I’m going to preface this by saying I am optimistically pessimistic about Iowa Football in the year of our Lord 2025, Kirk Ferentz’s TWENTY SEVENTH (!) YEAR AS HEAD COACH OF THIS PROGRAM.

The fact that this man wants to continue coaching in the age of revenue sharing truly astounds me. So far, it seems like he’s been up to the challenge of the new landscape of college football from a program perspective, and I honestly really respect him for that. For a guy who seems like his brain is thinking about 1985 as much as it does 2025, the program has adapted to this new era swiftly and with ease from the logistical standpoint, and I applaud them for that. There is an alternate universe where Kirk Ferentz was like “I don’t want to deal with all this,” and retired, and I’m sure everyone would have understood.

But in this world, he didn’t. The entire landscape of college football has essentially been flipped on its head and yet Kirk Ferentz is still here, and he’s going to do exactly what he has been doing for 26 years: give you a football season full of potential and the highest of highs, marred by a couple dud performances that shouldn’t happen, with an end result featuring the number 8 or 9 in the win column.

Now listen. There’s unquestionably a lot to be excited about when it comes to this team.

I wanted to hate Tim Lester. I really did. And goddammit, one season into his tenure as offensive coordinator, if he’s the heir apparent to the head coaching gig, by god, I’m all for it. The man did honestly more than he probably should have been capable of with the ‘offense’ he inherited from nepo baby Brian Ferentz. There’s no question that we should see improvement from the returners, and the newcomers, particularly at QB and wideout, are undoubtedly improvements over their predecessors.

But it’s all on paper. We have yet to see how any of it will actually play out against competition. I like the addition of Mike Gronowski, and again, think he’s a definite upgrade over Cade McNamara or Brendan Sullivan…on paper. He didn’t exactly light up the world in the Kid’s Day Scrimmage, and you’re asking him to go into Ames in his second game ever as a Hawkeye and bring home the win? It’s not impossible, but I’m not going to say it’s easy.

That’s what I mean about being cautiously optimistic about this season. The offense has a lot of potential! The defense should hopefully be improved and able to make stops against deep passes! But look at the schedule!

Yes, it pains me a great deal that the Indiana Hoosiers made the College Football Playoffs before Iowa. It really does. But they did so thanks to an extremely easy schedule and did absolutely nothing against teams with a pulse. We should see improvements across the board for Iowa this year, but the reality is that Iowa’s schedule is not really tailor-made for a team that is playing a 1-year rental at QB and coming off a season where the usually vaunted defense couldn’t make stops to save their lives when they needed to most.

At Iowa State, Friday night at Rutgers, at Wisconsin, at USC, at Nebraska? I’m not saying I think Iowa will lose all of those but I certainly see at least one random loss in there that this team shouldn’t, and that’s before we’re talking about Penn State or Oregon coming to Kinnick.

The offense can show all the improvement in the world (and I think they will!), the secondary can be much improved (I think it will be too, but maybe not as much as we want), and yet, there’s an extremely thin margin for error that can derail the W-L record quickly if Iowa is on the wrong end of some close games.

What I think we’re looking at is a season like many others at Iowa under Ferentz: a lot of really fun moments that make you think about how, if we didn’t have that one terribly timed fumble, this team could have made some noise in the playoff…otherwise known as business as usual in the Ferentz era.

Do I think it’s possible that Iowa makes the playoff in its current format? Probably, but I don’t think this year.

I just feel like everything would have to go right in every situation for this team to somehow eke out a 10-2 record. So instead, I’m just going to do what I’ve been doing for the last few years: go into the season believing no hype, with no expectation, and let the highs be highs and let whatever comes along with it happen.

Don’t get me wrong, I want this team to succeed! I want them to go 12-0 and host a playoff game in Kinnick! But as always, I’m going to hope for the best but prepare for the worst.

That’s just what pessimists do.