Friday night lights is HERE!
Kirk Ferentz and the Iowa Hawkeyes are working on a shortened schedule this week so that the team can play in the biggest game of the year thus far: a matchup against Rutgers to open Big Ten play.
Womp womp.
All jokes aside, this game does give us another opportunity to get more of a read on how good (or bad) this season will be. After the Iowa State game, I really don’t know, and that’s what makes this interesting! But you don’t care what I think, let’s hear what Kirk Ferentz
thinks about it from his weekly press conference! Full transcript here, genius insights below.
Injury news!
KIRK FERENTZ: Vander Zee is still out, and then Xavier Williams was injured on Saturday night, so he’ll be out, probably out at least a couple weeks. He’ll be fine, but we’re going to lose him, unfortunately.
Positive front, looks like Kamari has got a chance to be back. He worked yesterday and today and looked fine, so hopefully we’ll get him ready to roll in the game as well.
Good news on Kamari! Not great news on Vander Zee and Williams. Might just be one of those years with way too many injuries.
Q. Is there any chance Reece Vander Zee comes back before the bye week against Indiana?
KIRK FERENTZ: We’re not counting on it, but we’ll see. We’ll see what it looks like next week, but not counting on it based on what I know. But I think beyond that, it looks pretty good. We’ll see.
Well, that’s somewhat positive, I guess! Could use him in that game though.
Q. Thinking back to the Maryland game last year, Kamari Moulton had a 68-yard TD run, gave you some explosion in the run game, something that you’ve lacked so far. Do you think that can help in his return? And in conjunction, Nathan McNeil every time we’ve seen him looks really good to us. You’ve seen him more than we have; what’s keeping him off the rotation right now?
KIRK FERENTZ: Right there, his youth. He’s a little new to the scene, got here in January. I’ve said before, just a young man we are really impressed with. He’s focused and steady, solid on the field, in the classroom. Everything he’s done since he’s been on campus is really impressive, so we’re high on him, but we just want to bring him along at a pace that’s best for him hopefully. He has real potential.
But there’s some things he’s still got to work on, too, and he knows that. So he’ll do a good job there.
Getting Kamari back is always a good thing. Anytime you get a good player back, it’s a good thing, and we think Kamari is a real good player. He is capable of breaking some longer runs, and if he can do that, that would be a great thing. This is a tough defense to do that against. These guys have done a really good job.
Getting a good quality player back is really helpful. Unfortunately, we lost Xavier. I’d rather not do a prisoner exchange, quite frankly. I’d rather go 2 for none instead of 1 for 1. But the good news about Xavier is he’ll be fine, but it’s just going to take a little time.
Maybe a redshirt in the future here for Nathan McNeil?
I am very excited to see what is hopefully a fully healthy Moulton again. He looked fantastic in the few snaps we did see him play against Albany, and he could have really been an asset against Iowa State. He definitely slants this game in Iowa’s favor, in my opinion.
Also, prognosis doesn’t sound good with Williams, either.
Q. After looking back at the film in the passing game, were you pleased with the progression? I know there were some drops and stuff that you still want to clean up, but do you see this as a foundational piece that you can build on over the next several weeks?
KIRK FERENTZ: Yeah, it’s a step forward, and I think three weeks into it, I think there’s been progress each week, especially what we see in practice. The challenge we had two weeks ago, it’s a really — it’s a unique defensive scheme, unique coverages. Not a lot of clean looks. They do a good job not giving you clean looks.
I thought we took a step forward. Still things we can get better at, ball placement at times could be better, and then if you get your hands on a ball, you’d sure like to think we can come up with it, and if we’re going to move forward, we have to do a little better job with both those things.
Had a protection buster, too, that we’re going to have to get better at that as well because negative yardage is just tough to overcome. No matter how it comes to you, it’s a bad thing.
So reading in between the lines here, it sounds like Kirk is a bit more displeased with the receivers (again) than he is Gronowski, and honestly I think that’s accurate, and fair. Again I say: maybe having a wide receivers coach who has coached wide receivers before would be advantageous! As would placing an emphasis on the pass game! But what do I know???
The media was on the same line of thinking that I was…
Q. I know drops were mentioned a little bit ago. It seems, whether you guys have a good game offensively or a tough game, that that has been a continued trend. How do you address it in practice? Do you talk about it with Coach Budmayr? How do you address it?
KIRK FERENTZ: Believe it or not, we coach not to drop it, emphasize catching. I always joke with the guys, that’s why they call it wide receivers, not wide droppers. There’s a name, why you call them wide receivers.
The objective is to catch the football. It’s easier said than done sometimes. Sometimes it might be ball placement, sometimes a little bit behind, a little high, a little low, but you’ve got to flip it around, too, the quarterbacks have a tough job, and it’s not always clean back there.
Everybody is just doing a little bit better, and a lot of times just concentration, and then sometimes I think guys try too hard and start fighting it. I don’t know anything about throwing a football, but I know this, if you throw a baseball and try to steer it or aim it or try to overthrow it, the ball tends to sail on you.
That’s why practice is so important, just concentrating, developing good habits in practice, and hopefully through game experience, it just keeps getting better as we go along. That’s really every phase of our team right now. Hopefully we’re going to get a little bit better every week here as we move forward.
“We coach not to drop it. Emphasize catching.” You’re joking here Kirk but…do you? I think it’s a valid question to ask, given what we have seen from the wide receiver room of late! No mention of discussing anything with Bud here, but also this is a classic Kirk answer in that he doesn’t answer the question, so I don’t want to put too much emphasis on it…but also we’re here to overreact so…-insert eye emoji here-
Not a hugely newsy presser after a week that pretty much went as anticipated, so let’s end with this one:
Q. You mentioned the missed tackles but you have a defensive unit that’s giving up under three and a half yards a play, I think third overall in total defense. Doesn’t seem like they’re letting a ton of guys behind them, I think just two explosive plays, so what’s it tell you about your defense through three games that there’s stuff to clean up but they’re playing pretty good?
KIRK FERENTZ: Yeah, the good news is the guys are hustling overall, and so if somebody did miss a tackle, somebody else was there to close in on it and what have you. Those little things — win, lose or draw, there’s always something to be corrected and some areas that we can get better at.
I can go through the offensive line play in probably even more detail. But just aiming points and little things that if we can get those down better — because the competition is going to keep getting tougher here starting this week.
We’re going to play in a lot of close games moving forward just like we did two weeks ago, and those little things really tend to make a difference. It’s like a PAT; you just never know which play is going to be the one. But the old axiom is true; usually there’s five, six, seven plays you’d go back and look at. If you could change those, it would really impact the game. But as a player and a coach, you never know when that’s going to be; that’s why you’ve got to be at your best, and we’ve got to make sure we’re working on getting better.
I don’t even know why I put this in here, because this is such a peak Kirk Ferentz answer that uses a lot of words to not directly answer the question, but I guess I did just want to come here to say that the defense has played some excellent football. This could be an extremely scary unit in November, but for that to matter, we’ll need more offensive success. It will really, really suck if this turns into another year of wasting an elite defense.
