New Iowa offensive coordinator Greg Davis the perception of the Iowa program he always had has been verified during spring drills. The Hawkeyes will hold an open scrimmage on Saturday in Kinnick Stadium.

 ”Iowa has a reputation of being extremely physical, well-coached smart football team and that has been verified. The guys like the game, they understand the game, so it’s been more along those lines than something I didn’t expect,” Davis says.

Davis says the Hawkeyes have an outstand crop of tight ends led by junior C.J. Fiedorowicz. He says in 39 spring practices “I’ve never had a tight end like C.J. with his size and ability to play at the line of scrimmage and also to stretch the field,” according to Davis. He says the other tight ends look good too and he says they will try to expand what they do and what they ask of them.

Davis says if you can put two tight ends, and two receivers and a runningback on the field, you typically get a base defense, and he says if you can take those personnel and make it look like a one-back formation, you can pick up an advantage.

Davis says they using time in each practice to work on a no-huddle offense. “We’re still not greased up, totally competent with it, but we’re headed in the right direction with that,” Davis says.

Davis would like it to be a regular feature of the Iowa attack next season. He says they want to be able to play a lot of the game in the no huddle, but he says it depends on the opponent. Davis says the no huddle has the ability to change the complexion of the game and they want to be able to jump into it when they chose to.

The Iowa football tyeam will host an open scrimmage on Saturday in Kinnick Stadium but that won’t be the end of spring practice for the Hawkeyes. Coach Kirk Ferentz says they will have three more workouts to conclude the spring.

Ferentz says they decided to make this the final spring scrimmage for the public because of the Olympic wrestling trials that are going on as those will cause a lot of traffic in the area. Ferentz says it has been a productive spring for the Hawkeyes.

“Our team’s working hard, you know we’ve got a relatively young football team and we have some system changes, staff changes, things like that, so we’ve got a lot of new elements to the program right now and I think that’s made it that much more interesting for everybody,” Ferentz says.

Spring practice has been an adjustment for the Iowa offense under new coordinator Greg Davis. “We are in our fourth week now and it seems like it has flown by probably faster this year than any other year before. We’ve had eight practices so far and we look forward to finishing off the spring right,” according to senior quarterback James Vandenberg.

Vandenberg says while there are plenty of changes on offense it is not a completely different look. He says having a new play caller gives you some new tendencies compared to the previous coach and he says while they are looking for balance, the passing game has probably expanded a little bit.

Vandenberg says under Davis the Hawkeyes are playing at a faster tempo. “He comes from a system that has kind of done it all and in recent years has been an up tempo, almost predominately no huddle offense, so that is something that we are experimenting with,” He says. Vandenberg says the up tempo play is probably the hardest part of the new offense to learn.

The Hawkeyes struggled with consistency in posting a 7-6 record in 2011 and Vandenberg says to get to where they want to be the Hawks need to start winning on the road. “We knew we could play good football and we didn’t do it consistently enough, and I think that started with road games, Vandenberg says.

A young and inexperienced group of receivers are trying to pick up a new offense for the Iowa football team. The Hawkeyes are without Marvin McNutt who closed out his career as the Hawks all-time leading receiver.

Receivers coach Erik Campbell says the biggest thing right now is to learn the new system put in by the new offensive coordinator. Senior Keenan Davis is the top target coming back. He had 50 catches in 2011.

He says Kevante Martin-Manley is showing the experience he gained in playing last year and says he has done a good job moving ahead in the spring. Campbell says the receivers have new terminology this spring under new offensive coordinator Greg Davis, and there are some differences in reading the defense that have to be learned.

Campbell says there is not only competition for playing time but also competition to see who will be the number one receiver. “It’s always competition, and also there’s competition to stay on the field as there are young guys behind them who want to get on the field,” Campbell says.

Campbell expects Davis to step into McNutt’s shoes even though the standard has been set high. He says Davis as an older guy is expected to have a higher level of play than the young guys.

Iowa wraps up spring practice on April 14th.