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Updated: 1 September 2012 | 8:44 pm in Hawkeye Football, Iowa Hawkeyes, Sports, The Hlog by Mike Hlas
Video: Kirk Ferentz’s Saturday press conference
Relief and happiness for the Iowa coach and his team
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CHICAGO — Here are most of Kirk Ferentz’s postgame remarks after his Iowa football team’s 18-17 triumph over Northern Illinois at Soldier Field.
But first, and mainly in order so that the video doesn’t bleed into the Google ads, here is one of his responses:
On difficulties moving the ball through the air on NIU’s defense…
“We had a tough time. We had a tough time protecting at times, and we certainly had a tough time getting open. It just didn’t seem like we were in great sync throughout the game. I give them an awful lot of credit. They had a good game-plan. The mixed the pressure up with coverage, and did a good job. They made it very tough on us.”
This foreshadowed the fourth quarter (Mike Hlas photo)
Rules of Engagement
Video: Kirk Ferentz’s Saturday press conference
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Wow, that’s a more upbeat coach than I expected to see.
I was surprised when I looked at the box after the game. The defense statistically outplayed the visual impression they made on me, and if we toss out the outlier play (the QB dash where Miller took the wrong angle and Hyde got outrun (!)) NIU ran for 70 with only 130 total. Even so they finished with only 200 and 12 first downs. So you have to be happy for Phil Parker and the front seven.
I have absolutely no idea what we’re trying to do with the passing game, and we’re not going to beat a good team with 3.9 ypp. The Davis critics in Texas just harp nonstop about his love of horizontal throwing, incidentally. When Ferentz talks about being in ‘sync’ I presume he’s saying the receiver took route option B when JVB was assuming option A. I’m not sure this matters though if one of the options is a two yard out on the opposite side of the field.
It looks like Weisman is a gamer, Castillo looked comfortable in man-to-man, and I expect to see changes at safety if we have safety play like that next week. Bullock does something I haven’t seen a lot of Iowa backs do, and that is when he knows he’s going down he *gets* down like an NFL back. Aside from diving for the last couple of yards, maybe he can stay healthier.
One thing I’ve admired about Ferentz over the years is that he coaches the full 60 minutes, even when it gets ugly. Iowa has won more than a few of these games because he doesn’t get down on the guys, and they keep fighting as a result. A lot of coaches lose it, the team gets dispirited, the games get away.
Whoops. I guess I should have read the other pieces before auditioning for This Week in Plagiarizing Goofballs. But it’s reassuring: I guess I watched the same game you did.
I’m still reflecting on the offense we showed. It’s always possible that we only rolled out 30% of the offense, that the horizontal game is just the first few pages in the book. We shall see. (The Texas guys say Nope, what we saw is what we get.)
But for a guy in his first game, he sure had conviction on 3 and 9. And that’s an extremely positive thing. Also, btw, we didn’t run the clock out in the first half, and that too is a more aggressive departure from recency.
From what I can gather our offense lacks any real talent to get open on the outside. Losing McNutt means Davis needs to find ways to get open, but that has never really been his stock and trade, so to expect lots of that now might be silly. Martin-Manley works that underneath stuff rather slowly I thought. And then what? Bottom line, while the Texas guys wil lament Greg Davis and his offensive approach as a horizontal gumming to death it worked like a charm in national statistics until Garrett Gilbert came along. Since then, Texas has changed their OC (they got the “hot” Boise guy) but their output is exactly the same as when Gilbert was chucking the ball into the dirt, which by the way, Vandenberg did yesterday. So, until and unless we get better tools it really might not matter who’s calling plays in whatever offensive philosophy.
By the way, we had two three and outs yesterday and a lot of drives where we controlled the ball and clock. I think without that the defense would have worn down and we’d have been in worse trouble. It might be that Davis has an offense with feature of high octane tempo that also controls clock and is very defense friendly. Time will tell of course, but worth keeping an eye on.
I was at the game and I felt we were very very lucky. Our O-line couldn’t block, JV looked like a freshman instead of a senior. Only 3 tosses to possibly the best tight end in football. NIU out hustled the Hawks. Could be a long season.
I hope I’m wrong. Still bleeding Black & Gold, go Hawks