Iowa Football: Hawkeyes Release Week 5 Depth Chart vs. Penn State

After early disappointment in the 2020 season, the Hawkeyes are past the halfway point of the regular season and seem to have found their groove. Iowa is fresh off their second shellacking in as many weeks following a 35-7 beatdown of Minnesota.

With that kind of success, it’s safe to assume the coaching staff has found some personnel groupings they like. We saw few changes a week ago and entering week 5 at Penn State, we will see even fewer changes in Iowa’s two-deeps.

Image via HawkeyeSports.com

Noted Changes

• After missing the first three weeks of the season, Austin Schulte is back in the two-deeps as the backup to Jack Heflin
• With the return of Schulte, Dalles Jacobus remains on the depth chart but as the third right defensive tackle
• Coy Cronk is back as a backup RT behind starter Mark Kallenberger

Takeaways

There aren’t a lot of changes here and that’s the key takeaway. Iowa has won the last two games by a total of 86-14. When you pound two Big Ten teams that way, it doesn’t make a ton of sense to shake things up. Hence, essentially just two changes this week.

Austin Schulte missed the first three weeks of the season and there was speculation it may have been COVID-19 related. Now it’s rumored it was not related to COVID-19, but may have been another illness.

Schulte, however, appears to have officially lost his starting spot that he had in the pre-season depth chart. Jack Heflin remains the starter and Schulte is listed alongside Dalles Jacobus as his backup. The biggest takeaway there is that both Heflin and Jacobus have performed quite well thus far as Iowa’s defense, and its defensive line in particular, has been better than expected.

Similar to Schulte, Coy Cronk appears to be back from an illness heading into week 5. As with Schulte, Cronk appears to have lost his starting role to his replacement. This one will be a bit more interesting to follow. Cronk came to Iowa battling back from a season-ending injury at Indiana looking for game tape to boost his draft stock.

Kallenberger, however, has been quite good in Cronk’s absence and the offensive line has been dominant, particularly in the run game. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it. And so the Iowa staff appears content to leave the lineup alone despite getting the grad transfer back for depth.

Here’s hoping for another dominant performance in week 5 that leads to no changes heading into week 6.