Well folks, here we are! The last game of the season! And it’s been quite a season, hasn’t it? I’m going to be frank with you: Saturday’s game was a rollercoaster of emotions. I was blowing up the phones of every Iowa fan I know calling for Kirk Ferentz to retire after the game. I still think he should, for the record!
That was one of the most embarrassing performances I’ve seen from an Iowa team in a long time…until it wasn’t, and all the sudden the offense that had accomplished nothing all day was making
extremely difficult catches that culminated in a comeback and then a…game winning drive?
Like it was a good win, I guess? But for a team that Kirk Ferentz said was going to bring a lot of respect into playing, it sure didn’t look like they did for like 55 minutes of that game. It was the perfect feeling of late stage Kirk Ferentz fandom: team plays terribly, seeks out a win that should have been a blowout, and has people saying, “Wow what a game, huh?”
It has me feeling extremely nervous for this weekend’s matchup against Nebraska. They do not like us. It’ at Nebraska. Like us, they’re 7-4. Also like us, they’re semi-competent and have played the best teams on their schedule very closely (but also somehow lost to Penn State?) Last week’s game is not inspiring confidence in me that the team will show up!
But, what I think doesn’t matter. We’re all here to see what the Big Boss had to say in his press conference yesterday. So let’s take a look, shall we? Check out the full transcript here and my last snark of the regular season below (because we get to do this again for whatever mid-tier bowl we’re going to in Tampa!)
Let’s start with injury news:
KIRK FERENTZ: Injury front, both TJ Hall and then Hayden Large were able to work a little bit today and yesterday, but I’m not sure if they’ll make it or not. We’ll have to wait and see how the week pans out, but they’ve both made a lot of progress. Probably more so than we’ve anticipated. We’ll see. I don’t know. We still have a couple more days for them to recover, and hopefully they’ll be able to contribute a little bit, but we’ll see how that goes.
Not great for TJ Hall. I think the defense missed him a LOT last weekend.
Q. Logan talked about how he was not himself in the game the other day. He’s recovered a little bit here, but I guess how much are those four guys playing through right now, especially on a short week, and how confident are you that they can be the line that they’ve been most of the year?
KIRK FERENTZ: Ironically, there’s actually good news there, but to your point, it’s a factor. I don’t think we are quite as sharp Saturday as we’ve been, and I think it showed up on the tape.
Nobody’s fault, but the damage was done during the week when guys can’t work. I was talking to Reese about that this morning also. Coincidentally, my experience is, and the NFL is not much different. Maybe if with a guy that’s played ten years in the NFL, he can miss a week of practice and play pretty much at a high level, but you can’t do that week after week. It catches up to you.
My experience is for most players if they miss multiple days of practice, it really impacts their performance. It’s not dramatic, but it’s just those little details that matter. So I think that hurt us a little bit last week, no question. They weren’t 100% Saturday, but more so to the time they missed during the course of the week, and it happens sometimes. Players, you got to do what you got to do to get a guy out there. You have to be smart about how you handle it during the week.
The good news is, like all those guys on Monday felt better than they did a week ago Monday or even Saturday. Their arrows are going up, and that’s positive. I’m hoping if we’re smart about it this week, those guys will be ready to go on Friday. I think they should be good to go, yeah.
I mean, to be fair to Logan Jones, I don’t think anyone on the team played as sharp as they have at times this season, and they allegedly did practice! But the line definitely struggled a bit at times and it really showed. I don’t know that Nebraska will be that forgiving if they play poorly, so let’s hope things are better this week.
Speaking of Logan Jones:
Q. Logan Jones said something that piqued my interest. He said he was hoping for maybe a scholarship offer from Nebraska. He committed to you guys, and he’s so grateful for that. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think you might have said that you moved him from defensive tackle to center too late in the process, and it kind of stunted the growth a little bit. Anyway, now that we’re six years in and you have the biggest picture, how glad are you that, A, he chose you guys, and how has he big picture been able to adjust to that change and grow into the lineman he is now?
KIRK FERENTZ: Yeah, I don’t know if it stunted it too much, but it did a little bit. Linderbaum moved over in December. He picked up an extra dozen practices probably that Logan didn’t have the advantage of. I think what you see is, like Tyler, when he started that next fall, he was a little bit more proficient maybe than Logan. I didn’t know Logan was going to play six years, so it ended up not being that big of a deal in the big scheme of things, but Logan picked things up pretty quickly, too.
You’ve heard me say this before, too. There’s one thing about your work in practice and you go against good players, but game situations are just different. The more experience you can get of game experience, the better off you are going to be if you are thinking right and doing things right.
Both those guys are at the head of the class in terms of their reliability, the way they study the game, work at it, take care of themselves. Tyler was back here this past summer and got to spend some time with him, and you watch him train. He’s the same guy when he trains. He hasn’t changed a lick, except he’s smarter and more experienced now, but he just has a way of doing things, and Logan is very similar to that. They’re a little bit different personalities, yet very similar in terms of their focus and their seriousness.
To me it’s not coincidental or accidental that they’ve developed into really good football players, and Tyler is having a great career with Baltimore. I have predicted the same for Logan. He’ll doing really well wherever he goes. He won’t change. He’ll be the same guy five years from now.
I like hearing Kirk answer these kind of questions and seeing the behind the scenes coaching and development that go on in the program that we don’t always get to see like this. Jones has really come a long way from his early days as the starting center. The offensive line has been extremely good this season (until injuries forced some shuffling) and he has been a central component of that success.
Q. This is going to be the third time in Big Ten play that you have gone up against a backup quarterback with TJ Lateef this week. How do you go about preparing for a backup quarterback? Are you looking at the full season of film or predominantly trying to look at the last couple of weeks? What is your guy’s philosophy for preparing for a backup quarterback.
KIRK FERENTZ: We have a lot of good video on Lateef, and he’s done a really nice job. He’s out there playing well.
They’ve changed a little bit offensively, but not dramatically. You still have to prepare.
He’s a really good football player. The other guy was just an unusual passer, very gifted, very talented passer. Aren’t many guys in the country that can throw the ball like he did, but they’ve made that adjustment and shifted pretty fluidly, and it’s not affected them at all.
The good news is, again, we have film of him and film of them playing with him. Now the challenge is to try to stop what they’re doing with him.
Whatever they did last week to prepare for Michigan State’s quarterback, I hope they’re doing the opposite this week.
Let’s end with this:
Q. You guys have won 9 of 10, but a lot of those wins, seven points or less, three points, five. Why have you been able to pull those close games out in this type of rivalry series?
KIRK FERENTZ: I don’t know if I can put my finger on it. It just happens. The bigger point is the closeness. It seems like every year this game is just back and forth and tough.
There’s one got that got away that one year. I guess one here and one there, but for the most part and we’ve had some crazy turns too, as you know. Two years ago I guess that would have been maybe as wild of an ending or just an unusual of an ending. You know, somehow some way if you can get there and get it done, that’s the goal.
Who knows what’s going to happen this week on Friday, but my guess is based on what we’ve seen the last ten years, it’s going to be another back and forth and right down until the end deal.
“It just happens” says the coach who intentionally tries to play every single game close. I have no doubt that this will be a close game, but I’m gonna be real, if the same team that played for most of Saturday shows up, Nebraska could come away with a somewhat blowout win. I don’t think it will really happen, even if Iowa does lose, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility, and that worries me.
Have a great time with your loved ones this week and be safe, y’all. And as always: GO HAWKS!
