Well folks, I’m back from my temporary Kirk speaks hiatus and I’m back from a rainy Kinnick Stadium where I stood in the rain for hours to watch a Phil Parker defense give away a late lead from the Iowa offense.
WHAT KIND OF WORLD ARE WE LIVING IN?
A cruel one, that’s what.
And so, here we are, once again, with a fun season that will not end with a playoff appearance, but still hopefully a fun season overall…if Kirk and co. can survive a trip out west for a matchup against USC. It would be very Kirk Ferentz
to have the team come out and play its best game of the year and pull off the upset, but let’s let the man speak for himself, shall we? Check out the full transcript HERE and the return of my snark below.
Q. A couple of your players talked about when you reflected on last year’s West Coast trip to UCLA, that you guys may have probably lost the game before it was played, I guess. It felt like the preparation was good, but they just weren’t ready to play. What did you kind of learn about going to the West Coast last year? I know it was a Friday night, a little bit different, but how can you kind of make that change heading into this matchup?
KIRK FERENTZ: The West Coast trip a year ago was a night game, and those are a little bit of a challenge, I’ll admit that. Honestly, this one is just 2:40 central time if you want to look at it that way. So it’s not that big a deal.
I think our issue last year in the UCLA game was more just our approach to the game mentally, in my opinion. They were not a team really interested in running the football a year ago, and I’m not sure they wanted to run the ball against us, quite frankly, until we got into the game, and we didn’t show much interest in playing the run. It just became obvious they needed to stay with it.
Big difference from Saturday, like we had total respect for Oregon in every regard. They were still able to run the ball better than we like, but it wasn’t because we weren’t ready for it. I didn’t think we were ready mentally against UCLA last year in the run game and probably some other areas too where we left some things out there.
To me, it was more about our approach going into that game, than it was where it got played and who we were playing. Our mental approach in this team so far, this 2025 team, each and every week from my vantage point they’ve really prepared well, and they’ve gone out and competed with the right attitude. That’s what it takes to give yourself a chance to be successful.
Interesting look back at this game from last year, as I think a lot of people are making comparisons to it, with this being the second Big Ten conference west coast trip the program has experienced. These games are always going to be weird for the visiting teams, I think.
Kind of interesting too how Kirk is alluding to the fact here that they apparently overlooked UCLA last year compared to Oregon this year. They can’t do that for USC, so that’s an advantage I guess? But it’s surprising that Kirk would essentially admit to overlooking a team.
Q. I wanted to ask you about your message to your defense. Top five statistically in the country, but some of your players have expressed just a little frustration about those final game drives in the losses where they couldn’t make that one big play. How do you balance a defense that overall is playing really well, but in those small moments at the end of games, they’re a little frustrated, they just can’t get over that hump?
KIRK FERENTZ: Stats are great. I’m all for us being up there wherever we are defensively if we’re highly ranked. Yeah, it is all about getting the job done. Ultimately the most important stat, two most important stats are points and then wins and losses, which obviously they coincide.
It’s kind of like takeaways. We weren’t getting a lot of takeaways early, but then we started doing a better job. It’s not like you do anything specific, but it’s just about playing. I don’t think I have to mention that we didn’t get those stops to our guys because they know that and it hurts. They’re working hard all the time to get better at what they do, and that’s certainly part of the game.
We gave ourselves a chance the other day and came back with that drive and got the ball down there and scored and took the lead, but you have to finish it out. There’s a lot of things, but again, you can always go back five, six plays that happened during the game that would have affected that situation as well.
There’s nothing specific. We’ll just try to keep working and getting better. The task doesn’t get any easier because we’re playing a team that’s really good. They can run the ball and throw the ball very effectively. So it’s going to be a big challenge for us.
Great question here because the usual Iowa roles were definitely reversed in this game, with the defense not getting the job done for the offense in the closing minutes of the game. It’s strange to type. It wasn’t the only thing that caused it (the safety was huge, too), but damn does it hurt that the defense giving up that field goal will be what most people will remember about the game. But Kirk saying there’s nothing specific is kind of true but also frustrating. Like seriously, nothing specific? You’re the coach! There should be something specific you can call out to these players!
Q. A little deja vu because we’re always asking about responding after emotional wins and emotional losses. After nearly 30 years as the head coach, you know what you’re doing. What is it that you say that seems to resonate with players about responding and moving on, especially after an emotional loss like last Saturday?
KIRK FERENTZ: First of all, you never know if it does resonate or not. You never know if you’re saying the right thing or not. Time will tell. Believe me, you spend a lot of the week wondering about that and worrying about that quite frankly. If coaching and being involved in the game over time has taught me anything, you have to move on.
I guess it’s like real life in some ways. If you’re going to go out there and compete, which we do 12 times a year, if you’re going to go out there and compete where everyone’s got a chance to see and evaluate you, you have to be able to deal with setbacks, and that’s a big part of coaching.
I’d offer a little commentary just being asked about that, just in today’s climate I worry about that because there’s not a lot of forgiveness out there anymore. At least in college football there never has been and pro football.
You’re not going to win every day. It’s the way it is. My wife reminds me that all the time when we lose a game. Not that you want to hear it, but you’re not going to win every game. You’re trying like hell to do that. If at some point you can’t deal with that, then you probably need to get out.
Yeah, it’s natural for it to hurt after the game, on game day, it hurts on Sunday, and then you have to move on. At least with us working on Mondays now instead of the old days we took Monday off. We’re forced physically to do it, and that helps the Monday part as well.
Especially this week it’s pretty easy, we have a team again that’s equally a tough task, which is what we had last week. You’d better get your attention there real quickly. Otherwise, you’re putting yourself at a bigger disadvantage going against a tough team. It’s our job to try to educate our players to that. That’s just how it works. We have to be conveying those messages to our guys.
This is pretty much how I feel about this game. I never expected them to win so maybe I was never going to be the hardest hit, but it’s also true that they have to have a short memory if they want to have any chance of coming home from LA with a win. So I guess we’ll see how well Kirk did at educating his guys to move past this. Because now the playoff is for sure out of the picture and the season can go any number of ways. Yes, there will be a bowl game, but which bowl game is far from determined. And there’s definitely a worse case scenario where this team falls apart after losing to Oregon.
Q. I know Indiana and Oregon are two of the most explosive offenses, and you guys held them well under all their averages. It did seem like missed tackles were a common factor in both, I guess, especially going against USC. You mentioned earlier it’s one of the better run offenses in the Big Ten, the improvement they made. What’s the sort of emphasis this week going in and maybe just finishing through tackles? How have you guys addressed it? How have you worked on it? Just kind of your overall assessment about the Oregon game from that?
KIRK FERENTZ: I’m just smiling because I’m trying to think who I read, somebody talking about that during the course of this year, and I can’t remember who it was. It was a coach in college football, and they did like a 30-minute tackling session or whatever.
I don’t know. We’re practicing like we always do. Historically we’ve been pretty good. You have to factor in sometimes, too, the people you’re playing and give them a little credit. Both the teams we’re talking about had backs that are tough to tackle. Hemby from Indiana is a really strong runner, and those guys from Oregon are really good, too. So that factors in.
Nonetheless, if you want to be a good defensive football team, you have to tackle and tackle well. I would not disagree with what you said. Those are not our best tackling efforts overall as a game, in game condition. If we’re going to play better Saturday, we have to do a little bit better job. We have to get these guys down first attempt, first guy in, and just do a little better job there.
Missed tackles have been a HUGE problem this season and KIRK APPARENTLY DOESN’T KNOW HOW HE’S ADDRESSING IT? “We’re practicing like we always do” OK WELL I’M SEEING THE MISSED TACKLES IN THE ACTUAL GAMES, SO MAYBE CHANGE SOMETHING IN PRACTICE?
JUST A THOUGHT!
