Iowa football: Hawks lose a linebacker in transition to 4-2-5

The Iowa football team’s move to the 4-2-5 is here to stay, and that may have been part of the reason RS Freshman Jayden McDonald decided to transfer.

After one season with the Iowa football team, linebacker Jayden McDonald has put his name in the NCAA Transfer Portal.

It’s curious timing to see a player put his name in the transfer portal just weeks before the first game, but my guess is the writing was on the wall, and McDonald didn’t want to waste any more time playing in a reserve role.

Coming out of high school, McDonald was a 3-star prospect out of the state of Georgia who held 18 offers including offers to play at Kansas State, Ole Miss, Purdue, and Rutgers. He ultimately decided to join Kirk Ferentz and the Iowa football team’s class of 2018, and who would have blamed him at that point considering the Hawks have a rich history at churning out linebackers and had a lot of uncertainty at the position heading into last season.

Fast forward a year and the Hawks are now playing with just two linebackers as part of their base package instead of 3, and there are quite a few guys in front of McDonald. At the weakside linebacker position alone, there is redshirt sophomore Djimon Colbert, redshirt freshman Dillon Doyle, and redshirt freshman Seth Benson not to mention the arrival of four-star linebacker Jestin Jacobs in the class of 2019.

Playing time was going to be tough to come by given the depth and talent at the position.

With four years of eligibility remaining, McDonald can now transfer into a program, sit out a year, and still have 3 years left of eligibility or he can head to a junior college program and join a D-1 program next year.

It’s another blow for the depth of the Iowa football team, but it also just goes to show how much talent is currently on this team.