On Saturday, the Hawkeyes gave one of their most polished performances of the year. The score was 22-0 for Iowa against Rutgers. Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz spoke with the media after the victory to talk about the offense, his team’s development, and a host of other topics. This is what he had to say.
The city of Iowa City On Saturday, the Hawkeyes gave one of their most polished performances of the year. The score was 22-0 for Iowa against Rutgers. Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz spoke with the media after the victory to talk about the offense, his team’s development, and a host of other topics. This is what he had to say.
Just really proud of our players, our staff, everybody involved. Total effort, and certainly it was a really good week for our football team, capped off today.
We had a lot of respect for Rutgers because, well, they came in with six victories, and they looked great when we watched them on tape. Nothing was easy out there today.
I believe Coach Schiano is truly developing a program there, as I stated on Tuesday. Great regard for them. Throughout the first half, our men played through a few hiccups and missed several opportunities. They stayed concentrated and continued to play.
I thought they were great at halftime, and certainly played probably our best second half of football since we got started here, and I thought last week probably was in that category. This one certainly was a little bit better.
Most notably the offense I think took a big step. We put points on the board in the second half, but even in the first half I think if you look what they did, we had field position that was not real good two times inside the 10. Still found a way to drive it out there and give Tory a chance to flip field position. We weren’t necessarily holding the field position the way we wanted to, but that was better in the second half certainly.
As the game progressed, we felt that our lads gained confidence and performed well in the field.
In summary, November football is when things really start to take shape for football teams—I’ve mentioned this before—and the biggest line on the list on Monday was all about improvement. Everyone has an obligation to strive for improvement, including players and coaches. In my opinion, improvement can happen any week of the season, not just during the first few weeks of training.
We wanted to take advantage of that, and we did see a lot of improvement today. It’s a residual thing. We’ll keep trying to build on that.
Thrilled to get our eighth win. Happy about that certainly, and again, mostly just can’t tell you how proud I am of our players. Got a good quality group of guys that show up every day with a great attitude, and they care about each other. I think that showed today.
Q. There’s a lot of resiliency associated with your team and program, but I think first and foremost you look at the quarterback, Deacon Hill, today 200 plus yards, you had 400 plus yards as a total, but he seemed to really take a lot of steps forward. What does it mean for you to make those steps, and what areas did you see the most growth?
KIRK FERENTZ: I think general comfort. I’ve been seeing them for a while.
You can’t microwave this stuff — same thing with the offensive line. I thought today was their best day. But it’s a matter of you’ve got to practice, you’ve got to watch film, look what you’re not doing well and then keep working at it.
Deacon still made the one mistake there right before halftime, but I thought clearly he was playing with more confidence out there. We were helping him a little bit more.
But most importantly, he did the job. You talk about resiliency, I think that’s the first word I would use with him because I’m guessing he’s probably been hearing a lot of negative stuff out there.
Instead of worrying about that, he’s been focused on trying to get better, working hard with the coaches and practicing better. You hope that’s how it works for everybody, and he’s certainly right at the front of the list on that.
Q. There’s no secret that the offense had been heavily criticized this year, but for them to go out, get 400 plus yards against a really good Rutgers defense, a lot of the guys credited you and the way you’ve been coaching throughout the week. How have you kept this offensive flow and really just continued to help them laser focus and push forward to deliver the kind of performance they did today?
KIRK FERENTZ: Yeah, I’ve done it long enough where — I’ve been on the wrong side of a lot of stuff in my time, coaching, certainly playing, and again, all you really learn is you can’t do anything, you keep working with what you have.
In our case, the good thing is most of our issues have been — it’s not that we haven’t had enough, we haven’t had them available.
Being realistic, listening to whoever beat the Jets last week, and they were talking about the Jets’ situation on coming in Tuesday morning, doesn’t matter, and they’re talking about it. It’s not the same when you lose an experienced quarterback.
So that’s fine; who’s playing and what can you do with those guys, and that’s really where your focus goes. Yeah, we’re going to have some problems. Our three most explosive guys potentially offensively aren’t out there, but the season won’t get canceled, so you just keep playing.
The guys we have, fortunately, are good guys, and they work hard. I’m happy to see them experience a little success because at some point you’ve got to have some tangible evidence that that does work, too, and hopefully now Deacon can feel a little bit more confident next time he’s out there under center. Hopefully the line feels a little bit more confident. And they should; they did a good job today. I’m eager to see the film.
That’s how you build things. We’ve done a lot of building around here. That’s part of the process. When you lose guys, you’ve got to try to rebuild and reboot, and every now and then you get lucky with some guys, too.
Q. You hold the Big Ten’s leading rusher to 39 rushing yards on 13 carries. What was the key to really slowing him down when even Ohio State couldn’t slow him down?
KIRK FERENTZ: It felt like he had 100 yards today standing on the sideline. I’ve got an issue that way with my head.
If you look at their season this year, the couple games that they did struggle, he was contained by the defense, the April posing defense, so certainly it was a key, and we had a lot of respect for the quarterback, too.
If the running back got it going, which you can see why, he’s a good football player. That was a big key for us to keep him under control, and it was a team effort, the guys up front, the linebackers certainly, safeties filling in but it is easier said than done.
Q. Kaleb Brown has his first catch of the season last week. He comes in today in the absence of Diante Vines and kind of fills up the stat sheet. What did you think of his performance and first touchdown as well?
Yeah, every touchdown looks good to me. Same theme. He is a whole different guy than he was six, seven weeks ago. I don’t know how much he did last year. He wasn’t here. I don’t know if he was on the scout team or just standing there watching Harrison, all their good guys running around. So I don’t think he was working a lot at that position. It was new to him coming out of high school.
This is all new to him, and he’s been great. He’s been working hard, especially these last couple weeks he’s been kind of wired in, certainly making a big play last week I’m sure gave him some confidence that maybe he didn’t have a couple weeks ago, and he took it another step today, and we had an opportunity there with Diante being out.
Traditionally our best stories, usually our best guys have to play their best and then the other guys have to rise to a level where they can help us win football games, and he looked really good out there today. It’s so encouraging for all of us.
Q. 11 possessions today, no three-and-outs. You just said it was your best game by the O-line. Can you explain kind of how you got to the starting point? You had a lot of injuries. How that came together?
KIRK FERENTZ: Yeah, if you had seen the practice Monday, which you guys aren’t allowed to, but it was looking a little thin, and we really didn’t know who was going to be available or not. It was not really looking too good.
But credit to our guys, and Logan tried to go today, and he couldn’t really anchor down there. But I think we’ll have a chance to get him back next week.
You have to throw the tight ends in there, too, because we’re down three out of four.
But the guys that were out there did a good job, and they found a way to get that thing done. Again, it’s part of the game.
One thing about November, everybody has got problems in November. Everybody. Everybody has got guys hurt and guys sore and all that stuff.
You can worry about what your problems are, or you can just figure, hey, we’ve got to try to push through, and the other team has got some challenges, too.
Q. A lot of production out of Deacon Hill after a few weeks of not really having a whole lot. Was there like a schematic change in how you approached today’s game plan, or is it just execution making that big step up, and if it’s just execution, where does that come from?
KIRK FERENTZ: Yeah, I think we’ve been trying to be really mindful and smart, and we try to do it with everybody, whoever is in the game. There’s no position more important than the quarterback. Our quarterback situation was limited at the start of the year because Cade had the quad issue, and then certainly was altered when Cade went down with a knee issue.
So now you throw a guy in there who’s never done anything in the game. So yeah, you’re trying to always be mindful. I don’t know if he was any different today.
But the thing that was good, I thought, was play action he did a nice job. He did a good job in the drop-back game, which was critical. Made some really nice third down plays. We had the two-minute drive right before half.
A lot of things that we couldn’t have done four weeks ago. But that’s just practice, and there’s again, no panacea, no magic pill you give guys.
I think really the key to the whole thing is guys keeping a good attitude, not getting down on themselves despite what everybody is saying, just staying focused on what they can do and what they can do to get better.
That’s Deacon. That’s a bunch of guys on our football team. That’s what you like to see.
Q. I think you’ve joked about Ricky Stanzi needing to go out and throw an interception. The last couple weeks Drew Stevens has missed an early field goal and come back and had a really nice game. How much mental fortitude does it take for a guy like that to miss a kick early, then come back and have a great game?
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