Tight End University's Next Valedictorian 🎓
Send that one to the front of the class...
This is my corn. You people are guests in my corn.
- Ray Kinsela, Field of Dreams (1989)
It’s been a longstanding tradition at the University of Iowa to feature the TE position heavily (yea, thanks for the heads up, VP). CFF wisemen to this day still tell tales of yesteryear when they would find messages like “TEs deserve love too” etched into their cornfields. Was it the ghost of Nile Kinnick up to his old mischief again? Or Brian Ferentz. Jr. on another bender late night? To this day, nobody has the answer.
The previous staff for the Hawkeyes were not an exception to this rule. Under Ferentz Jr.’s reign as OC (2017-2023), a TE led the team in receiving yards four out of the seven seasons, and five out of the seven seasons if you count either yards or receiving TDs.
Sam LaPorta was the main man in 2021 and 2022, while TJ Hockenson led the team in 2018. Noah Fant led the team in TDs the previous year (2017).
Many prognosticators felt that the next guy up in 2023 would be Columbus Ohio’s Luke Lachey, who was off to a good start vs. Utah State before succumbing to a season-ending ankle injury. In his absence, Erick All and Addison Ostrenga picked up the slack. Ostrenga in particular came on late in the season, finishing with four games of 10 CFF points or more in his last six appearances. All moves on, but Ostrenga and Lachey return for another year of carnage in the Midwest.
After Jr. was fired from the position of OC, Brian Ferentz Sr. hired former WMU head coach Tim Lester. Naturally the question becomes: how does Lester feel about the TE position? Here are some quotes from the man himself:
“I love tight ends,” Lester said at his introductory press conference in February.
“I'm a huge fan,” Lester said of the tight end position. “... Some people use them, some people don't. I love the fact of what they can do to a defense in the run game, in the pass game, in the play pass game, in the keeper game. It also can open up things out on the edges, too.”
Here is an update that you would have seen in the monthly recaps earlier this offseason:
Luke Lachey has a great working relationship with Lester in the early going. There's a lot of excitement from the tight ends because they are still going to be a big point of the Iowa offense. Lester is ecstatic about his size, athleticism and all-around skill set. He feels that Lachey and Ostrenga have the talent to do exactly what he's always wanted to do with tight ends.
Obviously Lachey is coming off of a major injury, which introduces some uncertainty, but the expectation is that he’ll be back and vying for the TE1 role. What’s interesting to me is that there seems to be talk of utilizing not one, but two TEs heavily this year. Here’s a quote from Ostrenga:
I definitely think we can both do great things together . . . I think if somebody is guarding him (Lachey) a lot that I can maybe get my opportunity. If I’m getting guarded, he (Lachey) can get his opportunity. So I definitely think we can both feed off each other a lot.
While Lachey has been a hot name in CFF dating back to last offseason, his teammate—Ostrenga, has largely gone under the radar. However—despite Lachey’s return—it is not that far fetched that Ostrenga ends up being the most productive TE on this team in 2024.
Before diving deeper into personnel, let’s look at the patterns of the new(ish) staff.
Coaching & System
TE1 PPG AVERAGE — HC: 8.3 — OC: 6.61 (half ppr)
Normally when you’re looking at historical target shares of coaches, you’re happy just to see above 20% for the WR1. With Ferentz, this guy’s TE1 has commanded a 21%+ target share twice in the last three seasons(!), including a rather strong 26.9% in 2022. That coincided with around 7.8 targets per game. Again, this is the TE position we’re talking about here—you know, the position that is so borderline-unusable that some CFF leagues have just removed it all together…
We felt that the numbers under Ferentz would probably be pretty good going into this article, and the numbers merely confirm this. But what about Tim Lester?
Whispers through the grapevine say that Lester didn’t even have to interview for the job, he merely showed Ferentz the TE target share of his 2019 offence and Brian told him he was hired on the spot. You know what they say: great minds think alike; and one can only come to one logical conclusion when assessing the Iowa and WMU offences of years past—great offensive minds. Game recognize game, as they say.
Though with Lester his patterns are more enigmatic, as the very next season his TE1 might as well have not even been on the field, averaging 1.6% target share. In each case, the historical TE1 target share being above double digits is sufficient in my mind, given that the bar is so low for this position in CFF. Lester spent last year as an analyst for the Green Bay Packers of the NFL.
Unfortunately, my data and table only go as far as the historical TE1 statistics. It would have been great to know the historical usage of the second TE under Ferentz as well.
As expected, Iowa was one of the slowest teams in the FBS last year checking in at 97th with 27.7 seconds per play run. The average over the last three years is slightly faster, however, with 25.9 seconds per play run.
Ferentz’ play calling tendencies average out to around a 55/45 split in favour of the run, while Lester’s is about 59/41.
Personnel
Luke Lachey is coming off the aforementioned season-ending ankle injury, so we’ll just have to wait and see how he is on his return. Ostrenga is entering his third year in the program, and if he’s already slated to be a featured weapon this year then he’s definitely a guy to circle for 2025 as well. Iowa TEs typically do spend the full four years (sometimes longer) at the university.
Here’s Lachey speaking about his decision to come back for his senior year:
I love Iowa. I don’t think I could really leave this place. The people are great. I knew a lot of guys were thinking about their decision and a lot of guys were kinda leaning (toward) coming back. I felt like there would be a lot of potential for our team. But even just personally, I just felt like there was more I could do here. And more I could learn to help myself be better prepared for the NFL.
Lachey also offered some thoughts on his teammate and the plan as far as he knows for the offence:
I’ve seen a lot of great things from Addison. He continues to go out and he practices really well. He’s got the details down really well. So I’m really excited for him and everything that he did last year. He’s gonna be able to carry that over for this season.
I think we’re gonna be a focal point of the offense, and I think that we’re gonna be used similarly to how we were. I don’t know. It’s really good, though. I like it.
Here’s new OC Tim Lester:
They fly around . . . It's been fun. There's a lot of stuff you can do when you have big, long, fast guys that can catch and they're also willing to get their hands dirty in the box. So it's been a lot of fun because we're going to need them. That part has been good.
Between the two returning TEs, neither’s aggregate stats from 2023 will blow you away. Ostrenga didn’t really start to get spin until Oct. 21st vs. Minnesota. He then went on to have games of three, eight, seven, five, nine, and five targets to close out the season. Over the final six game stretch, he caught 28 passes for 173 yards and two scores, or an average of 9.55 PPG in 1PPR formats.
Lachey started the year hot with a nine target game where he caught seven passes for 73 yards, and then caught three of his seven targets the following week for 58 yards before going down with injury in week three vs. (coincidentally) WMU.
Closing
Both players have ADP data according to Campus2Canton. Lachey sits around 143.4 currently, while Ostrenga holds an ADP of 328.7. Lachey’s June ADP of 128 suggests he’s trending positively heading into the latter stages of the summer, however, while Ostrenga had no June ADP, suggesting he might be moving in the opposite direction.
Overall, it’s logical for CFF players to reach for Lachey first, as most indications are that he’ll be back in the role of TE1. However, I don’t think the discrepancy between the players’ production will be as pronounced as many expect, and I suspect Ostrenga will be a viable TE asset in many CFF formats too. ◾
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Sample of 2018-2023.