Five Iowa football players stepping up in 2024
The 2024 Iowa football season is nearly upon us. We continue our previews of the upcoming season by taking a little different angle. This time we look at five player who are poised to step forward in a significant way in the upcoming season. If they do, then it could mean good things for the fortunes of this Hawkeye squad.
What we are looking for here is players who have been solid performers that could elevate to first or second team All Big Ten level or higher this season. Last season players like Jay Higgins and Sebastian Castro would fit this profile.
Let’s dive into the five players will we be focused on for the 2024 season.
There’s been no question that Logan Jones has been a player that Kirk Ferentz believes in. Ferentz knows that the center position is going to be the most important position on the offensive line and he has been successful at molding players like Tyler Linderbaum into stars.
Jones has shown potential, but he hasn’t hit the level that Ferentz thought he would quite yet. In his first year as a starter, he was tardy on his delivery of snaps and that didn’t help a struggling offense. He worked with James Ferentz after the season and improved on the timing of his snaps.
But, last year was a bit of a struggle largely due to his health. Jones hurt his leg in the middle of the season and attempted to play thought that in the final month of the season. Eventually he had to shut things down for one game. His Pro Football Focus grades reflected that injury decline. Going from posting PFF grade of 64.8 in the first eight games and 56.6 in the last five.
This year he’s coming into the year with first team all-conference expectations and some outlets mentioning potential All American honors. If he hits that then it means the Iowa ground game has had a great year.
There were plenty of high expectations when Xavier Nwankpa committed to Iowa. Depending on where you looked, he was either a four or five star prospect. On3.com’s consensus rankings had him as a four star. Bottom line, the SE Polk standout had his pick of colleges and he chose to stay home.
In his freshman year he played in every game, starting the bowl game. In that win over Kentucky, Nwankpa intercepted a pass and returned it for a touchdown. That basically cemented his spot in the starting lineup last season.
Last season he started 12 games and played in all 14. He also played with a thumb injury during the season. It limited what he could do on the field and led to Iowa defensive coordinator Phil Parker to move Sebastian Castro back to strong safety when Iowa was in a traditional 4-3 look on defense.
There’s no question about that talent. Nwankpa is a great athlete and this year it feels like the talent meets the on field performance. I’ve been mentioning for a while that Nwankpa is poised for a breakout season and I think that will play out.
It feels strange to think that Aaron Graves is moving into this junior year. He already holds an associate’s degree out of high school and graduated from Iowa this spring. Yes, is an academic All Big Ten athlete and now he wants to be an All Big Ten football player.
After spot duty as a true freshman, Graves was a piece of the rotation last season. Early on in the year he played ok, but didn’t seem to be taking the next step. That was playing an average of 29 snaps per game. This year he moves into a starting role with limited depth at the position, which means he’s going to have to play over 50 snaps a game and play at a very high level.
It’s been quite a journey for Cade McNamara. No one is throwing a pity party for him, but the reality is in the last four years he has had to learn a new offense from a different coordinator. He’s also had two significant knee injuries that limited him to eight games of action and he was never fully healthy last year at Iowa.
Bottom line is McNamara has had his fair share of challenges in the last two years. Even when he was “healthy” last year, he wasn’t fully practicing. He struggled in Iowa’s only open practice when was one week into fall camp. Honestly, we should have all expected him to struggle. He has to get used to facing a pass rush again with players at his feet and playing 11 on 11 football. Kirk Ferentz says that he is coming along in the last week and continues to improve, but with the season right around the corner there is a sense of urgency for McNamara and he needs to perform well early on in the season.
After his performance in the 2022 season, the arrow was pointing way up for Deontae Craig. He had what could have been called a breakout season with 31 tackles, 6.5 sacks, and 3 forced fumbles. That was in more of a reserve role and the hope was that Craig would launch himself into a double figure sack total and perhaps get on the radar of NFL teams nave a legit decision to make after the 2023 season.
Those numbers didn’t arrive. While his tackle total moved up to 54 stops, his sack total tumbled to just three and had half as many tackles for loss as he did the previous season. Last year Iowa had three sacks in the first five games before they started to use the blitz more to generate pressure. All things being equal, Phil Parker would rather not blitz as much as he did last year. Can Craig get that double digit sack season this year?
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