When the football preseason began, one of the biggest questions about the Iowa offense was at wide receiver.
The Hawks knew what they had in three-year starter Marvin McNutt but had lost the program's all-time leading wideout in Derrell Johnson-Koulianos as well as Paul Chaney Jr. and Colin Sandeman.
This season, Iowa was going to need junior Keenan Davis and other inexperienced wide receivers like Kevonte Martin-Manley, Steven Staggs and Don Shumpert to also step up their game.
"We were in a bit of a quandary at our receiver position based on what we saw in August," Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz said. "I think if there's been a real positive the last two weeks, our receiver group has taken some positive steps forward."
McNutt is about to become the program's all-time leader in touchdown receptions. He needs two more to tie the mark and three more to set a new bench mark. He has two big games this season and one average game against Iowa State in the team's only loss.
Overall, McNutt has grabbed a team-high 18 passes from James Vandenberg for a team-high 313 yards and two scores. Davis has come on the last two weeks and now has 17 catches for 254 yards and two scores.
Martin-Manley -- a redshirt freshman who Johnson-Koulianos was raving about all offseason -- has started to surface as he has eight catches for 99 yards and three scores -- all of which have come in the last two weeks and two of them came in the fourth quarter of the come-from-behind win over Pittsburgh last Saturday.
"We knew Marvin was the proven veteran player coming back," Ferentz said. "You have a couple different levels going on. Keenan the last two weeks has played a lot better. Kevonte surfacing, too, is helping us. The whole group caught the ball well in practice last week. That's really encouraging."
The only other wide receiver to catch a pass this season is true freshman Marcus Grant and that came at the end of the game against Tennessee Tech in the first game. Having three legitimate pass catchers is big but having other young guys emerge will be even bigger.
That means Iowa fans need to keep an eye for guys like Shumpert, Staggs, Jordan Cotton and Grant to see if any are able to surface this season.
The way Martin-Manley has started to play as a redshirt freshman, the possibilities are endless for what the other young Iowa wideouts can do.
Martin-Manley was injured in August but has definitely started to turn the heads of Iowa football fans and the media.
"Just good to see because he was really struggling in August," said Ferentz regarding Martin-Manley, who only had looks from MAC schools before being offered by Iowa. "He had a foot injury. He was out there practicing, but he was just kind of a guy that was out there practicing. Didn't really differentiate himself. Good time to surface, that's for sure."
