Fresh off of a decisive road victory against the Northwestern Wildcats, the Iowa Hawkeyes continue to control their own destiny for a spot in the College Football Playoffs. However, as we all know, the team almost certainly needs to win out in order for that to become a reality.
The remaining schedule is favorable on paper, but the Hawkeye cannot afford to let their guard down at all in any of the remaining games, and that starts this weekend against the Boilermakers. Let’s see what Kirk Ferentz has
up his sleeve to prep the team, shall we? Check out the full transcript HERE and my commentary below.
Let’s start with this:
Q. I know you’re not a stat guy, but Iowa has had a 97-yard offensive touchdown drive in each of the last three games. The first team since 2015 to do that. I know with this group, I wouldn’t call them young now that they’ve almost played a full season together, but what about this group makes them not flinch when they’re pushed back against their own goal line? It seems like they aren’t pressing. They’re calm in the way they execute. I know you told Hank and the offense before they went out against Northwestern: Hey, you did this last week; just go out there and do it again. What makes them so composed?
KIRK FERENTZ: I wish it was that easy. Take a shot there. Sometimes they listen.
It’s all about execution. I think I said Saturday night, the goal was just to get the ball out of there, so if you do have to punt, you can at least flip the field position a little bit. That’s what you’re hoping to do. The opponents are trying to keep you where they get the ball back midfield or less.
There’s percentages with all that stuff, but I got to tell you, I’ve been impressed with that three straight weeks. I lost track about three weeks ago, but the other two I knew.
It’s really impactful if you can do that certainly because, again, as a defensive team, you’re thinking, okay, we have a chance to pin them down, get the ball back, and at minimum, get three points. If you can take that and then, flip it around the other way, that’s a double bonus there.
I wish I could tell you what the magic formula is, but it’s a real credit to the players just for sticking to it and doing the execution part of it.
KIRK FERENTZ SAYS EXECUTION – TAKE A DRINK!! But in all seriousness, the offense has truly been such an improvement this year. The fact that we’re able to confidently move the ball, confidently throw on first down in a lot of these scenarios…that says something. Iowa is taking some really big steps forward this year under Tim Lester, and it’s paying off tremendously.
Q. I don’t mean to beat a dead horse here, but I know the fumbles have kind of continued. I know you said there’s not exactly a perfect drill to maybe fix that or to work on it, but I guess is it just business as usual, or how do you address that?
KIRK FERENTZ: I mention it, and you’re not beating a dead horse either. Believe me, we’re on the same page. Twelve loose balls, that’s way too many. Our interception rate could be better, but it’s about average, I’d say, league-wide, and it’s not alarming. But 12 loose balls, that’s a lot for, like, three seasons, I’d say.
To me it’s concentration. It’s like tackling too. Some games we tackle better than others, but we tackled really, really well last week, but we pretty much do the same stuff routinely, whether it’s ball security drills or tackling. I think a lot of it’s just concentration.
Sometimes you can’t explain what happens in a game, but a couple of weeks ago, eight loose balls, I mean, that’s just ridiculous, quite frankly. It gets down to concentration, in my opinion.
Experience factors in there, but we’re nine games into it, so everybody is a veteran at this at this point, unless you just got out there. I’d give you a hall pass there maybe, but we have to do a better job. I think we will, but we have to do it.
12 loose balls on the season seems like the most I can ever remember in a season under Kirk Ferentz. Surely I’m wrong on that stat, but this has definitely been a problem this year, without question. In a rare moment here, I agree completely with Kirk that it does seem like a matter of concentration, particularly in the Minnesota game. The team just didn’t show up that game, and it showed. This is something that needs to have been fixed yesterday.
Q. Related to the ball security question, you’re going to obviously mention it to the group, but is it something you maybe put on your assistant coaches to reemphasize, if you will, in meeting rooms? Hey, you’re running here with the ball out like this. I guess that would be my first question.
KIRK FERENTZ: Yeah. There was something we saw a week ago with a particular player about just some of the maybe technique that could have been changed, and I think that was addressed last week and really didn’t show up Saturday. That’s encouraging.
But, yeah, everybody has ownership, and then we talk about turnovers too. Sometimes it’s somebody missing a block or not blocking well enough where a guy gets caught in a compromising position, so everybody has a hand in that.
Yeah, we continue to coach it, and we will continue to coach it and emphasize it. Those old adages are true. What you emphasize is usually what you get. There’s a fine line too.
I’m thinking of a story. I worked with a guy who worked with another guy. I was coaching at Stanford and overdid it. They were playing Oregon State I think. They had buckets of water out there and the whole nine yards, and they went out there and proceeded to turn the ball over like seven times because they had the players just talked into it. You want to be careful about where that line is, that’s for sure.
Lol “a particular player” does his name happen to start with X and does he play running back? If what you emphasize is what you get in a game…what is being emphasized in practice??
Q. I know all offseason we talked to you about the young defensive line that you had and everything you lost, a very talented linebacker corps. Maybe outside of Jayden, really have not been tested. You guys have 30 sacks. I think it’s seventh in the country. How much of that is just execution, the different schematics by Seth or Phil? How much of them are coverage sacks? How have you been able to extract the best out of a young group that continues to gain experience by the week?
KIRK FERENTZ: I’m afraid to be too complimentary because you end up regretting it. A good friend of mine said, “Don’t brag on anybody but dead folks.” A pretty good motto, actually.
That was an area of concern, that and our specialists were two big areas of concern, and probably the offensive line coming into the season just because of inexperience. To that point, I think we’re doing okay up front there, and to me it’s the whole front seven.
I didn’t lie, but cheated a little bit. We had a feeling that Cam Buffington was going to be a pretty good player. We knew Jayden was. We had that part locked down pretty good, but the development of what’s going on up front has been really pleasing.
We were counting on Bryce to be an anchor and a leader up there, and he’s done that. Hawthorne has done a really good job there.
Kenny didn’t play that many snaps relative to the other guys last year, but he’s a veteran guy with a great attitude, and he’s adopted a good, strong leadership role, too, so that’s helping in that room. Then everybody else is kind of doing what they can to catch up.
We’re getting all we could ask for out of Luke and Will in their rotation. Kahmari Brown is starting to get comfortable in our defense and the way we do things, so that’s good to see. Then you have Epenesa and Campbell, two young guys that are starting to gain a little confidence and getting the feel for what it is. Collectively it’s more of a collective thing, to answer your question. Then you have Ries on the sub packages and Van Kekerix is playing really well.
It has been a collective thing. All the things you talked about are true. The schematics have been good, giving guys a chance to be in position where maybe they have opportunity. Then historically we have a fair number of coverage sacks where we’ll be rushing four guys, but if you can make a quarterback hold the ball a little bit more than he wants to, that gives you a chance maybe to flush him and have something good happen. I think that’s kind of been an understated strength for us over the years is if we can make it hard for them to have an easy throw, then maybe some good things will happen up front.
The defense started out a little questionable at times, but I’ll be damned if they haven’t turned into one of the finest units in the country. They’re downright scary. The quarterback pressure was fantastic last weekend. Sure, it was a backup, but still, the defense was all over the place. They will need to keep playing like that every single game to come out of these remaining games without a loss.
Let’s end with this interesting nugget from Kirk about the CFB Playoff expansion:
Q. I know you said you’re not worried about future College Football Playoff stuff years down the road, but is there maybe some sadness the loss of the Big Ten Championship game? I know that’s been a pretty special event in the past.
KIRK FERENTZ: I have to tell you — yes and no. I’m not feeling real collegiate anymore. If I was, we’d still be playing with 10 or 11 teams in the Big Ten. That stuff is all gone by the wayside.
The world has changed dramatically in this arena, so you have to roll with it. I don’t want to dissertate too much about the playoff thing because it’s already been said, but to me, when they went from two teams to four, my attitude at that point was the more the merrier. I really meant that. I would rather have it be two or 22 or in this case 24 because you’re always going to have that argument, we should have been No. 4, not No. 5 and all that stuff.
As soon as we went to four, the bowl games — it started to diminish the value of bowl games traditionally, which is unfortunate in my opinion. But, again, that’s 20 years ago. All that stuff is kind of in the rearview mirror.
I think our Commissioner has kind of led the way on the 24 thing, and it made perfect sense. He talked about relevance of these games in November nationally, and you have to shift your mentality because that’s really what it’s all about. You know, here’s the new world, and that one we’ll deal with next year. Right now we’re dealing with this year, and really none of it matters.
I don’t dislike any of these shows, but they just don’t mean anything to me right now because I know enough that the accuracy rate of what gets said tonight or last week or next week won’t be real impressive. It’s the way it goes.
Guess what, in a month we’ll all know. We’ll all know the answers. Suspense is killing me, I have to tell you.
I for one will definitely miss crowning a conference champion, but at the same time, with the diminishing values of the bowl games that Kirk mentions here, the expanded playoff does make a lot of sense. I’m still of the thought that the end game here is that college football will turn into two conferences (most likely Big Ten and SEC) and you’ll have all your teams that used to make up the Big 12 or ACC or what have you will be different divisions in the conferences. You then get divisional championships and a spot in the playoffs, like the NFL. It just makes sense at this point for it to go in this direction, even if it means we may not get a definitive conference champion.
