FOLKS…
IT’S GAME WEEK! You know what that means, right? It’s time to have fun
Let’s hope there’s no lightning in the forecast this time around.
Since it’s
game week, Kirk Ferentz met with the media yesterday to preview the game, talk about the depth chart, and more. Let’s check out my highlights, shall we? Full transcript is HERE and my snark highlights and comments are below. With it only being week one, I sadly have very little to be snarky about…but I know my time will soon come.
From the opening statement:
KIRK FERENTZ: We released the depth chart yesterday, and that’s a fluid situation, especially this time of year. We really don’t know at certain positions what our depth is. I think that could go as much as a couple weeks here before we really kind of settle into who’s who and what’s what.
Some of the names are in permanent ink, a lot of them are in pencil. I remember when I went to the NFL, I was always curious why everybody was always using pencil, and I learned pretty quickly, that way you can erase and say, hey, I never said that, erase whatever you wrote down.
I will say, I think, there is going to be some shifting as we go along. We’ve got guys rotating in practice. But it’s a starting point. We’ll see how things play out over the next couple weeks.
Kirk Ferentz, pencil guy. Got it. Jokes aside, I think fluidity on the depth chart, particularly on the offensive line, will probably be just how it goes until…midseason, maybe? Let’s hope not, but that’s kind of what I’m thinking.
Q. I wanted to ask about Mark and it being his first start, having just started to play live football again this last couple months, whatever it is. How would you define success for him specifically on Saturday?
KIRK FERENTZ: Yeah, it’s kind of like our whole football team. You hate to start with the negatives, but you don’t want to do anything negative. Things are going to be really costly. In any sport but certainly in football, a big part of winning is not losing, so just taking care of your job, basically, and the difference is a quarterback, he has his hands on the ball every play. It is a little bit different than other sports. It’s a critical position. He makes a lot of big decisions and critical decisions during the course of the game.
But I think probably as much as anything from my vantage point it would be not trying to do too much. I think during the course of this camp, we’ve seen him get more and more comfortable, and then went through a little period there where he’s trying to maybe do too much and force some things, that type of deal.
He hasn’t played in a while. I know he’ll be excited just like a lot of guys that haven’t played in Kinnick. He has played in Kinnick but not on our side. So just try to relax and play your best football the way you’ve been coached, and look forward to seeing him play.
Damn it, I thought I wasn’t going to have snark this week. IT’S THE FIRST QUESTION ABOUT THE NEW QUARTERBACK AND YOU’RE IMMEDIATELY TALKING ABOUT WINNING IS NOT LOSING, AND HOW YOUR QB CAN’T MAKE MISTAKES!?
WE’RE DOOMED.
But seriously, if you’ve been reading these press conferences as long as I have, the fact that Kirk is talking about camp mistakes here from Gronowski is…not great Bob! I don’t really know what I’m expecting here, both in week 1 and over the course of the season, but I certainly don’t love that it’s week 1 and it already sounds like we might be trying to reign in the quarterback.
THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU TRY TO BE OPTIMISTIC YALL. IT DOESN’T WORK.
Let’s talk offensive line:
Q. I wanted to ask you what your breakdown is when you look at a position like, say, left tackle, the subjective versus the objective and how you decide ultimately who plays more or who wins that type of a job. You see every practice, you look at every single play, every single snap; how do you break that down? Is it number of blocks made? Is it his technique is better, he’s more consistent with it? Is it a combination of that? Which one do you skew towards if it’s we need to go in a direction here with one of these guys?
KIRK FERENTZ: It’s really all of the above. All the things you talked about factor into it. It’s ongoing, too. I mentioned pulling out the sheet I had from January and how different that looks now eight months later, eight plus months I guess. That’s part of it. Practice what we’re doing.
Jack Dotzler, I’ll just cherry pick him, you talk about tackles. Had really, I thought, a good spring and then didn’t have a great end of the spring. His last day out there was okay, but he’s made vast improvement.
The good news to me after I watched that tape from that last practice, most of it was just some technique stuff that he kind of abandoned, and talking about first experience, spring practice is not — the place isn’t sold out, but I think he had his motor running a little bit too hard and it affected his play.
He’s done a really good job in camp, and kids’ day is the only time we’ve been in public, but he played a lot better than he did that last time prior to that. It’s a process. You just kind of evaluate day-to-day, and it is fluid.
I mentioned we have a lot of stuff written in pencil right now. I think we listed Trevor No. 1, but I’ll give you some inside info. Yesterday one guy was at No. 1, the other guy was at 2, and then we flip-flopped it today. So we’ll see what happens on Saturday.
But we’re not 100 percent sure on a lot of spots, but it’s daily and ongoing. It will be all season, too. The objective is to play well in games. As we move forward, how you do as the games go on really is going to determine who’s going to be playing.
Ultimately a player decides who’s playing. That’s really how it works out.
I tell our guys, it’s your job to get notice, it’s your job to earn the position, and everybody has got an opportunity; that’s the great thing about this.
Again, you TRY to be optimistic but I really would love for this to be a year where we’re not seeing a constant rotation around the offensive line to see who fits where due to injuries, inability, etc. That’s really not what we need trying to break in yet another new quarterback.
Q. Sticking with left tackle, do you know who’s going to start? Will you tell us who’s going to start on Saturday? Will it be a rotation? And maybe also, I know you’ve rotated guys in the past, and how does that benefit you to have that rotation so you can finally determine a guy like a James Daniels and whoever — you know what I mean? You’ve rotated guys in the past.
KIRK FERENTZ: I think, as I stand here right now — 2 p.m. on Tuesday — we’ll start Trevor, but Jack is going to play. I’m sure we’ll play him because it is that close. I think they both have earned it. They both have done a good job.
Sometimes it’s because you don’t have one and you’ve got to play two, but I think we have two guys that really have made significant ground and gained significant ground. Then we’ll just keep playing.
If it ends up that we got six, seven guys that can play starting level football, we’ll play them all, no question about it. Usually you don’t have that. But if we do, we’ll play them, and that will be a good thing.
We’ve got some guys that are really close, so it’s going to be fun to see how it develops here.
Will it be a good thing though? You’ve said this in the past and it has definitely not been a good thing! But there you have it: sophomore Trevor Lauck will seemingly get the first snaps at left tackle come Saturday night.
Q. A lot has been made about the receiving corps and the improvement they’ve made in the off-season. Where have you seen the biggest improvement, and going forward, what more would you like to see as they develop into a group that can have a good season?
KIRK FERENTZ: Yeah, two-fold. I think we talked about the health thing earlier, and that’s a position that tends to get hit with a little bit more soft tissue stuff, and then I would also add the maturity. I think those two things kind of go together sometimes.
We’ve got a good group of older guys that really work hard and set a good tempo, and they’ve — Jon has done a good job, I think, with those guys daily, and they’re showing improvement each and every turn.
Hopefully they can get involved and help us become a real balanced offense. That’s our goal.
I’ll believe that when I see it, re: having a balanced offense, but receiver has been so dry for so many years now that I don’t think it can possibly get any worse in that department so I’m going to mark this down as a spot for optimism! Hooray! (?)
Let’s end with this one:
Q. What are your thoughts on revenue sharing and maybe some disadvantages or advantages that you feel Iowa has there?
KIRK FERENTZ: I’m all for revenue sharing. I think it’s outstanding. The world has changed, and certainly the way things look compared to 15 years ago, night and day difference. TV, we can thank them for all that.
I think it’s great that money is going back to the athletes. I think that’s really so deserved and a great deal.
If we could just keep it to that, I’d be a perfectly happy person. But unfortunately, we kind of struggle with that as a rule. There’s some things already going on — I think the changes that have taken place in structure the past year here, less than past year, were all really positive. I just hope at some point we can contain what’s going on with NIL and that type of thing.
I don’t want to say I’m not optimistic, but I’m not overly optimistic. Somewhere in between, and just hopeful that for the betterment of our game we can figure this out. The NFL had an advantage because they had a lot less teams when they set the rules up, but from a structure standpoint they’ve got the best thing going.
He’s spot on for this one. Revenue sharing is unquestionably the right move in this day and age, but until the portal gets figured out once and for all, we’ll continue living in the Wild West for awhile here and that will probably be to the detriment of the sport. But, it is what it is, and like I have said previously, Kirk Ferentz doesn’t have to be here dealing with all these changes, but he is, and he has, from all accounts, handled it very well thus far.
Well, that’s all for this week — you know I will have thoughts next week once we have some film, so buckle up. It’s great to be back and as always GO HAWKS!
