CHICAGO — Near the end of the 2024 calendar year, Iowa football’s quarterbacks room was in a somewhat bleak state.
Brendan Sullivan was a fleeting bright spot, but even then, the program had been unable to shake the frustrating trend of underwhelming quarterback play. The Cade McNamara experiment was officially a failure. The room was so devastated by injuries that preferred walk-on Jackson Stratton was forced to start the final two games of the 2024 regular season. Multiple Iowa quarterbacks, including McNamara, hit the transfer portal.
Iowa hit a near-total reset at quarterback.
Over the span of a few months, the Hawkeyes welcomed five new quarterbacks to the program. Stratton was the only quarterback on the 2024 roster to return to the Hawkeyes.
Around this time last year, Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz mapped out his ideal scenario for the future of the Hawkeyes’ quarterback situation.
The gist of Ferentz’s hope, which he expressed at 2025 Big Ten Media Days, was that after Mark Gronowski’s lone season at Iowa, someone from within the program would succeed him.
“Hopefully somebody on our roster right now will be able to take it if Mark is our starter, which I would anticipate, they’ll be able to take the reins from him, or we’ll have a healthy two-man competition a year from now,” Ferentz said in July 2025. “In a perfect world our guys are coming up from within. But that’s a perfect world, and certainly the world is not perfect. That’s our plan. That’s our hopes.”
One year later, that has panned out how Ferentz envisioned.
Gronowski finally got Iowa’s quarterback moving in the right direction, delivering the type of quality play that Hawkeye fans had been starving for. And now in the post Gronowski-era, returners Hank Brown and Jeremy Hecklinski are competing for the job in 2026.
It’s too early to decide whether the restoration of Iowa’s quarterbacks room has been a resounding success. The production of Iowa’s quarterback position over the next few years will better inform that. But at least entering the 2026 season, Iowa’s QB rebuild is on track.
“If you take those guys (Hecklinski and Brown), plus Jimmy (Sullivan) and Ryan (Fitzgerald), I think we’ve got a healthy room right now,” Ferentz said on July 28 during Big Ten Media Days. “And then we just added an incoming player with Tradon (Bessinger). So I think we’ve got that balance now.”
Gronowski was the headlining addition at quarterback ahead of the 2025 season, but Iowa had also wanted to bring in a younger transfer. That came in the form of Brown, who joined the Hawkeyes after two seasons at Auburn. Hecklinski ended up being an extra prize. After a head-coaching change at Wake Forest, senior analyst Warren Ruggiero connected the dots between Hecklinski and Iowa.
That gave Iowa two new transfer quarterbacks in the pipeline behind Gronowski. The idea was that the Hawkeyes would not need to go into the transfer portal at quarterback ahead of the 2026 season.
“That was the goal a year ago,” Ferentz said. “First of all, we were really focused on Mark being our guy, to be the starter, and that all worked out. And then the other goal, a year ago, was to get a young quarterback in the system that we felt good about. Because that room started getting a little thin. So we wanted to get another young guy to the room, preferably younger than older. So, the idea was to start building that. And Jeremy ended up being a bonus pick.”
Over the last few years, Iowa had been forced to rely heavily on the transfer portal, bringing in McNamara, Gronowski, Brendan Sullivan, Deacon Hill, Stratton, Hecklinski and Brown. But this offseason, Iowa finally found some much-needed stability.
The Hawkeyes added only one newcomer: four-star freshman Tradon Bessinger. Gronowski moved on to the next level, and Stratton departed via the transfer portal. But other than that, there weren’t any roster changes within the room. The Hawkeyes are returning four quarterbacks from last season’s roster — Brown, Hecklinski, Fitzgerald and Jimmy Sullivan.
The risk in not making a transfer-portal splash at quarterback this offseason is that nobody in the room has a great deal of college production. Brown has just two starts under his belt, both of which came at Auburn. The most notable moment of his Iowa career came against Indiana, which isn’t remembered for the right reason. The extent of Hecklinski’s game action at Iowa is garbage-time appearances against Wisconsin and Minnesota.
But there’s also a benefit of trusting what’s already in the program.
For the first time in offensive coordinator Tim Lester’s Iowa tenure, the Hawkeyes’ starting quarterback will be in his second season in the system. In each of Lester’s first two seasons with the program, he operated with starters who were still relatively new to the complex Shanahan system. There is reason to be concerned with the lack of college experience in the room, but it is reassuring to know that Iowa now has four quarterbacks who are in their second season under Lester, including Brown and Hecklinski.
“It’s huge,” Brown said in July. “Preparation breeds confidence. When you’re in a system for that long, and you understand there’s so many nuances within this offense and so many minuscule details that you (don’t) necessarily need to know, but are helpful to know and builds confidence to what you’re doing. And so, when you already know the concepts, the formations, the nuanced details, you can keep your focus on what the defense is doing, so that it’s just natural what we’re doing.”
Iowa’s quarterbacks room has undergone drastic changes since its teetering state at the end of the 2024 regular season. After Gronowski injected new life into the offense, things are looking up at quarterback. But the Hawkeyes’ multi-year plan still has more questions to answer.
The strength of this quarterback rebuild will be further tested in 2026.
“They’re different guys, different individuals, but they’re both, I think, totally capable of leading a football team,” Ferentz said of Brown and Hecklinski. “I’m as excited or anxious as you guys are to see how it all plays out.”
Follow Tyler Tachman on X @Tyler_T15, contact via email at TTachman@usatodayco.com
This article originally appeared on Hawk Central: Iowa football’s quarterback rebuild to be tested during 2026 season
Reporting by Tyler Tachman, Des Moines Register / Hawk Central
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By Tyler Tachman, Des Moines Register | USA TODAY Network
