Leistikow: Mark Gronowski gives Tim Lester the quarterback Iowa football needs for 2025

Posted by Admin January 7, 2025 Football

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Mark Gronowski’s seismic commitment to Iowa doesn’t immediately solve every shortcoming of the Hawkeye football offense. But to a head coach who loves baseball analogies, Kirk Ferentz certainly must feel like he just hit a transfer-portal home run.

The Hawkeyes’ daunting 2025 schedule suddenly looks more manageable as Gronowski, who won 49 games and two national championships in four years and 55 games as an FCS starter with South Dakota State, presumably takes the reins of the ascending Tim Lester offense.

Gronowski delivered the good news to Lester, Ferentz, Tyler Barnes and the rest of the Hawkeye decision-makers on Monday night: That he’ll play one more year of college ball. And he’ll do it in Iowa City, where quarterback play has suffered since Nate Stanley took his last snap in the 2019 Holiday Bowl. Everything became official on Tuesday afternoon, as Gronowski announced his commitment to an excited Hawkeye fan base.

Gronowski was seriously considering a jump to the NFL after five years at South Dakota State. A strong sales pitch from Lester and Co. was essential, and it’s safe to say this wouldn’t have happened without Brad Heinrichs and the Iowa SWARM Collective helping to close the deal with a financial package surrounding NIL opportunities.

What is Iowa getting in Gronowski? In short, a winner. After missing the fall 2021 season with a torn ACL, he recovered to lead the Jackrabbits to back-to-back national titles in 2022 and 2023 before a fifth-year campaign that ended with a loss to North Dakota State in the FCS semifinals.

Gronowski’s arrival instantly gives the Hawkeyes a brighter quarterback future and completes the competitive quarterbacks room that Lester has craved.

The immediate future should be Gronowski’s. He arrives at Iowa as the clear front-runner to the starting quarterback position, with the education in Lester’s NFL-inspired offense beginning immediately. Gronowski’s South Dakota State film and experience show a player who can operate the run-pass option plays that Lester prefers (dating to the second-year offensive coordinator’s time at Western Michigan). He also gives a now-intriguing quarterbacks room a definitive, championship-pedigree leader. In an ideal world, Gronowski becomes a high-level bridge quarterback for the Hawkeyes and the first, major step in solving an issue that has lingered at Iowa for five years.

In the shortened 2020 COVID-19 season, Spencer Petras’ first season as a starter, Iowa averaged 6.4 yards per pass attempt, which ranked No. 99 in FBS. That was pretty much the high point after Stanley, who passed for 68 touchdowns as a three-year starter from 2017 to 2019 (Iowa has 49 TD passes in the five years since).

Iowa’s per-attempt number dropped to 6.2 in 2021 (No. 114 in FBS), then 5.8 in 2022 (No. 120), then a national-worst 4.8 in 2023 (No. 133 of 133) in Brian Ferentz’s final year as offensive coordinator. Iowa regrouped to 6.6 per attempt in Lester’s first year as OC in 2024, but among FBS teams the Hawkeyes’ 131.6 passing yards per game ranked ahead of only Michigan (129.1) and three service academies. Lester relied on a run-heavy approach because of all-American running back Kaleb Johnson … and because Iowa was below-average at quarterback, using three starters in a season for the first time since 2006.

Compare Iowa’s recent run with Gronowski’s yards-per-attempt in four years as an SDSU starter: 8.4 in the FCS COVID spring 2021 season, 8.3 in 2022, 10.0 in 2023 and 8.1 in 2024. Maybe more importantly, Gronowski has only been intercepted 20 times in 1,190 attempts his four-year career (1.7% rate). Ball security has been incredibly important to a Ferentz formula that has produced 204 wins in 26 seasons at Iowa, and Gronowski fits right in.

Gronowski’s addition basically gives Iowa a similar skill set to Brendan Sullivan, who started Iowa’s bowl-game loss to Missouri, but with tons more proven experience. The 6-foot-3, 230-pound Gronowski is 49-6 as a starter; Sullivan is 3-8. Gronowski can make plays with his legs, as evidenced by 1,787 career rushing yards and 37 touchdowns. As a passer, Gronowski has a 64% completion rate and his per-game yardage averages by year were 156.5 (spring 2021), 197.8 (fall 2022), 203.9 (2023) and 181.3 (2024). In total, he’s thrown for 10,309 yards and 93 touchdowns.

So, no, Gronowski’s not going to be an air-it-out, 40-throws-a-game quarterback who will turn Iowa into a pass-heavy outfit. He didn’t have more than 14 completions in any of his final seven games at South Dakota State and never attempted more than 37 passes in 55 starts.

While Hawkeye fans deserve to be excited, they might come into this marriage with skepticism, wondering if this is Cade McNamara 2.0. We know that importing a 64% passer (like McNamara was in his final year at Michigan in 2021) who comes from a winning program doesn’t automatically translate to quarterback greatness at a place like Iowa, which is still operated by Ferentz’s complementary football style centered around protecting the defense.

But Gronowski gives Iowa a definitive No. 1 quarterback for 2025 while allowing two bright young prospects – Auburn transfer Hank Brown and incoming freshman Jimmy Sullivan – a needed developmental year in Lester’s system. Lester will not hand anything to Gronowski and will encourage competition that allows the cream to naturally rise to the top.

It’s too early to know what happens with Brendan Sullivan, but assuming he stays at Iowa, he’ll be a really solid backup option for the Hawkeyes in 2025, with Brown (redshirt sophomore) perhaps making a challenge. Sullivan certainly could opt to transfer, too, with hopes of finding a more solid starting role in his final college season. Don’t forget about Jackson Stratton, either. The walk-on who won two late-season games as an Iowa starter (at Maryland, vs. Nebraska) was also a Lester find and clearly has arm talent.

Lester said at the Music City Bowl that he wanted “five or six” quarterbacks in his room to increase competition. Gronowski’s addition on Monday got him to as many as five this spring and to six by June, thus completing Lester’s desired overhaul in less than a year.

A year ago in February, Lester arrived as offensive coordinator to a room with an injured McNamara, Deacon Hill, Marco Lainez and walk-on Tommy Poholsky. All four of them are gone now, as is June arrival James Resar (who Lester immediately switched from QB to receiver).

Now, the room is led by a two-time FCS national champion in Gronowski, three players who have won power-conference starts in Brendan Sullivan, Stratton and Brown, and a promising freshman who Lester really likes in Jimmy Sullivan. Plus, walk-on quarterback Ryan Fitzgerald – the son of former Northwestern coach Pat Fitzgerald – joins the program this summer.

That’s quite an upgrade in 11 months.

Now, the fun part. The QB portal madness is done. Lester gets to lean into what he loves most, being a quarterbacks coach. And it’s time to get to work.

Hawkeyes columnist Chad Leistikow has served for 30 years with The Des Moines Register and USA TODAY Sports Network. Chad is the 2023 INA Iowa Sports Columnist of the Year and NSMA Co-Sportswriter of the Year in Iowa. Join Chad’s text-message group (free for subscribers) at HawkCentral.com/HawkeyesTexts. Follow @ChadLeistikow on X.