Iowa football: Another preseason ranking, another Hawkeye appearance

Finding the Iowa football team on a preseason ranking has been a common experience so far, and it continued with Sports Illustrated’s 2019 top-25.

It’s been a few years since the Iowa football team has been ranked heading into the season, but the media is coming out in droves to support the Hawks this preseason.

Despite an incredibly difficult road schedule, a restocked and reloaded Big Ten West, and question marks at key offensive positions, media folks appear to be favoring the Hawkeyes.

In the most recent preseason top-25 poll to be released, Sports Illustrated ranks the Iowa football team 18th in the nation, ahead of three other Big Ten teams (Wisconsin, Michigan State, and Nebraska) and our lovely (insert sarcasm) in-state rival Iowa State. Penn State, Michigan, and Ohio State are the only Big Ten teams to be ranked higher.

In spite of the optimism heading into the college football season, Sports Illustrated had a tediously lethargic quote about the Hawks.

"Kirk Ferentz’s teams are boring to a fault. They run, they punt, they play solid defense, they win eight games, everyone goes home happy. No team embodies consistently solid football quite like Iowa."

However, it isn’t wrong.

If the Iowa football team wants to meet, or even exceed, expectations in 2019, they need to be great on defense as they were last year. Unlike last year though, they also need to get their running game in order and figure out their punting situation.

Last season, without a true identity in the rushing attack and with a punter who was among the worst in the nation, the Iowa football team still managed to win eight regular-season games (and are a few points away from winning all twelve).

This year though, the interior offensive line has significantly more upside and the line’s tackles make this unit one of the most feared in the nation so the running game should improve, and the Hawks shored up arguably their biggest weakness by adding graduate transfer Michael Sleep-Dalton to the punting mix.

If all three of those factors get to where their ceiling is, this could be a season to remember, and the Iowa football team will blow Sports Illustrated’s preseason expectations out of the water.