Comparing Brian Ferentz to Tim Lester
A deep dive into the differences and improvements of Tim Lester's offense compared to Brian Ferentz
Iowa has become a place that doesn’t fire people. Maybe the university doesn’t like change, maybe we are all too nice, but one thing was clear at the end of the 2023 season: Brian Ferentz had to go.
Brian Ferentz became a polarizing figure because Iowa’s offense was one of the worst in college football. In 2023 he had a lot of excuses, injuries at quarterback meant Deacon Hill had to start the final nine games of the season and would go down as one the statistically worst quarterbacks to ever play in the power five.
Even Hill can make excuses because the offensive line was historically bad, which is something we haven’t seen at Iowa under Kirk Ferentz. Even with statistically the worst offense in the power five, Iowa made the Big Ten title game, but it wasn’t enough for Kirk to keep his son on staff.
Kirk then went out and hired Tim Lester. At the time it looked like an uninspiring hire. He was the head coach that followed PJ Fleck at Western Michigan. His offenses had been successful, but in 2022 the Broncos went 5-7 and he was fired. He spent the next year as an analyst for the Green Bay Packers before getting the call from Iowa.
While Iowa only finished 8-5 and certainly had games where they struggled, what he did in 2024 was nothing short of a miracle.
I’ll be honest, I have no idea how much control Kirk has over the offense or how conservative he wants the play calling, but simple changes to run a more modern offense did wonders for the Hawkeyes in 2024.
What I am going to do today is dive into the numbers and find out what changes that Lester made and how they impacted Iowa’s offense.
I will be using some metrics you may or may not have heard of before, so I included a glossary at the bottom of all of the terms used in this article.
These charts were inspired by @JBudDavis on X who is a great follow for College Football data.
All data is from Sports Info Solutions and CollegeFootballData.com
2024
2023
Change from 2023 to 2024
I know that is a lot to process, but a lot of green is a good thing.
Iowa was starting from the basement, so there was nowhere to go but up.
Run Attempts went up
Iowa saw almost a 7.5% increase in the percentage of running plays called, mainly because Brendan Sullivan got a lot of playing time towards the end of the season and the Hawks had one of the best running backs in college football in Kaleb Johnson.
Iowa increased their yards per attempt by close to two yards, which was one of the biggest increases in college football.
Tim Lester’s offenses have always focused on establishing an effective rushing attack to open up the passing game. To do that he used a lot of different formations and made Iowa less predictable than they were under Ferentz, while still running the ball more.
RPOs & Motion
To make Iowa more unpredictable the use of RPOs and Motion helped their offense tremendously.
You’ll see in the chart above that Iowa was one of the most effective teams running out of RPOs in college football last season and increased their yards per attempt from 2023 by over 3.5 yards.
The use of pre snap motion by Lester made it difficult for teams to key on Kaleb Johnson. Iowa’s percentage of rushes against a heavy box went down over 15% year over year, which is a big reason why the running game flourished.
Running the Ball Outside
Because Iowa increased their usage of RPOs it made it easier for them to run the ball outside the tackles. Better offensive line play and blocking on the outside had Iowa running the ball 2/3rds of the time outside, which is something I am sure a lot of us never thought we’d never see.
The added benefit of running the ball outside at that high of a rate is it opens up gaps for runs through the middle and opposing defenses were not able to stack the box, which is why Iowa’s rush attempts against a heavy box went down from last year.
Kaleb Johnson’s numbers from 2023 to 2024 improved dramatically because of Tim Lester changing the offense to best suit him and Iowa at large. For example, Johnson had one attempt out of RPOs in 2023 (which is why I didn’t include it in the chart below for 2023).
Improved Offensive Line Play
Any running back will tell you he’s only as good as the offensive line in front of him. Iowa’s offensive line in 2022 & 2023 was uncharacteristically bad, but with more experience they came together in 2024.
2024
2023
Change from 2023 to 2024
The added element of Brendan Sullivan as a running threat improved Iowa’s offensive line play dramatically with the stuff rate on QB runs dropping by over 12%. In addition to that, the offensive line was creating almost half a yard more per rush compared to 2023..
Cade McNamara vs. Brendan Sullivan
Let me preface this by saying a lot of Cade McNamara’s numbers look bad, but it’s mainly because he was not a good fit for Tim Lester’s offense. He obviously transferred the season before Lester was hired and also was coming off a torn ACL.
Because he was not a running threat it did limit Iowa’s offense a bit, even if he was a better passer than Sullivan.
Sullivan was used in certain packages up until the Northwestern game and then started three games towards the end of the season.
The rushing numbers are not even close comparatively, but the passing numbers show that Sullivan was actually better than McNamara, likely because of how dangerous Iowa’s ground game was, which opened up a lot of space in the passing game.
Lester’s offense simplifies a lot of the reads the quarterback has to make, which allowed Sullivan to flourish towards the end of the season.
Tomorrow we will take a deep dive into Iowa’s new quarterback Mark Gronowski and how he fits into Tim Lester’s offense.
Summary
As you can see, the changes Tim Lester made really improved Iowa’s run game and their offense as a whole.
Even though Iowa was starting from the basement, with how good Phil Parker’s defense always is, even an average offense can allow Iowa to be a 9 or even 10 win team and compete with the top of the Big Ten.
We will preview the upcoming season by going through each position group, but it’s important to establish a foundation of what Tim Lester’s offense looks like and how it can benefit Iowa going forward.
In the end, here were the overall differences in where Iowa ranked comparing 2023 to 2024 (all rankings were created from data provided by CollegeFootballData.com)
There’s improvement, but we still have a long way to go.
Glossary
Yards per Attempt- Total Yards/# of Attempts
EPA/Play - a statistical metric used to evaluate the impact of each play on a team's ability to score points. EPA essentially measures how much a play increases or decreases the expected points a team will score on a drive, based on down, distance, and field position. If you’d like to read about it further, this is a pretty good explanation.
Positive Play%- the percentage of passes or rushes by a player that resulted in a positive EPA (i.e. a successful play for the offense) (definition from Sports Info Solutions)
Heavy Box- 8 or more defensive players in the box
Non-Heavy Box- 7 or less defensive players in the box
Offensive Line Yards- attempts to measure the number of running yards which are attributed to the offensive line. Yards are weighted as follows:
losses - 120%
0-4 yards from LOS - 100%
5-10 yards from LOS - 50%
11+ yards from LOW - 0+
(Definition from College Football Data)
Pressure Rate- # of Total Pressures / # of Dropbacks
Stuff Rate- % of Carries which resulted in zero or fewer yards
Catchable %- The percentage of pass attempts that were deemed catchable, excluding spikes, throwaways, and miscommunications and including defensed accurate passes.
On Target %- The number of on-target/catchable throws a quarterback makes divided by the total number of pass attempts. Does not include plays with no reasonable accuracy expectation such as: spikes, throwaways, QB/WR miscommunications, receiver slips, and passes batted at the line of scrimmage.
Success Rate- Measures play efficiency. A play is considered successful if it:
Results in a touchdown
Gains ≥50% of yards needed on 1st down
Gains ≥70% of yards needed on 2nd down
Gains 100% of yards needed on 3rd/4th down
(Definition from College Football Data)
Explosiveness- Average EPA on successful plays.
(Definition from College Football Data)
Power Success Rate- Percentage of short-yardage runs (≤2 yards on 3rd/4th down or inside the 2-yard line on 1st/2nd) converted to a 1st down or touchdown.
(Definition from College Football Data)
Points per Opportunity- Points per offensive drives that cross the opponent’s 40-yard line.
Havoc- Percentage of plays where the defense recorded a TFL, forced a fumble, intercepted, or broke up a pass.
(Definition from College Football Data)