AMES — The missed opportunities used to nag at Iowa State football wide receiver Dominic Overby every day, but now, they just fuel him.
Overby started the 2025 season, his redshirt freshman campaign, with a bang. He hauled in the first touchdown pass of the campaign in the season-opening win over rival Kansas State in Ireland.
After that, there were near-misses and some dropped passes. His role slowly dwindled and he faded away from the receiver rotation and was utilized on special teams.
“For me, personally, I see it as I had so many opportunities that I just didn’t capitalize on it,” Overby said, looking back at last season. “Attacking that this offseason is my biggest goal, developing my gaps in football is my biggest goal. With that, it’s easier to do that when I’m learning a new offense and understanding what my responsibility is.”
The 6-foot-5, 200-pound speedster out of West Jordan, Utah, is the Cyclones’ top returning receiver from last season, after various departures and an influx of largely unproven wideouts in a new system.
Still, Overby didn’t compile eye-popping numbers. He finished with 87 yards and two touchdown catches on seven receptions. Overby’s only other touchdown grab came in a Sept. 13, 2025, win over Arkansas State, and then he had three receptions for 22 yards in the Oct. 4, 2025, loss at Cincinnati before never appearing in the stat sheet again.
This year, he feels better equipped physically and mentally to handle the challenges that come with a college football season and is determined to have a more productive campaign. He’s putting more onus on himself to step things up in a competitive wide receiver room that has no defined roles just yet.
“It was kind of hard because it was my first season where I had a role,” Overby said. “I had a role one week and the next week, it might be limited, so just showing up every day, just going through the process and getting better every day practicing, studying film, and all that stuff.
“This year, I wake up every day and it’s not like, ‘Oh, I get to do this.’ Like, I’m excited to do it, because I know that if I ever get put in those situations, I’m gonna do it.”
His speed will be his greatest asset, but new wide receivers coach Derrick Sherman, who previously coached at Big 12 foe Houston, is hoping to unlock his potential even further by developing other areas of his game to make him more than just a deep-threat.
“Within the scheme, you got to be able to put him in positions to where he can get a head start and he can get rolling,” Sherman said of Overby. “That’s something that he can do just rolling out of bed, but one thing I’m pushing him for is to continue to develop his body, continue to develop his mindset, just attack everything because those dudes who can really run and can really fly like that, most people try to keep you from being able to do that, and for me to develop him into the complete player that I think he can be, it’s just continuing to develop power to go along with his speed.”
Overby is one of 44 holdovers from the Matt Campbell era, a group that includes a total of 21 players who were on scholarship last season. Although he didn’t foresee the coaching change in December, Overby’s vision for his future remained untouched.
“When I found out the news, I was like, ‘Wow, I saw my whole future here,’ and that’s something that still hasn’t changed,” Overby said. “The plan that I have and what I want to do here still hasn’t changed and then the whole new staff was actually very welcoming. They’re straight up honest and told us what I’d be like and they wanted me to stay and gave me an opportunity to.”
Despite the new offense, new schemes, new teammates and coaches, Overby still can enact “his plan.”
Like Carson Willich and other returners who got some starting experience last season, he’s hungry for a much bigger role and wants to be a reliable contributor. There are plenty of unknowns surrounding the passing game and what that may look like when the depth chart settles this fall, but Overby wants to be someone who can bring some comfort when he lines up for a snap.
“I want to be the player at Iowa State, like I’ve seen it done before in the past, being here for two years already,” Overby said. “That’s just something that I want to be. … I definitely learned a lot more (from last season) than I ever would have thought. Understanding that you need to be a player that shows up every day and when you’re not, you’ve got to figure out how you can even when it’s hard and just growing as an individual.”
Eugene Rapay covers Iowa State athletics for the Des Moines Register. Contact Eugene at erapay@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @erapay5.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Dominic Overby strives for growth in Iowa State football’s new offense
Reporting by Eugene Rapay, Des Moines Register / Des Moines Register
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
