86 Days Until Iowa Football: Tommy Kujawa & Jameson Witte

Today is an ode to the walk-ons of the Iowa football program, the guys who often sparingly or never see the field at all, but are nevertheless important cogs in this Hawkeye machine.

Tommy Kujawa - Senior
Greendale, WI (Greendale)
6’3”, 237 lbs
2021 Projection: Reserve tight end

Kujawa joined the program all the way back in 2017, redshirting his first year on campus.

And that’s kind of where his story starts and ends. The tight end project hasn’t seen any time on special teams or otherwise since donning the Black and Gold. That likely won’t change given Iowa’s tight end two-deeps, but he could seriously be in the mix for special teams play, who knows.

He’s one of seven tight ends on the roster, and joins Bryce Schulte and Jackson Frericks as walk-ons of that group. The former has seen serous S/T duty, while the latter is just getting his feet wet.

Our other guy today may have a similar, albeit less steep hill to climb to get some playing time.

Jameson Witte - Freshman
O’Fallon, MO (St. Dominic)
6’5”, 276 lbs
2021 Projection: Reserve defensive end

Witte was a relatively unheralded recruit from a state that Iowa doesn’t typically get too many guys from, but he comes in at a position of need with a really good frame to start with. He had no major offers, but opportunities to walk on elsewhere, picking Iowa over Oklahoma State and Missouri.

He comes in to a relatively stacked defensive end group, behind ZVV, John Waggoner and Joe Evans, but things are kinda hairy on the interior and leads me to believe he may just tryout there in the future. Witte has the makings of a classic Iowa walk-on success story. Let’s see how that narrative plays out AD (After Doyle).