CHICAGO -- In the quiet moments this offseason when linebacker Josey Jewell's body ached from overexertion, when he felt like shutting down, he did not picture the magical joyride that represented most of Iowa's 2015 season.

Instead, he went to the dark place that offered a fuel reserve. It had nothing to do with the Hawkeyes' 12-0 start and everything to do with their 0-2 finish on the biggest setting of their college football lives.

"Whenever you get tired at a workout, you’re thinking about it," Jewell said this week at Big Ten media days. "Because if you don’t push yourself even more, you’re not going to get better than last year -- and you’re going to do the same thing as last year. So during workouts, when you’re tired, when you’re mentally weak, you really want to push through because you’re thinking about those bad things."

What drives Jewell are the same results that motivate Iowa's entire team ahead of the 2016 campaign. Forget the close wins and the undefeated regular season that vaulted the Hawkeyes into a space as darlings of the sport. The real stimulus derives from a soul-crushing 16-13 loss to Michigan State in the Big Ten championship and a humbling 45-16 defeat against Stanford in the Rose Bowl.

"We left two games out there that could have defined what kind of team we were, missing out on the College Football Playoff and blowing it on the big stage like the Rose Bowl," said Iowa cornerback Desmond King, the reigning Thorpe Award winner as the nation's best defensive back.

With fall camp on the horizon, Iowa is considered the prohibitive favorite to win the Big Ten West and make a return trip to the league title game. The question is: Can the Hawkeyes really do it all over again? And how much different will the task become when they can't sneak by as an unassuming power?

Last season, Iowa was picked by 40 preseason media voters to finish fourth in the Big Ten West, behind Wisconsin, Nebraska and Minnesota. What followed was a series of firsts for the Iowa players. The Hawkeyes cracked the Associated Press Top 25 for the first time in five years, made their first conference championship game appearance and advanced to the Rose Bowl for the first time in 25 years.

"What we did last year, we get zero credit for," Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz said. "Nobody really cares at this point. It's the same race, same challenge again."

Those experiences from a year ago will no doubt shape a talented bunch that returns quarterback C.J. Beathard, top receiver Matt VandeBerg and a strong ground game on offense to pair with eight returning defensive starters, including the All-American King. At the same time, the Hawkeyes will now have to deal with the pressures of expectations from the very start. Iowa received 33 of 40 votes to win the Big Ten West in the preseason media poll.

"I notice a difference," King said. "It's not about [being] the hunter, like we were sneaking up on people. Now we're the team that's being hunted. People want to play us. People want to beat us. The four trophy games that we have -- Iowa State, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Nebraska -- they have empty trophy cases over there and want to get those back."

For as many breakthroughs as the Hawkeyes experienced a year ago -- they won six regular-season games by single digits and ran away with the West -- the past eight months have represented a collective introspection on the failures that prevented a special season from being an all-time great one. Iowa was oh-so-close to participating in the College Football Playoff when it led Michigan State 13-9 in the fourth quarter before the Spartans put together a punishing 22-play, 82-yard drive to win the game.

Tailback LJ Scott's second-effort stretch into the end zone with 27 seconds remaining from 1 yard out proved to be the winner. On the play, he churned past six would-be tacklers, including Jewell, who blasted up the middle but fell under the weight of Spartans offensive guard Benny McGowen and a Scott stiff-arm at the 2. Four weeks later, Iowa trailed Stanford by five touchdowns at halftime and was steamrolled at the Rose Bowl.

"I think of the worst things that have happened, and it’s something you don’t want to happen again," Jewell said. "So you try to make changes, and you try to focus on doing so."

Ferentz acknowledged that if his team is "living with our head in the clouds, we'll get whacked pretty quick." But the players representing Iowa at media days understand they have much more to achieve. Iowa has lost four consecutive bowl games, a streak that predates any of the current players. The Hawkeyes' last bowl victory came in the 2010 Insight Bowl against Missouri.

Success can breed confidence. And given Iowa's disappointing end to an otherwise memorable season, it will not breed complacency.

"We've still got a lot of motivation for this season," Beathard said. "We didn't finish the way we wanted to last year, coming off a Big Ten championship loss and another loss in the Rose Bowl like that. That fueled us this offseason. We've got some unfinished business there in Indianapolis. That's one of our goals to go back there and change the results."