Oh boy oh boy.
We are only three weeks into the 2025 Iowa football season and folks are MAD.
Why, you might ask?
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but Iowa’s offense did not look good (again) and it prevented the Hawkeyes from winning a massive rivalry game that also happened to be a ranked opponent.
Yes, we’ve been doing this same song and dance for years now? Yes, Iowa is 0-fer against its last
10 ranked opponents? But don’t bring that up around Kirk Ferentz, because he needs you to know that he was only 3 points away from victory last weekend.
But in reality, since we’re doing the same old song and dance anyways, let’s play the greatest hits and see what Kirk Ferentz had to say about all this during his weekly press conference. I’m writing this intro before the presser has happened, so I’m going to guess we’ll hear about:
- Needing better execution
- Throwing the ball well in practice
- Lack of turnovers from the defense
- “Mark is our guy”
- Talks about a former quarterback (Drew Tate, maybe?)
So let’s get into it, shall we? Full transcript here, my snark below. We’re all back in midseason form, folks.
Let’s start with the injury updates:
KIRK FERENTZ: Medically, pretty much the same as last week; we won’t have Moulton and Vander Zee, and then Addison Ostrenga, unfortunately, is out for the season. That’s been confirmed.
It’s really unfortunate. Addison is a great young guy, and you hate to have anybody certainly lose playing time, and he’s one of our senior guys, leader, and just a tremendous young person. That’s certainly disappointing.
All of this sucks, especially losing Ostrenga for the year before he really even had a chance to do anything. Iowa is now hurting again at a spot that is supposed to be a strength. I am ready to declare here and now that the Angry Iowa Running Back Hating God is now the Angry Iowa Offense Hating God, also known as the ghost of Brian Ferentz. He’s out for revenge and folks, he’s getting it.
Q. Are you happy with the downfield passing game right now, and how do you get that to maybe click and be a threat to opposing defenses maybe more consistently?
KIRK FERENTZ: Well, we’re working on that. We’re working on everything right now. We’re 1-1 right now, so not happy with a lot of things. That’s kind of the nature of the beast. We scored 13 points; we have to do better moving forward.
But they’re a good defensive football team, too. There’s a lot of things you have to factor in there. I thought we made some improvements on Saturday. We grew from week 1. In the passing game, it was not good week 1. We talked about that a week ago. We’ll keep pushing forward and continue to grow.
Two things going on there. I think our players get more comfortable as we move forward, and then also we learn more. It’s one key takeaway, I think; anytime you look early in the season as a staff, if we’re not learning about the current group of players that we have, and you learn through camp, you learn every day, you learn going back to January, but getting in game competition, you learn a little bit more about what’s good and what’s not so good, and it’s a process, and it’s been that way as long as I’ve been coaching. That’s kind of what we’re going through right now.
If a member of the local media has to ask the head coach how he thinks he can make downfield passing a threat to opposing defenses, your team is in trouble. This is a classic Kirk non-answer. “How do you improve the passing game?” “Well, we played a good opponent!”
Thanks for that insight, coach. Thankfully, this reporter recognized that and pressed on with the questioning:
Q. I know we’ve talked a lot about just Mark’s play in general, but there was a handful of drops against Iowa State. What are you seeing in terms of receiving game, tight ends? What’s your evaluation of how they’re playing on the other end of things of Mark?
KIRK FERENTZ: Saturday is a good illustration, and you just brought up a good point. There were a lot of things going on. It wasn’t one player necessarily. A lot of the things I saw that were maybe a little bit uncharacteristic. I don’t know if it was the step up in terms of atmosphere, competition, all those types of things. It was a little tougher challenge than being at home on a game that was fairly comfortable.
There were a lot of things. Mark dropped a shotgun snap, and that probably killed us on a 3rd down attempt. We had a chance to have it open and hit it, and just a simple routine thing there. So all those little things really add up.
Throw special teams in there, too; that’s normally a strength for us, and it didn’t really do much to help us in the game the other day.
The combination of all those things, they all go together, and yeah, dropped balls are going to help deter an offense’s progression, and that’s not a good thing. Just little basic execution, and that’s usually what the game comes down to, especially in games like that where you have two competitive teams. Flip it over and list some things on the other side of the ball, too.
You’ve just got to keep pushing forward.
Kirk is right here that Mark Gronowski was not the reason for the lack of offensive production on Saturday, but he certainly contributed. However, I have to say it: DING DING DING THERE’S THE EXECUTION AND PRACTICE REFERENCES BOTH IN THE SAME ANSWER.
Wow, it’s like I’ve read all of these press conference transcripts for way too many years and can predict what Kirk is going to say! Love that we’re here already in week 3.
On a serious note, losing Vander Zee obviously sucks but even when he returns I don’t think this offense is going to magically turn into Oregon and score a bazillion points a game. Should they improve? God I hope so. Because these drops have been bad and it’s almost like Jon Budmayr maybe shouldn’t be the wide receivers coach!
Q. Mark has something around a 54 percent completion percentage. It’s only two games, of course. In short, do you feel your offense is matching his skill set, if that makes sense?
KIRK FERENTZ: That’s what I was alluding to earlier. I think we’re learning about him, he’s learning about us. Right now, grab on to percentages — I’ll go back to that first throw he threw, that hitch well short of the receiver that he’s probably completed 1,000 of those in his lifetime. It’s a matter of fact, but that’s not who he is. So it’s just a matter of him getting more comfortable and us doing a better job of maybe making him more comfortable, and that’s part of the process as you go along.
I think about some of the good quarterbacks we’ve had, I’ll go way back to Brad Banks, nobody knew who he was, and then after three games they did know who he was and nobody liked him, and probably — I don’t know if Drew Tate was getting rave reviews after Arizona State. It’s just part of the process. When you’re getting on the field and going through things, you’re learning as you go, and my attitude is we look more at the big picture, there’s 12 games scheduled, we’re going to take it a week at a time. As long as we’re growing and getting better and moving forward, we’ll live with the results, and that’s really all you can do.
THERE’S THE DREW TATE REFERENCE. I am firing on all cylinders here.
This is another classic Kirk non-answer but attempting to read between the lines, I’m guessing he’s admitting that they’re still trying to figure things out offensively? I get that it’s early in the season and that Mark didn’t practice in the spring, but there’s plenty of tape that the coaching staff could have used to try and form the offense around his skillset!
Q. What do you mean by making more comfortable? Are there certain routes, certain ways you run things that would make him feel more comfortable?
KIRK FERENTZ: Well, I think every quarterback, that’s part of the exchange hopefully. He and Tim talk all the time. That’s what every quarterback does with the quarterback coach and the play caller. Yeah, there’s certain things you feel good about and certain things you don’t feel good about. That’s part of putting a game plan in.
That’s a weekly process but also week to week. Certain things become more and more evident, and you try to — if you’re doing it right, you try to tailor make things toward the players’ abilities.
It’s interesting, I just saw a headline, I haven’t read the article yet, it’s on my desk in there, I think it was in the Wall Street times, it’s about the Steelers tearing up their playbook. My guess is Arthur Smith has got a playbook that includes a lot of things, and it’s just you do what your players allow you to do. You want to set your players up for success. That’s part of the process as you go along each week hopefully you’re being a little bit smarter about things.
Really enlightening answer here, Kirk!
Let’s get off of quarterback and talk tight end:
Q. Two-fold question, what is the nature of Addison’s injury, and DJ Vonnahme is going to have to step into a larger role, maybe Thomas Meyer – he traveled with you guys – what can you tell us about both those guys?
KIRK FERENTZ: I’ll start with those guys. They both have done a good job. We’ve gotten a much shorter glimpse at Thomas, obviously, because we only know him from August on basically. He trained here in June and July, but football-wise saw him starting at the start of August here, late July I guess technically.
Then DJ is a guy that we’ve just seen take step after step after step. He’s a converted player. He’s now playing tight end. That’s what we projected him as. The one question, especially he’s a former quarterback, is he going to block, how will he block. He’s done a really good job there, and he’s changed his body on top of it.
He’s a guy that we feel good about, and now due to injury he’s going to be pressed further into his role and grow a little bit, and that’s good. That’s fine. He’ll handle it well. He’s done a nice job, not only offensively but special teams this segment here. So that’s good. And Thomas will continue to grow. We’ll throw more at him right now, too.
Addy unfortunately has an achilles injury, so they repaired that yesterday, and is on the road to recovery.
Wishing the best to Ostrenga on the road to Achilles recovery. A long road ahead but hopefully we’ll see him back in the black and gold.
I don’t know a ton about either of these guys, to be frank with you but it seems like DJ Vonnahme is going to be the guy going forward. Let’s hope he has a breakout season in him.
Q. I know you guys have been dealt relatively interesting injury situation obviously with now Addison out, Reece Vander Zee, but I want to go back to the Iowa State game. It looked like there were a handful of routes on 3rd and 6, 3rd and 7, guys maybe only running about five yards out. I’m curious from your insight, is that the route concept, is that the receiver not knowing where they’re at, is it the defense taking some things away? Take me through your thought process when you looked at the film on that.
KIRK FERENTZ: Yeah, first of all, as you might imagine, if we need six, we typically don’t run routes at four or five hopefully. Hopefully we don’t have those calls matched up. Yeah, a lot of times it’s one of the big takeaways from Saturday, quite frankly. I mentioned special teams really didn’t do much to help us in the game, and that is uncharacteristic. Usually we at least hold our own or get an edge there, and I’m not sure we did that Saturday. So that’s part of the deal.
What you’re referring to there, I wouldn’t disagree with that or the drops. But usually it’s a matter of people pressing. I’ve sat in a million meetings where the one piece of feedback you hear all the time is hey, the receiver was a little short, and that’s the John Wooden “be quick, don’t hurry” deal in my opinion, and sometimes the harder guys try, the more they lack out on that, and that’s flipping over on defense, too.
One of our issues Saturday at times was leverage, and there was one play in particular I thought was a huge play in the game that we had defended but our leverage wasn’t quite where it needed to be, and it’s a matter of inches, and those little inches make a difference.
That’s the challenge in the game. The tempo is high, so can you get to where you’ve got to get, whether it’s a route depth or a point you are on the opposition of the guy that’s trying to block you.
When you lose those little things, it opens the door for maybe an extra yard or two, and those sometimes can be really big plays in the game, and that’s part of the deal. The big play in the game was that tipped pass that was just a great play by Burkle, who made a great reception on it. On one hand, kind of lucky, but on the other hand, great play by their guy, great effort, and that’s part of football, too.
“…as you might imagine, if we need six, we typically don’t run routes at four or five hopefully. Hopefully we don’t have those calls matched up.” Could’ve fooled me!
This answer is allll over the place so that Kirk can once again not answer the question. So again, my interpretation here is that everyone is just pressing too hard on offense?
Why is that? Maybe because the head coach cares more about not making mistakes on offense than making big plays on offense? Just a thought!
Let’s end with this:
Q. I wanted to ask about slow mesh. I know we talked about it a little bit after the game, but are you feeling comfortable with running that? I know you guys only ran it twice. What do you think about including that, especially while you mention Mark is trying to figure some things out with chemistry and all that?
KIRK FERENTZ: Yeah, we wanted to run it Saturday if we feel like it’s going to help us a little bit, and then how much or how little probably depends on how things go as we move forward. But yeah, we think it’s something worth investing time in. We have invested time in it. Unless there’s a good reason, we’re going to keep it in there and just see how it goes week to week and that type of deal. It hasn’t really eaten up much time. It doesn’t take away from a lot of the other things that we want to do as well. We’ll just keep it as part of the offense, and whether or not it growing or shrinks we’ll see as we go along. I don’t know at this point.
WE WANT MORE SLOW MESH!
