Iowa Football brought back a ton of COVID year defensive players in 2024. Had to watch Quinn Schulte fuck around at Safety playing like he didn't want to be there while 2 much better players rotted away and didn't get snaps. Brought back both Jay Higgins and Nick Jackson, and on the surface that looked great. I love those two guys, a couple of my favorite Hawkeye LB's ever. Brought back Sebastian Castro who had a shitty year. Team went 8-5 and disappointed with a defense that was way worse than it should have been.
If they don't come back and take their COVID years and leave as they naturally should have, then Iowa would have figured out much earlier which of the LB's sucked and which ones could play. Sharar would have gotten a whole season as a starter. Nwankpa would have played the position he should have played the whole time a year earlier. Lutmer would have played way more.
2025 Iowa Football went 9-4 and was 2-3 plays away on defense from being 10-2 or 11-1 in the regular season and making the College Football Playoff. If all those younger guys got more experience the prior year, if Phil and Seth Wallace figure out they needed to play different LB's or go get a better option, do they win those games against Iowa State or Indiana or Oregon? Do they win all of them? Do they make a stop at USC and not have to drive down at the end and lose because they were out of bounds by an inch?
Shit like that. I think you still have to do things to compete, but letting middling players or even good players hang around getting in the way of younger and more talented players is a bad idea.