Iowa football: Multiple Hawks claim yearly Big Ten awards

With the Big Ten regular season over, coaches and media voted on top players today. Here are Iowa football players who received honors for their play.

After a season in which the Iowa football team finished 8-4 on the heals of a strong defense and an occasionally explosive offense, a few players were expected to receive end of year awards for their outstanding play. Earlier today we predicted which guys would receive those awards, and we are happy to say we successfully predicted every Iowa football player that made one of the three All-Conference teams.

Even better news was that a few other individuals were able to take in honorable mention awards for their great performances this season.

In addition to the All-Big Ten team awards, a few individuals collected individual position awards.

As you can see in the following slides, the Iowa football team had a fantastic collection of talent this season. It’s unfortunate they weren’t able to bring home more additional wins, but there is a ton of promise as many of the players on the All-Big Ten teams are not yet seniors.

The future is bright in Iowa City, but before we think about that, let’s take a look at who collected hardware today.

Defensive Awards

Defensively, the Iowa football team had three members named to All-Conference teams along with one member taking home the 2018 Tatum-Woodson Defensive Back of the Year award.

Do-it-all safety Amani Hooker was the star of the day on defense and rightfully so. He was our midseason MVP for the Hawkeyes and he has been the centerpiece of the defense. Hooker, a junior from Minneapolis, took him the prestigious 2018 Tatum-Woodson Defensive Back of the Year award for his outstanding play this season.

Hooker is the third Iowa defensive back in a row and the fourth overall to win this honor behind Josh Jackson, Desmond King, and Micah Hyde.

Should we just call the University of Iowa football team DB U already?

He continued to rack up the awards as he was named to the First Team All-Big Ten Defense by coaches and media. AJ Epenesa landed on the coaches Second Team All-Big Ten Defense and his junior pass rushing counterpart Anthony Nelson landed on the Third Team.

The media, however, had a slightly brighter opinion of the Iowa football team as Epenesa joined Hooker on the First Team Defense and Nelson also received a bump up to the Second Team.

Both Epenesa and Nelson led the Big Ten in sacks with ten apiece and both were named to Big Ten Defensive Players of the Week twice.

Rounding out the All-Big Ten teams with honorable mention awards was senior defensive end Parker Hesse (52 tackles and four sacks), sophomore safety Geno Stone (tied for second in the conference with four interceptions), senior safety Jake Gervase (77 tackles and three interceptions), and senior defensive lineman Matt Nelson (27 tackles and six passes defensed).

For those keeping track at home, two of Iowa’s backup players, three safeties, and four defensive lineman received All-Big Ten honors. Pretty impressive.

Offensive Awards

As expected, TJ Hockenson and Noah Fant both took home All-Big Ten honors when the awards were announced tonight. More surprising, however, was the number of players that took home awards in addition to these two.

Let’s first start with Iowa’s two stud tight ends though.

TJ Hockenson, who is up for the John Mackey Award for the nations tight end also took him the Big Ten’s award for the best tight end in the conference.

The Kwalick-Clark Tight End of the Year award is now officially in the hands of an Iowa football tight end. Hockenson is the first Hawkeyes tight end to win the award that is named after one of the all-time great Hawks, Dallas Clark.

In addition to the 2018 Kwalick-Clark Tight End of the Year award, Hockenson received First Team All-Big Ten as voted by the media. Meanwhile, his running mate, Noah Fant, received second team as voted by the media. In the coach’s vote, the two swapped places with Fant being on the first team and Hockenson being on the second team.

Joining Hockenson and Fant on the media’s All-Big Ten Team were lineman Alaric Jackson (second team), Keegan Render (third team), and Ross Reynolds (third team). Jackson’s is arguably the most surprising to me considering his inability to stop some of the conference’s top rushers without inducing a drive-killing holding penalty, but he is incredibly talented and with some more work, he will likely be a future first-round draft pick.

The coaches’ All-Big Ten Team shook things up slightly. Jackson remains on the second team and Ross Reynolds bumped up to join him.

Sophomore wide receiver Ihmir Smith-Marsette and Tristin Wirfs received honorable mention All-Big Ten as voted on by the media to round out the list of offensive awards received by the Iowa football team.

Special Teams Awards

Sophomore return man Ihmir Smith-Marsette cleaned up on special teams awards despite not taking a kick back to the house once this year.

In just 19 attempts, Smith-Marsette finished third in the Big Ten in kick return yards with 557. He also led the conference in average yards per return with 29.3.

Today, he was named 2018 Rodgers-Dwight Return Specialist of the Year.

His 29.3 yards was the second best in the nation and almost a full-yard greater than legendary return man Tim Dwight (28.7 yards per return in 1997) who this award is partly named after.

The honors didn’t stop there as the sophomore from New Jersey proceeded to be named First Team All-Big Ten by the media.

The coaches continued their disappointing trend by voting a tier down for Iowa football players as Smith-Marsette was named to the Second Team All-Big Ten by them.

The special teams awards weren’t over though. Senior Miguel Recinos, who kicked the game-winning field goal against Nebraska proceeded to be named Honorable Mention All-Big Ten after a season in which he hit 75% of his field goal attempts and 100% of his 44 extra point attempts good for 89 total points.