IOWA CITY, Iowa — In the hot and humid portion of summer workouts, when offensive linemen ramp up conditioning while trying to keep their weight high, Iowa tackle Gennings Dunker would cool off at the Hansen Performance Center by watching video of Brandon Scherff, the Hawkeyes’ starting left tackle from 2012 to ‘14.

One clip in particular caught Dunker’s eye: In a 2014 game, a Pittsburgh defensive back crashed through the line of scrimmage, and the Outland Trophy winner turned inside and leveled him.

“I’ve seen some of the most disgusting blitz pickups in the history of football,” Dunker said of his time studying Scherff. “That’s awesome to watch.”

The names of Iowa’s legendary offensive linemen are spoken with reverence, and their paintings line the walls of the program’s All-American room. Robert Gallery. Scherff. Tristan Wirfs. Tyler Linderbaum. The years run together, but the standard never graduates.

But a few years ago, thanks to recruiting flops, injuries and inexperience, the Hawkeyes’ offensive line lost its edge. From 2021 through 2023, Iowa failed to surpass 3.4 yards per carry despite winning Big Ten West Division titles in two out of three years. In 2022, Iowa ranked 127th nationally at 2.9 yards per carry.

The zone-blocking scheme, implemented by Kirk Ferentz in 1981 as Iowa’s 25-year-old offensive line coach and later refined when he became head coach in 1999, appeared predictable and stale. Ferentz’s high school coach and lifelong mentor Joe Moore helped invent zone blocking with former Pittsburgh Steelers assistant Dan Radakovich in the 1970s. It was still a winning philosophy, rooted in reaching aiming points rather than blocking individuals or gaps. But Iowa’s dogmatic reliance on outside zone (in which the running back aims for the tight end) and inside zone (in which the ball is basically punched up the middle of the defense) needed a reset. Teams no longer line up with 250-pound middle linebackers, and faster-moving second-level defenders often beat offensive linemen to their aiming points.

The Hawkeyes needed a schematic change along with a personnel upgrade. Enter Tim Lester, the former Western Michigan head coach, who replaced Brian Ferentz as Iowa’s offensive coordinator in January 2024 after spending a season with the Green Bay Packers as an analyst. A disciple of the Shanahan offense, Lester wanted to incorporate a mid-zone run within the Hawkeyes’ offensive attack.

Two years later, the mid-zone run play has not only become an effective weapon in Iowa’s offensive attack but also set up its other zone running plays to work in concert. Along the way, swagger has returned to Iowa’s offensive line ahead of Saturday’s collision with No. 9 Oregon.

“It gives us a little bit more variety in a way,” Ferentz said. “It was a matter of repetition, getting guys comfortable where it becomes natural. To me, all we’ve done is add to our arsenal a little bit, and I think it’s probably made the other parts a little bit more effective as well.”

In 2024, the Hawkeyes averaged 5.12 yards per carry, the second-most by a Ferentz-coached team, as running back Kaleb Johnson earned consensus first-team All-America honors. This year, Iowa’s 31.3 points per game is its second-highest average since 2002, even though the team has thrown only five touchdown passes through eight games. Mark Gronowski, the South Dakota State transfer brought in to fix the program’s talent deficit under center, has already tied the school record with 11 rushing touchdowns by a quarterback.

No. 20 Iowa (6-2, 4-1 Big Ten) is averaging 185 rushing yards per game and 4.84 yards per carry, which is more impactful for its ground-acquisition style of offense than in a slash-and-dash Air Raid attack. The Hawkeyes plastered their oldest rivals Wisconsin and Minnesota by a combined score of 78-3 last month to bounce back from close September losses to Iowa State and Indiana, and they are confident they can keep it rolling as they enter a highly competitive November with back-to-back games against the next two Big Ten teams above them in the initial College Football Playoff rankings. The Hawkeyes are 21-2 in November since 2019, but don’t expect them to start celebrating anytime soon.

“The second you think you’re microwaved, you’re done for,” said sixth-year center Logan Jones, who played two seasons at defensive tackle. “If you just stop and get complacent, that’s when you get run over.”

Offensive coordinator Tim Lester helped install a key wrinkle to the Hawkeyes’ traditional zone running game. (Julia Hansen / USA Today Network via Imagn Images)

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The Hawkeyes’ blocking system isn’t for everyone, and they’re not afraid to make their philosophy clear in the recruiting process. Some programs prefer oversized linemen and “duckwalking,” a blocking style in which the player gets a wide base and attempts to wall defenders. The Hawkeyes employ a run-and-hit mentality that relies on lighter but more nimble offensive linemen who attack defenders the way they approach ball carriers. Their stance is negotiable, but the fundamentals are not: The elbows are inside with knuckles upward underneath the defender’s numbers. The shoulder pads must strike the defender, and the backside knee is aimed at the defender’s midsection.

Sometimes collecting those types of athletes involves positional switches. Of Ferentz’s six Big Ten offensive linemen of the year, five played other positions in high school.

“We’re going to take a big, athletic kid and let them play athletic,” said George Barnett, Iowa’s fifth-year offensive line coach. “I want them to finish like a dog hanging his head out the window and that breeze hits, man, they’re feeling fast and physical. We want a good first step and meticulously place the wrecking ball before it goes through the building.”

It’s overly simplistic to suggest that one play has unlocked Iowa’s offense, but the mid-zone has allowed Iowa’s athletic linemen to reach every block a step quicker. The play design provides a lane over the offensive tackle, calling for a sharper running angle than the outside zone, which is aimed outside the tight end. Running backs have fewer steps before making a cut, and linemen focus on running through defenders. The mid-zone unleashed Johnson (now with the Pittsburgh Steelers) because of his size, power and acceleration, and Iowa’s 2025 backfield led by sophomore Kamari Moulton has enjoyed similar success, topping 200 rushing yards in four games.

The blocks vary by alignment, but front-side offensive linemen broadly aim for the play-side (or outside) number in an outside zone. For a mid-zone, linemen often shift their target toward what Barnett calls the “screws,” which is the defender’s sternum. That immediately resonated with Iowa’s linemen, especially Dunker.

“Dunk was like, ‘I get to go through that guy?’” Lester said. “‘This is awesome.’ … That actually fits him beautifully.”

With his long red hair and tattooed arms covered by thrift-shop threads, the 6-foot-5, 315-pound Dunker squats 685 pounds and carries himself more like a Viking warlord than a Dean’s list student on track to become a doctor, which he is. The mid-zone simplified Dunker’s focus from reach-blocking edge players to attacking them head-on.

“It’s like heaven,” Dunker said. “It gets me excited. I’m sweating thinking about it.”

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Because Iowa is a developmental program, few recruits are physically mature enough to compete immediately along the line of scrimmage. But the Hawkeyes regularly turn three-star prospects into pros. Of the 21 Ferentz-coached offensive linemen who became draft picks, only six were four-star recruits.

When freshmen arrive on campus, the strength and conditioning staff puts them through a functional movement screening. Strength coach Rai Braithwaite identifies four problem areas common among most incoming recruits — lack of posterior chain development (glutes) and flexibility, shoulder girdle strength and flexibility, total body flexibility and torso strength. Most freshmen shift to the scout team to accelerate their weight room development and learn the intensity that comes with playing offensive line the Iowa way.

“Coach Ferentz is always talking about habits and daily disciplines,” Braithwaite said. “He doesn’t talk about outcomes.

“We prepare ourselves to play in tight ball games. Everything that we do, like, come ready to go. If you knock a cone over, screw something up, it’s not OK. It’s not, ‘My bad.’ Like, that was a fumble.”

To instill this mentality, Barnett’s approach is firm but fatherly. He keeps his talking points short, efficient and easy to remember. Barnett’s calm demeanor was necessary three years ago when Iowa started four underclassmen up front and all of them struggled. Iowa performed the same drills every day, and there were two speeds: walkthrough or 100 percent. There was no ambiguity, which Barnett felt maximized learning.

“We talk a lot about fundamentals over the scheme,” Barnett said. “Everybody’s got schemes. Everybody’s got a playbook. Anybody can draw it up, anybody can teach a play. We’re all P.E. majors. We’re not splitting the atom here. But who can do it? How can our room have good, clean fundamentals and sharpen those throughout a season to be able to plug it into Tim’s scheme? We talk a lot about being brilliant at the basics.”

Those lessons became pivotal when Iowa implemented the mid-zone. In the spring of 2024, Lester and Iowa’s staff spent hundreds of hours going over the new concepts. Every movement on each side of the ball required a counter. If a defensive tackle moved 2 feet during a pre-snap shift, for instance, that movement altered every angle for the entire offensive line.

After spring football, Iowa’s offensive staff traveled to Green Bay to learn more about the mid-zone’s intricacies.

“They were ready to go ask the pros,” Lester said. “I couldn’t get that deep like (Packers offensive line coach) Luke Butkus or some of those guys. I think we had better questions by that point because we had already gone 15 practices against our defense.”

The line caught on quickly last year and has become even better this fall, with Dunker, Jones and guard Beau Stephens likely to land on All-Big Ten teams. The mid-zone has infused life into Iowa’s running game and may hold the key to its chances of remaining on the outskirts of the College Football Playoff race — The Athletic’s projections entering Week 11 give the Hawkeyes 2 percent odds of making the field. Oregon (7-1, 4-1) will bring one of the nation’s best defenses to Iowa City, and the threat of inclement weather could force Iowa to lean even more on its much-improved line.

Like all of its challenges the last few years, Iowa’s offensive line is ready to take it on in what could become a legacy-defining game for the program and Ferentz.

“Guys like Robert Gallery, Austin Blythe, Brandon Scherff, they set the standard for what it takes to play offensive line at Iowa,” Jones said. “We kind of lost that along the way. But these past couple years, we brought it back to what it’s supposed to be.”