Again he obviously is a great athlete. He will be a RS-Soph this year and is taking a position change going into this year. Physicality wise I just do not believe he has the tools at that position. Iowa has 9 TE's right now and I would guess he is 8th or 9th in the depth chart. He has two fellow RS-Soph's that have seen game action at that position and that is behind Hockinson and Fant. Beyer from Kennedy is going to be in the mix and I am not even sure they list him as a TE yet.
To clarify...absolutely nothing against the young man at all. He was a very good small school Iowa HS QB and might be caught in the TE conundrum.
Come next fall, Drew Cook will be a RS-Junior. About halfway through the spring camp of 2017, Cook moved from QB to TE. He's subsequently benefitted from a summer/fall-camp, bowl-prep, and now another spring camp. During past fall-camp ... Ferentz sounded very positive about Cook and his development at TE. Given where he's current at it terms of height and weight ... he's already sitting at a pretty good spot in terms of size.
In terms of handling the physicalness of Iowa's TE play ... you need look no further than the fact that Iowa's top TEs are regularly guys who were glorified WRs at their high schools. In other words ... many of our top guys had very little prior experience with Iowa's physical brand of blocking ... but they all demonstrated a fearlessness and willingness to throw themselves into the melee that led the Hawks to recruit them. Neither Fant nor Hock did much blocking in high school ... and yet they've been coming along pretty well.
In terms of depth-chart ... Fant and Hock are clearly at the top. Coming out of bowl-prep, it sounded like Beyer was a significant riser. Also, given all of Wieting's prior game experience ... he's most likely somewhere in the top 4. However, everything I've heard about Cook puts him pretty squarely at #5 ... and potentially pushing for #4. (if you're counting TEs ... we have Fant, Hock, Wieting, Beyer, Cook, Vejvoda, Coons, and a number of lesser-known walk-on TEs)
Given that Iowa uses 2 TE sets all the time ... and will likely be toying with 3 TE sets with increasing frequency in '18 .... Iowa will assuredly rotate AT LEAST 4 guys at TE ... perhaps more (depending on what they show in practice). Furthermore, since Iowa played the TE at the H-back spot a lot ... it's well within the realm of possibility that Brian compensates for Drake Kulick's graduation by playing TEs with increasing frequency at the H-back spot.
If the '17 season was indicative of anything, Fant, Hockenson, Pekar, Wieting, Wisnieski, and Beyer all saw positional reps at TE last season. Thus, I would be genuinely surprised if Drew Cook didn't see some TE reps in '18 (even if it's mostly just in clean-up duty).
Consequently, if many of us are correct about our prognosis concerning Fant ... Cook will then be ready to step up among our top 4 TEs ... and he'll be in a position to be an important contributor for us in '19.
