Iowa football: Three takeaways from Iowa’s high scoring victory over Minnesota

Iowa is stacked at tight end

I may be cheating a little with this one, but the Iowa football team is absolutely stacked at the tight end position. Through five games this season, Noah Fant and TJ Hockenson have essentially been unstoppable. This isn’t a complete surprise considering both tight ends were named to the Mackey Award Watch List in the preseason, but they are taking their games to another level.

Furthermore, there was a significant amount of hype on Fant from draft scouts leaving Hockenson as the forgotten tight end on the Iowa football team. In fact, just this week I wrote an article about how Fant was mocked to the Cowboys in a recent 1st round mock draft. While Fant has the superior touchdown numbers (five to Hockenson’s one), I would argue that Hockenson has been the more complete and impactful player for Iowa’s offense.

He is willing blocker and a chain mover on third downs, and as of right now he is Iowa’s leading receiver in terms of receiving yards. The best part is he is only a redshirt sophomore so there is a pretty solid chance we have at least one more season of seeing #38 man the tight end position.

Considering Fant is widely considered the top tight end prospect in the nation and Hockenson has been out performing him in most aspects of the game, I would be willing to argue that the Hawkeyes are sitting on a gold mine at tight end with two of the top five tight ends in the country.

Against Minnesota, Hockenson was all over the field. Not only did he catch three passes for 49 yards and a touchdown, but he added a touchdown on the ground after the Iowa football team busted out a surprisingly creative fake field goal attempt.

Pretty good for the number two tight end.

Through five games, I am relatively happy with Iowa’s performance save for the loss to Wisconsin, and it’ll be interesting to see how these three takeaways play out over the next few seasons as Iowa continues to battle injuries on the defensive side of the ball.

Regardless, the most important takeaway from yesterday is that Iowa got a key conference win on the road in a historic rivalry game. I’ll take that takeaway anytime.