Here's a portion of what Iowa's third-year offensive coordinator told the media ahead of the Hawkeyes' open spring practice on April 25.
Q. What have you seen from the quarterbacks so far? What's the challenge of scheming an offense when you don't know who the quarterback is going to be yet?
TIM LESTER: It is hard. Trying to figure out which plays each of them like and they're more comfortable with. We have an unbelievable room of coaches that are helping us with the amount of data I get after every practice.
I've been really proud of both of them. They're both playing really well right now. They both improved in the areas that I asked them to improve on. I always try to make very clear goals of what I want each one of them to do in the spring, and their numbers are really close.
I had a visiting coach in my office, and we had a decent practice that he had watched, and we were going through the numbers. He was, like, man, this is a great problem to have. You have two playing well instead of having to play one because the other one is not playing well. I didn't look at it like that, but that's great.
They're both improving. They got a long way to go. Like I said, I want everyone on the team to improve. I've been proud of each of them as I've given them the things I want them to focus on. I think they've took that to heart and gotten better. They see them being more functional, but their completion percentage, their explosive plays, their interception numbers are all kind of where I want them.
Q. Year one, Kaleb Johnson was your explosive play guy. Year two, didn't have that through the air either. Jeremy and Hank both pretty confident the other day that you guys could be explosive through the air this year.
TIM LESTER: Oh, that's good. I should ask them about that.
Q. What is your confidence level that you can make that step in year three of your offense?
This will be a totally new team. I've been pretty much calling practice the same way since I've been here. You've got to practice everything. Then on Saturdays you do the things you're good at, but you're always trying to improve on everything you do.
So having Tony out there has helped our explosiveness a little bit. Running the same plays we've been running. We've just been getting over the top. You like that one-on-one matchup to number two, and you like it to 81. Now you like it to 14 and eight and seven. There's more options, right?
You got to get those guys the ball. Well, there's only one way to get receivers the ball. So we've got to continue to find ways to do that. I've been coaching them up on how this offense. We still won't know until camp, right, how we have to find explosive plays. Even if we ran the triple option, you have to find ways to find explosive plays.
Q. With the quarterback situation, do you have a time frame of when you want to have a starter, one, and then, two, is there something you want to see from each of them that it would be, okay, that's my guy?
There's really not a time frame. There's part of me thinking it would be great if it was clear by a certain -- by the end of spring or by camp -- it's not even close to clear. It's a good problem to have. It's definitely going to go into camp. It could go into the season. I don't even know.
I like where they're both at. They're both operating at a high level. If they can keep both growing, then I feel like we're going to have multiple options come the fall, which obviously are for my first year here with the more we can have healthy, the better and playing well, so we don't have two running backs and a safety as a backup as a third stringer. Hopefully we can keep them healthy, but I'm happy with where they're they at.
Q. How has the race at center shaken out and the starting five for the offensive line?
I'm happy with where we're at. We've had a rotation in there. We've probably had six, seven, eight guys play center, but Pieper moving was a big story. He's done a really good job. We moved him back and forth. Cael Winter has really come along. He's had a great spring. He could play guard or center, but I think he's more comfortable at center.
Mike Myslinski, he was doing really well. He got hurt. We got Jano back. Was happy to have him out there in pads again. He was out there flying around, and he looks comfortable. It's really who plays guard is probably secondary to who plays center. Once we figure out the center, the guard will be easy.
Trent came in here, and he's learning our system. He's a guy who came from JMU. He rolled an ankle, and he was out for a week or two. He did some really good things the other day.