Post-game Press Conference with Ferentz

[cincyhawk]

I don't think Id even give that much credit to Norm.

When KF has had good years he's had out standing talent, especially on D, that was good enough to make basically anything you want to do work.

For ten years nearly every starter on d played in the nfl, you don't have to do a whole lot of great scheming to win with that.

and iowa didn't win nearly as often as they should have most of those years.

Thus. And what really kills me is that Iowa list games because s sometimes, even with that talent, they would play a little bit soft on coverages because "little ol' Iowa" didn't have the talent to go man to man with NW or OSU. Give me a break.

The thing everyone should find insulting about Ferentz isn't his offensive football philosophy. It's that, deep down, he thinks that this state, and the school he works for its inferior to almost anywhere else. Can't blame him, I hear that opinion from broadcasters, politicians, family members, business leaders and message board posters too, and not just about football.

You see, Iowa is just a little tiny backwater, flyover, cow town with no athletic talent produced in state outside of big, fat, slow Norwegian corn-fed farm boys with low football is but high haymont management iqs. The only thing of consequence to ever come out of this state was Herbert Hoover, and we all know how much that sucked for the county. If anything is to be successful, it must be thorough grinding it out humbly over years of poor circumstances and low resources. The Iowa mantra is that we succeed despite our lowly position in life.

There have been a few Iowans from the past that taught that that is a losers' attitude. Now they might not have been born here, but they deserve the title of Iowa nontheless. Jim Zabel never excused Iowa's talent deficit due to the state population. Ronald Reagan never thought Iowan's were backwater. Hayden Fry was ****** off about the workhorse, humble, little old Iowa attitude. And rightfully so.

So many people buy into the flyover country nonsense. They think we should just be grateful for what we already have and thankful somebody stronger and bigger and more capable and more talented hasn't come along and taken it all away from little old Iowa yet. You hear it in the talk show narratives on WHO (hard working, humble, service in stead of innovative, exciting, and excellent).

Kirk buys into that idea of Iowa the weakling. Which is a real shame, because it really means that he learned nothing from Harden Fry and Zabel or his own success. And if you believe that, that success at Iowa is not possible because it isn't realistic, why do you have a home or business or farm here? If there's no hope for improvement, go somewhere that there is. I think that Iowa can be successful because there are excellent, talented, and strong people here, and that attitude of poor me offends me.

 

[ArvadaHawk]

I trust that since you are so firm that we need Iowa to move into the 21st C. in football, you can clearly explain what that means? The team that just beat the crap out of us runs almost exactly the same offense Iowa runs, and does nothing really different than Iowa does on defense. But, I await your response! Please enlighten me.

doc, now I know who gave me a thumbs down for my post, even though, there are a half dozen others that, essentially, state the same thing. But okay:

* Minny actually game planned us by using the jet sweepaction to attack our weakness, which is perimeter run support. In fact, they ran the exact same play 3 timesin a row in the 2nd qtr because we couldn't stop it.
* Minny did throw deep on us of PA because they had us overthe barrel with the run.
* What Iowa did was run the jet sweep once. The Minny DE or OLB jumped the play and itshould have been a loss. But Parker madean athletic play and turned it into a 4/5 yard gain. What a 21st century coach could have done,was put CJ in with Parker and Wadley and run jet sweep action and then readoption off of that, as Minny had obviously game planned the jet sweep. But, instead, we continued to use a fullbackas our primary back.
* Read below what Hawkeye Game Film posted. kfootball didn't take advantage of therunning game that was there to take. kfootball didn't utilize Wadley when I think he should have and we couldhave gained control of the LOS with the running game. Nope...our game plan is our game plan andwe're sticking with it. That is so not21st century.


From HGF:

RB
It wasn’t just Iowa’s passing game that was ineffective in this game, the running game was also very ineffective. Iowa’s rush attack had little diversity until the game was already out of hand; Mark Weisman was the only RB to get significant touches and he simply wasn’t effective in this game. Jonathan Parker got one touch on the jet sweep but other than that it was Weisman struggling to pick up yardage. Iowa often was getting the front seven blocked up and getting the match-up it wanted when Weisman carried the football: a big RB vs a CB or safety. Unfortunately Minnesota won pretty much every single one of those match-ups in this game. Weisman appeared to be slowing up into contact at times and simply wasn’t able to avoid tacklers or run through them. Kirk Ferentz has referenced Weisman being a full-back playing tailback and Saturday it showed more than usual.
We got our second look at RS Freshman RB Akrum Wadley in this game. For the second straight week Wadley led Iowa in both rushing yards and yards per carry; however he also fumbled for the second straight week. Fumbles happen in football, but you don’t like seeing a guy fumble twice in his first 24 carries. The other area that showed up again this week were some balance issues as Wadley enters the second level. Wadley runs with a lot of forward lean and at times gets to far forward, puts himself off balance, and stumbles as he tries to break a big gainer. It definitely wasn’t all bad for Wadley though, when he is on balance he’s extremely shifty. He is very sudden and can change direction in the blink of an eye. Wadley also has shown early aptitude at finding cutback lanes; as well as the ability to make unblocked defenders miss. Wadley shows more power than his slight frame would indicate as well, he steps through arm tackles and tends to finish his runs falling forward. I think what I like most about Wadley are the natural instincts he shows as a RB; he turns his pads in traffic, shows innate ability to make guys miss, and runs to space. Iowa will need to find ways to get Wadley more integrated into the game-plan over it’s final three games.


OL
Iowa’s offensive line had its best game of the season last week against Northwestern and looked to have gotten things under control. Things looked pretty good early on in this game, but turned pretty quickly. Iowa’s pass protection started to have some lapses in the 2nd quarter with pressure up front being the root cause of three consecutive drives stalling. Most of the pressure came from the interior and it was mostly just man on man match-ups Minnesota’s guys were winning. It wasn’t all from the interior, both Scherff and Donnal gave up a couple of pressures each in this game as well. Minnesota also brought some blitzes that Iowa failed to adjust to. Iowa will need to raise it’s level of play in pass protection or they’ll continue to struggle with consistency on offense.
Despite the struggles of Wesiman in this game, I don’t think the offensive line did a poor job as a run blocking unit. The offensive line managed to get bodies on the front seven the majority of the time and a lot of the tackles were made by CBs and safeties. Iowa also mixed in a couple of sprint draw looks and a couple of RB screens this week that were very well blocked. Iowa has a pretty mobile group of offensive lineman and draws and screens are excellent ways to take advantage of that. It looks like something Iowa could build off of and attack with going forward.

 

[Sparky]

Have you ever seen him more angry? I can't think of many press conferences where he seemed more ****** off than that one.

Nope. And, it only took 16 seasons for us to see it.