Mark Gronowski’s case for the NFL starts with the simplest argument in the book: he wins.
That’s not a throwaway line, either. Gronowski leaves college football as the winningest quarterback in Division I history, and the Iowa run he just put together only sharpened that reputation. Even when the Hawkeyes were backed into corners, he kept finding a way to drag them out.
The Rutgers game was a perfect example. Iowa had already gotten a jolt from Kaden Wetjen’s opening kickoff return for a touchdown, but Rutgers still had the Hawkeyes tied up or chasing for most of the first half. Gronowski answered every swing, helping Iowa reach halftime locked at 21 after the Scarlet Knights had built leads of 14-7 and 21-14.
The pressure only ramped up from there. Athan Kaliakmanis kept attacking the Iowa secondary with Ian Strong and KJ Duff, and Rutgers pushed back in front 28-24 with less than 10 minutes left.
That’s when Gronowski hit Dayton Howard for a 42-yard bomb to set up the go-ahead score. He finished that drive with a two-yard rushing touchdown, then added another one-yard scoring run after Jaxon Rexroth picked off a pass.
Iowa walked out with a 38-28 win.
Penn State brought a different kind of chaos, and Gronowski still found answers.
Iowa’s own mistakes nearly buried it. Drew Stevens tried a 66-yard field goal at the end of the first half, and Penn State blocked it and returned it for a score.
Then the Nittany Lions opened the third quarter with another touchdown drive from Ethan Grunkemeyer and went up 21-10. With the crowd and momentum tilting the other way, Gronowski took over.
He drove Iowa down the field with a 38-yard run and finished the possession with a read-option touchdown to cut the deficit to 21-16. Later, after the teams traded field goals, he ripped through the middle of the defense on a run that broke multiple tackles and turned into a huge gain. That set up an eight-yard scoring run by Wetjen for the go-ahead points.
And when Iowa needed one more clutch sequence, Gronowski delivered again. On what looked like a routine run to drain the clock, he faked the handoff to Kamari Moulton, froze the Penn State defense, then kept it himself, bounced outside, picked up the first down and slid to end it. Iowa survived, and Gronowski had his fingerprints all over the escape.
Michigan State closed the regular season, and it was more of the same: Iowa flat, then Gronowski bailing everybody out late.
The first quarter was a slog, with punts, an interception from each quarterback, and Wetjen’s record-setting 62-yard punt return touchdown. Iowa led 7-3 at halftime, but the Spartans grabbed control in the third with two touchdown passes from Alessio Milivojevic and took a 17-7 lead into the fourth.
A Stevens field goal trimmed it to 17-10 with 11:27 left, but Iowa still looked stuck. Then Wetjen’s 40-yard punt return gave the Hawkeyes the ball at the Michigan State 42 with 2:37 remaining. Gronowski moved them to the 13 in under a minute, then fired a back-shoulder strike to Jacob Gill to tie the game at 17-17 with 1:29 left.
He wasn’t done. After a short Spartan possession, Iowa got the ball back at its own 21 with 41 seconds to go, and Gronowski went right back to work.
He hit DJ Vonnahme for 19 yards on the first snap, then zipped a 29-yard throw to Reece Vander Zee along the sideline. That drive set up Stevens for the 44-yard game-winner as time expired, and Iowa won 20-17 on Senior Day.
With 58 victories under center at the college level, Gronowski’s NFL pitch is clear. He knows how to win football games, and that matters.
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