Iowa football makes the funniest offensive coordinator hire possible

The Iowa football team has finally hired an offensive coordinator after three months of searching. Of course, judging by the reactions from most people who heard the news, it appears Kirk Ferentz should have searched a little bit longer.

The Hawkeyes announced that after a season where their offense was once again one of the worst in college football, they hired Tim Lester. Someone who doesn't have a long track record of actually being a good offensive coordinator.

Lester does have a a long resume as coach in the profession and there was a time when he was considered a rising star. Especially when he was the head coach at Western Michigan. But his days of success in the MAC were basically over long before Iowa came calling.

Lester spent the 2023 season as an offensive analyst for the Green Bay Packers. The year before that, he was fired as the head coach of Western Michigan. At least part of the reason why Lester was fired was because his offense was ineffective.

Ok, that's being charitable. His offense was downright bad. 127th out of 131 teams in offensive SP+ bad. Iowa finished 129th in SP+ this past season. So I guess there is a little bit of an improvement there.

In that final season with Western Michigan, Lester's team was held under 20 points, eight times. It might be time to examine the fact that Kirk Ferentz didn't fire Brian and someone else had to do it, because the Iowa football head coach legitimately thought scoring more than 20 points was overrated.

Iowa football makes the funniest offensive coordinator hire possible

It's worth pointing out that Lester was not a particularly hot commodity as an offensive coordinator before he took over Western Michigan either. In his final season as Syracuse OC, his offense was 80th in the country in scoring and 117th in yards per game.

Credit where credit is due. Iowa football does a lot of things right. It appears that offense will continue to not be one of them.