and Kaleb Johnson for that matter, are also not special backs. Williams did a nice job to ghost the safety on the 53 yard run, but otherwise I didn't record him doing a ton to put pressure on the defense. The same thing is true for Johnson, who also fumbled in this game, though he recovered his own fumble. These RBs are just guys, as they were last season. 

The run blocking is also iffy, but better than I expected. You saw some good blocks on the long runs, but there were tough moments. Nash Hutmacher was a problem for the IOL: 

But I like that clip because that leads us into the elephant in the room, which is the scheme. The beleaguered Brian Ferentz is a punchline by name at this point and yeah, he's not working with much as injury and many years of recruiting failures have left this offense talent-less. But that said, the scheme is terrible and whether that's a fault of Brian or (more likely) Kirk's refusal to update what has become long ineffective and out-of-date, it is a humongous problem. 

Against Nebraska, I watched the same thing happen over and over again, Iowa slamming into stacked boxes where they were (basically) -2. They would put one or two WRs on the field and Nebraska would feel comfortable singling them up while rolling the safeties down. Look at this: 

QB hands off to the RB, so you've got 10 defenders against 8 blockers. Safeties never have to respect the threat of the pass and it's game, set, match for the ability to break off anything of consequence on the ground unless the linebackers or safeties fail at their job (which, as I showed you, did happen a couple times). I charted tons and tons of versions of this play: 

Elsbury and Colby give you good blocks but Nebraska shuts it down because their LBs and safeties are right there to make a stop as soon as the RB finds the hole. Another one: 

They did do some fun stuff to spice up the running game: 

But overall it was boring, unimaginative, and incredibly vanilla. There's not enough in the scheme to make up for the nonexistent passing game. Sure, it probably isn't possible to make up for the talent issues in the pass game, but too often the playcalling doesn't even try. They ran three rushing plays in a row on 1st & 10, 2nd & 8, and 3rd & 8 at one point and then punted. There was one stretch where I charted them calling essentially the exact same rushing play (perhaps with tiny variations) five straight plays with no success. The rushing game is banging your head against a wall and the passing game is "you might be better off doing the Wildcat instead". Grim. 

 

What does this mean for Michigan? 

Nothing. You read this piece just to laugh at Iowa because there is no scouting to be done here. This is the worst offense in the Power 5, a maelstrom of incompetence and lack of talent at every positional group with a scheme that is so stale it has moldy growths all over the playbook. Injuries have ravaged what was already going to be bad and reduced it to apocalyptic territory. They have surpassed 15 points just once in their last six games. Against a top 5 defense in Michigan, that should not change at all. 

Michigan does not need to play Will Johnson in this game. They could roll with DJ Waller as CB1 and be completely fine. My only curiosity with this game is whether, now that the Ohio State game is in the rearview mirror, Michigan chooses to stop playing their Ohio State defense every week and tailor the game plan to an opponent. Because if there was ever a team where it makes no sense to play light in the box with two high safeties against, it would be Iowa.