Iowa football offers coveted 2026 Pennsylvania QB
Iowa football offers coveted 2026 Pennsylvania QB
The Iowa Hawkeyes offered another quarterback in the 2026 class.
Peyton Falzone, a 6-foot-5, 200 pound quarterback, reported an offer from the Hawkeyes on Tuesday. A product of Nazareth High School in Pennsylvania, Falzone is regarded as a consensus four-star prospect across the four major recruiting networks.
247Sports ranks Falzone as the nation's No. 195 player overall, as its No. 15 quarterback and as the No. 5 player from Pennsylvania. The On3 industry ranking places Falzone as the country's 193rd-ranked player, as the No. 15 quarterback and as the fifth-best player from Pennsylvania.
Falzone passed for 2,136 yards and 23 touchdowns and also ran for 743 yards and eight more scores during his junior season at Nazareth.
Falzone also holds offers from schools such as Penn State, Rutgers, Syracuse, Utah, Virginia Tech, West Virginia and Wisconsin.
Iowa currently has six commits in its 2026 recruiting class, including fellow quarterback Cash Herrera out of The Bishop's School in La Jolla, Calif. The Hawkeyes also have pledges from offensive linemen Carson Nielsen, Owen Linder, Colin Whitters and Hudson Parliament and from defensive back Marcello Vitti.
Here's a look at Falzone's junior season Hudl highlights.
Iowa will host its Junior Day on March 8 and would love to have Falzone as one of its visitors. If Falzone were to pick Iowa, the star from Pennsylvania doesn't sound deterred that the Hawkeyes already have a quarterback committed in Herrera.
"That's not really something that ever scared me. I know when you go and you play at the P4 level, you're going to be competing for your life every day, and every year they're going to bring in a new guy that's trying to be better than you.
"It's going to be exciting to have someone else in a class to try to compete against and make each other better," Falzone told Eliot Clough of Hawkeye Beacon.
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New York Times
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It would have been unfathomable three months earlier, as Anthony powered an Iowa team to the verge of its first NCAA Regional since 2017. Then came the investigation. Iowa withheld Anthony and three of his teammates from competition after state law enforcement alleged they were among dozens of student-athletes at Iowa and Iowa State who had gambled on sports. Anthony was not accused of betting on his own team, but the NCAA does not permit student-athletes to bet on any sports it sponsors at any level. Anthony could not play in the final games of his redshirt-sophomore season on a team with College World Series aspirations. Scouts' interest cooled. The NCAA eventually deemed him ineligible until May 2024. Then he went undrafted. 'I didn't know what I was going to do. So (I'm happy) just being able to bounce back from that and be where I am here today,' Anthony said. 'Here' is Triple-A Lehigh Valley, where Anthony has batted .400/.442/.525 for a .967 OPS since his promotion from Double A on June 11, though he recently hit the injured list with an adductor strain. What got Anthony a step away from MLB — manipulating at-bats, frequently finding the barrel — is what made him the star of an ascendant Iowa team. The NCAA investigation came amid the rapid growth of legal sports betting in the United States, with mobile betting ads ubiquitous at live sporting events and on broadcasts. College students, in turn, have flocked to gambling companies' apps: A 2023 NCAA survey found that 58 percent of 18- to 22-year-olds had participated in at least one sports betting activity. Advertisement But what is legal for a typical college student may not be allowed for NCAA student-athletes, creating challenges the NCAA and institutions are working to navigate in a quickly evolving environment. 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Everyone around Anthony agrees: He has a knack for finding the barrel. Iowa hitting coach Marty Sutherland first saw Anthony at a summer workout while recruiting in Georgia and thought, 'This kid looks like he moves pretty well and has a pretty good feel for making good contact.' Phillies area scout Justin Munson, who signed Anthony, was reminded of third baseman Alec Bohm, also one of his signees — 'big body like that, similar swing path.' 'He always hit,' Munson said. 'He didn't swing-and-miss a whole lot. Had power in all fields and just did a really good job of showing up, being on time always.' Anthony arrived at Iowa as a pitcher and utility player. But it was clear by his redshirt-sophomore season in 2023: Anthony was a hitter, among the nation's best. He was tabbed All-Big Ten and a third-team All-American in 2023 after leading Iowa in batting average (.389) and doubles (22), along with nine homers and 38 RBIs. Advertisement There's a quote Sutherland shows his players every year. It's from a postgame media scrum after Anthony hit a two-run homer against Purdue in May 2022. Anthony recounted every pitch: the 1-0 slider he didn't like, the next two fastballs, the 2-2 fastball he fouled away, the slider he took for a home run. The whys and hows of every decision he made. 'This is what it means to be a hitter,' Sutherland tells players. 'We can work on your swing and how you move and your explosiveness and how hard you hit the ball. … But this is what starts to separate you as a hitter.' Anthony's gift for finding the barrel helped him. So did hitting the weight room. But perhaps most valuable was his confidence. 'I've never seen Keaton step in the batter's box against anybody, regardless of who it was, that he didn't feel like he was better than they were,' Iowa coach Rick Heller said. 'You knew that he felt like he was going to hit the ball hard off of that guy.' Iowa baseball was 32-11 when coaches and players learned about the investigation in early May 2023. An Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI) agent had used geofencing technology from Canadian company GeoComply to create digital boundaries around Iowa's and Iowa State's athletic facilities in early 2023, per a federal complaint. The agent, Brian Sanger, said in a January 2024 deposition that he did not obtain a warrant to use the technology. But superiors gave him the go-ahead to place boundaries around the facilities, The Athletic reported in April 2024. The objective, per charging affidavits and court testimony, was to investigate whether athletes, coaches and athletic personnel were improperly gambling or fixing sporting events. Sanger identified gambling account numbers but not account holders, then subpoenaed sports betting companies' records to reveal who had engaged in betting. Names were brought to Iowa and Iowa State. Iowa withheld identified student-athletes from competition and notified the NCAA of potential violations. Prosecutors charged 15 Iowa and Iowa State athletes with underage gambling — the legal sports betting age in Iowa is 21 — and tampering with records, among other charges, in August 2023. Advertisement Anthony was investigated but not charged. Twenty-six athletes across the Iowa baseball, football, men's basketball, men's track and field and wrestling teams were withheld from competing with their teams. Punishments ranged from loss of NCAA eligibility to prosecution, though the state dropped charges related to the investigation in March 2024. There was no clarity about when Anthony or his teammates might be absolved of wrongdoing, so they continued to practice to be ready if they were reinstated. 'I was really upset,' Anthony said. 'It was just tough. You're playing with all of your best friends, and you have to leave them — it sucked.' The dates kept shifting. 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Had those players been there, Heller said, 'that team had the potential to keep going and maybe go to Omaha.' The ending was bitter. But, Anthony said, he would not change his time at Iowa if he could, calling the saga a 'great learning step' that eventually made him stronger. Sutherland and Heller understand what their players were accused of is not allowed under NCAA rules. What's frustrating, Heller said, is that betting on other sports and teams is happening among '90 percent' of male college athletes from JUCO to Division I. He feels Iowa was made the scapegoat. Sutherland agreed: 'You just feel bad for (Anthony) because the punishment doesn't necessarily fit the crime.' Advertisement Anthony's draft stock was tarnished by the gambling investigation. Yet MLB maintains ties to gambling companies, and MLB players can bet on sporting events other than baseball, per the collective bargaining agreement. 'I would just plead with those scouts, like, 'What are we doing?'' 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