New Iowa starter Hank Brown's winning TD pass against Michigan a sign of trust built with receivers

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — Iowa quarterback Hank Brown wasn’t just working to win the Hawkeyes’ starting job in the offseason. He was also working to build trust with his wide receivers.

That trust, he said, showed in his 16-yard touchdown pass to Reece Vander Zee as time ran out to give Iowa a 20-19 win at Michigan last Saturday.

It was Brown’s fourth start with the 14th-ranked Hawkeyes, but the first since having the “OR” removed from the depth chart in his battle with Jeremy Hecklinski for the No. 1 spot.

“Definitely a full-circle moment,” Brown said Tuesday about the game-winning pass. “That’s definitely trusting the process.”

It was a moment coach Kirk Ferentz thought was something Brown could build on heading into Saturday’s home game against No. 5 Ohio State.

“It’s like anything in life,” Ferentz said. “When you experience something, typically you’re a little better in that situation next time around, whether you do well or not do well, and the key is how do you rebound if you don’t do well. But this will help him a little bit. Next time he’s in that situation, he’ll have that at least to draw confidence from.”

Brown was 21 of 35 passing for 227 yards against the Wolverines — 13 of 19 for 142 yards in the fourth quarter. That includes a 16-yard touchdown pass to Vander Zee 58 seconds into the quarter that gave Iowa a 14-13 lead.

Brown said the winning pass to Vander Zee was tied to work they had done in practice.

“We’ve been working on those red-zone deep throws, whether it’s a fade ball or a back shoulder like that one,” said Brown, who made two starts in two seasons at Auburn before transferring to Iowa after the 2024 season. “It’s just trusting Reece and knowing that when he has that leverage, I’m going to be able to throw to that spot. We were on the same page, obviously, knowing where that ball’s got to be. It’s trust in Reece, and trust in the work that we have been putting in out on the field.”

Brown saw as the play developed that Michigan’s defense had given him only one option to Vander Zee.

“We work on that play call in that situation,” he said. “Our coaches do a good job of preparing us for play calls like that. But also, it was the way their defense was set up. They had two high safeties and they were pressing on Reece. Their corner didn’t let him get over the top to beat him deep, so we knew the back shoulder was the way to go.”

The battle for the starting job was the biggest question for Iowa leading up to the season. Brown and Hecklinski shared snaps in the first half and early in the second half of the 40-0 win over Northern Illinois . Brown took all the snaps in the 16-13 win over Iowa State , then it was back to sharing snaps with Hecklinski for the first half of the 55-0 win over Northern Iowa.

It became Brown’s job in the week leading up to the Michigan game. For the season, he's completing 68% of his passes for 175 yards per game with five TDs and no turnovers.

Brown played a total of 55 snaps over three games last season. He replaced an injured Mark Gronowski in the fourth quarter of a 13-13 game against Indiana and was 5 of 13, threw an interception as the Hawkeyes were moving into field-goal range. He was off target on 6 of 9 passes as Iowa tried to come back from a seven-point deficit in the final 2 minutes of a 20-15 loss.

“What happened last year was inadmissible evidence, right?” Ferentz said. “We all saw it and he wished he’d done better. But that didn’t define his career. He didn’t know what the hell he was doing, quite frankly, as a young, inexperienced player... He’s a so much better player now than he was a year ago, as is Jeremy.”

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