Iowa should be more than an NFL tight ends farm team

It’s difficult to find and train tight ends who can both block and run routes in the seams, running over smaller defenders and then running around bigger defenders.

But Iowa has a strong tradition, and they’ve really been on a tear of late. Following Mackey Award winner Dallas Clark’s run with the Colts, Iowa sent guys like Allen Reisner, C.J. Fiedorowicz, and Henry Krieger-Coble to the NFL. Their last three main TEs were George Kittle (2018 NFL record breaker), Noah Fant (All-Big Ten in 2017 and 2018), and T.J. Hockenson (also a Mackey Award winner).

In the 2019 NFL Draft, both Hockenson and Fant went early — Hockenson eighth overall to the Lions, Fant 20th to the Broncos — after a season in which they led the Iowa attack and combined for 78 catches, 1,279 yards, and 13 touchdowns.

Their last class included three players at that position, all from Illinois, and the 2020 class already includes a verbal commitment from another out of Texas (all three-stars like Kittle, Fant, and Hockenson, of course).

Fant came from Nebraska, and Kittle from Oklahoma. Kittle and Hockenson redshirted, allowing them to spend quality time with college football’s highest paid strength coach. Fant played sporadically as a freshman before coming on strong as a sophomore in 2017.

It’s rare for tight ends to come out of high school with the full complement of skills. The guys with the expertise in blocking need time to master the route running, and vice versa. While all positions have to add new skills, it’s not uncommon for tight ends to have been big receivers in high school who start from scratch as they learn to block box defenders.

There are no workarounds for Iowa’s key players. The offense relies as heavily on head coach Kirk Ferentz’s favored stretch blocking schemes as it does on sending them up the seam on routes. Many of the best high school tight ends were allowed to remain flexed-out full time as receivers, and there are plenty of colleges that don’t require them to build out their blocking skills before they see the field, but Iowa’s system doesn’t make exceptions.

While the Hawkeyes’ consistency in developing well-rounded players makes them a solid farm team for the NFL, it also gives them a potential leg up on much of college football.

They’d regularly mix in 21 personnel (two running backs, one tight end) with a fullback instead of Fant or 11 personnel with a WR instead of Fant. And when the two TEs played together in 12 personnel, the Hawkeyes put an extra emphasis on the stretch blocking game:

They were big fans of this set, which put a lot of passing strength to the field with Fant and the twin receivers while still getting into bigger personnel. Of course on this play, Penn State matched with 4-3 personnel and brought a linebacker off the edge late and unaccounted for, so the benefit of effecting zone blocking was limited.

The vision is to force a defense into personnel that is either too big to cover or too small to beat blocks, but the Hawkeyes yielded the advantage by running into a blitz.

Occasionally the Hawkeyes mixed in RPOs or screens to the perimeter off their stretch runs, but their most devastating plays involved throwing to their tight ends. Here, they lined up their tight end tandem in a run blocking formation only to send them deep and confuse Wisconsin’s defense:

The Hawkeyes run a shallow cross, with Hockenson running a dig, Fant outside of him running a post, and the RB running a wheel route outside. This is a pretty standard concept, but it’s not as common for the vertical stresses to come from the tight ends and running back.

Ferentz had a RB committee that combined for 4.4 yards per carry. That’s totally underwhelming for a team that had a pair of dominant tight ends who could force opponents into difficult matchups.

The main wideouts were Nick Easley, Brandon Smith, and Ihmir Smith-Marsette. Easley led that trio with 52 catches for 494 yards and five scores, only 9.5 per catch. Given the safety attention that Fant and Hockenson could command, that’s remarkably unexplosive. The other two did more damage per catch but only hauled in 28 and 23 catches apiece.

The unit finished 54th in Offensive S&P+ — a step up from 2017, when they finished 70th — but still calling into question how Iowa isn’t getting more from its NFL pipeline at such a crucial position. In 2016, they finished 68th in Offensive S&P+ as future Pro Bowler Kittle averaged fewer than three catches per game he played.

In 2018, Iowa failed to use Fant enough as a flexed-out receiver. They’d also regularly take him off the field, to insert a slot receiver or fullback. Given Fant’s speed and route ability, there was little reason to play with more than one or two wide receivers at a time. By playing with Fant or Hockenson in flexed-out positions, the Hawkeyes could have easily used motion to abuse opponents for choices in personnel.

The Hawkeyes didn’t use much motion, save to move blockers toward weaker DL or for play-action opportunities:

One play that was most emblematic of the Hawkeyes’ lack of creativity was this third-and-20 call against the Nittany Lions:

The Hawkeyes get into 11 personnel, with Fant attached to the line and Hockenson on the bench. After moving a receiver across the set, they run stretch behind Fant into a defense that felt no need to back up to the first down sticks.

They didn’t build around these players by going big and then flexing them out against linebackers, or running over defensive backs if opponents tried to take away the passing game.

In 2018 with the 49ers, Kittle caught more balls (88) for more yardage (1,377) than both of Iowa’s tight ends combined, some of them coming from former Iowa QB C.J. Beathard.

The Hawkeyes are poised to continue producing versatile players for the NFL, but they’re missing out on some of the benefits for themselves along the way.