Overview:
Deacon Hill capped spring practice by throwing a pair of touchdowns during the Hawkeyes’ public scrimmage
There is no April foolery in the way Deacon Hill regards spring football.
The former Santa Barbara High School quarterback played the opener of his coronavirus-delayed senior season on April 1, 2021.
Two years later last week, he concluded spring practice at the University of Iowa by impressing the press and public alike with his performance as a first-stringer in the Hawkeyes’ open scrimmage.
“He’s made a good showing for himself,” head coach Kirk Ferentz said after the last of Iowa’s 15 spring workouts.
Michigan transfer Cade McNamara, the team’s preordained starter, was held out of the 11-on-11 drills while rehabilitating his surgically repaired right knee.
“He clearly is our starter right now,” Ferentz said. “It is not a debate.”
But Hill, who also transferred to Iowa three months ago from Big Ten rival Wisconsin, was still happy to get his day in the sun.
In the snow, actually.
“I would classify this as one of our better-weather springs,” Ferentz said afterward. “I think we had five straight days that we were (outside). Pretty tolerable. Pretty nice.
“Not today.”
A Passing Grade
But Hill showed a hot hand amid the flurries at Kinnick Stadium in Iowa City. He threw a pair of touchdowns that included one of his signature, downfield bombs.
“Regardless, in your head, you’ve got to throw out 1-2-3, or whatever (string) it is,” he said. “When you walk in every day, you’ve got to think, ‘OK, what can I get better at today?’
“That’s been my mindset all throughout spring practice. ‘What can I do to move forward each and every practice,’ whether it’s confirming a read, confirming a protection.”
McNamara’s starting job is protected for now. He’s a seasoned graduate transfer who won All-Big Ten Third-Team honors at Michigan in 2021 after leading the Wolverines to the league championship and the College Football Playoff semifinals.
He transferred to Iowa, however, after a gimpy knee cost him his starting job last fall. He underwent surgery after the injury forced him off the field during Week Three.
Hill took a big step toward becoming his backup ahead of Joe Labas, a fellow sophomore who led Iowa to a 21-0 victory over Kentucky in last season’s Music City Bowl in Nashville.
It’s been a friendly competition, Hill insisted.
“We talk a lot,” he said. “Our lockers are kind of next to each other, so we’ll talk after practice about concepts, run through some reads together.
“Me and Joe have been getting closer, which is really nice.”
Navigating the Portal
Leaving Wisconsin behind, Hill admits, was a stressful odyssey. He entered his name in the transfer portal midway through last season after the school fired head coach Paul Chryst.
By that time, Hill had gotten only a few snaps in a rout over New Mexico State.
“The portal is all new, so it was pretty tricky navigating myself through that,” he said. “But I lean on my family and all that.
“Coach Chryst, I have a lot of respect for him, so that was a difficult period for the team. I thought it best for myself to pursue other options. And the portal was tricky, but we got through it.
“I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”
Hill originally announced that he was transferring to Fordham, a New York City university that competes in the NCAA’s Division I Football Championship Subdivision as a member of the Patriot League.
But just five days later, Iowa offensive coordinator Brian Ferentz, son of the head coach, called with a scholarship offer from the Hawkeyes.
Hill had been through the same agonizing process in high school when UCLA asked him to renege on his commitment with Wisconsin and sign with the Bruins.
He’d accepted a scholarship offer from the Badgers during a summer camp before his junior year at Santa Barbara High.
UCLA complicated matters when it made its own offer after a junior season in which he passed for 3,102 yards and 33 touchdowns while leading the Golden Tornado to the CIF-Southern Section Division 8 final.
He approached this year’s decision the same way as in 2020.
“I had long talks with my parents that day, my whole family,” Hill said. “My brother-in-law (Sam Tai) — he actually transferred when he was playing in college, from UCLA to San Diego State, so he had a lot of good knowledge.”
Both of Hill’s parents were multisport stars.
His father, Pe’a Hill, played football at Fresno City College before transferring to BYU-Hawai‘i as a basketball player.
His mother, the former Cindy Battistone, starred in four sports at San Marcos High School, earning Parade All-America honors in basketball. She continued on to become a Third-Team All-American at BYU.
All three of Hill’s siblings — older sisters Sami, Kodi and Abbi — were water polo All-Americans at UCLA.
“You would think they would all tell me to go to their alma mater, but no,” he said. “They told me that Wisconsin is the place I need to be.”
This time, they all told him to divert to Iowa.
The Budmayr Is for You
Former Wisconsin quarterback coach Jon Budmayr, now an offensive analyst at Iowa, was another major influencer. Hill describes him as a “quarterback guru.”
“He was the one who recruited me to Wisconsin,” he said. “It’s been really nice having him here.
“But it was also just believing in the program. Iowa has always been a stable program. They’ve always had a winning record.
“I just wanted to be part of a great-tradition school, and this is definitely that.”
“Wisconsin plays a pro style, and they play a pro style here,” Hill said. “It’s just that they have different names for their concepts.
“The new names and all that stuff is kind of tricky, but everything has been pretty similar.”
The Hawkeyes also use the same type of offense as the Badgers.
He’s already made a good connection with sophomore tight end Addison Ostrenga.
“I was friends in high school with his quarterback, Jerry Kaminski,” he said, referring to the two former stars for Wisconsin’s Sun Prairie (East) High School. “Me and Addie got connected through him.
“Ever since I got here, me and Addie have clicked.”
They clicked for a 55-yard touchdown on the longest pass of last week’s spring scrimmage. Hill’s arm, Kirk Ferentz observed, is the strongest of all his quarterbacks.
“He’s bigger than most quarterbacks I’ve been around,” he said. “That’s the first impression.”
Hill also threw an eight-yard TD to wide receiver Diante Vines. His second-longest throw was a 21-yard completion to wide receiver Jack Johnson.
Hill, who’s trimmed down to 230 pounds from the 248 of his freshman year at Wisconsin, also displayed a nice burst of speed when he scrambled for a seven-yard gain.
School’s in Session
He considered himself to be far from perfect, however.
“Obviously some stuff to clean up,” Hill said. “It was a lot of good, some iffy.
“But at the same time, practice is where you make mistakes and learn from them.”
It’s been the booster to Hill’s rocket rise on the depth chart this spring.
“Probably what impresses me more about Deacon than anything is his ability to learn and grow on a daily basis,” Brian Ferentz said. “He sees things. He picks them up. He doesn’t make the same mistake twice.”
The backup job, the elder Ferentz insisted, is still up for grabs.
“As of today, it would be him,” he said of Hill after last week’s spring finale. “That could go back and forth.
“He can throw a ball obviously. But the language, the nomenclature, being able to call plays … I would say he’s been in a system where you go in the huddle and call plays instead of holding signs up and everything.
“As simple as that sounds, it’s different.”
But the Hawkeye from balmy Santa Barbara doesn’t mind different.
“Just getting used to Iowa City — I love Iowa City,” Hill said. “So far, it’s been really nice, so I think I’ve acclimated well.”
And that’s no snow job, no matter which way the weather turns.