Ahh, Mike, you know just what to say! However, since you didn’t paint a picture of daisies and butterflies, you might be considered to be a “negative” writer by some. (Not actual fans, mind you!)

maybe KF is wanting to do a Dove commercial since he’s so comfortable with everything.

I’d be comfortable making 5 mill a season if I could throw that team together and have people make excuses for me too.
Did anyone notice before the last INT that our offence let 30 seconds run off the clock. Who cares if there was a pick or not. 4 yards a play and 30 seconds between each one, we’d have been lucky to make it to the 50.
Make sure yall re-up your seaon tickets so KF can stay in his bubble and we can watch another couple seasons of this……since we’ve had terrible recruiting classes the last 4 years. I love how wrer supposed to be excited that we lost only by 6….at home to a team that will lose by 40 to Oregon. Way to go…….btw JVB don’t let the door hit your backside on the way out the door.

Today’s the defense played well, but let us not fool ourselves – many games, the defense was as inept as the offense. Lots, and lots of people to blame, I’m afraid.

Some year end observations – I, like many others, was really, really looking forward to this season. Most of us felt that it was time for Parker and O’Keefe to go, but knew that Fererntz’s loyalty would never allow himself to push them out the door. So, the stars aligned and they moved on and things were shuffled, fresh blood brought in and there was, we felt, reason for optimism.

We could argue that we have had more than our fair share of injuries, but that’s not an excuse. My biggest frustration is the lack of progress. Mike’s “Ground Hog Day” reference is accurate. Week after week the same issues. Now, one more thought –

The fact that these changes were made is not an excuse for poor play. We were spoiled to have had the same coordinators for all of those years. In reality, other schools are continually changing these positions due to assistants becoming head coaches, someone gets fired, etc… So to say that we needed to learn a new system really holds little water with me.

As a side bar, I will say that I do not like a coach working from the press box during games. During time outs, last minute drives, etc…, I think that college age kids need to have someone they can look in the eye and develop a winning drive, play, etc…

I will never, ever get on here or any other forum and say Ferentz is overpaid. As long as the stadium stays full, he’s making the school money. But another year like this and I’m guessing you will find lots of empty seats at Kinnick and then Ferentz, Barta and the whole bunch will have some hard decisions to make.

All I want is for everybody to be honest. If something isn’t working, acknowledge it. If someone isn’t a good fit, face it, admit error and try again.

Stepping down off the soap box.

Thanks for listening.

“I’m comfortable with everything right now.” — Grandpa Ferentz, Nov. 23, 2012.

In contrast, about six games ago, Nebraska lost its second game and things looked dark in Lincoln. But Bo Pellini didn’t say he was comfortable with everything. He didn’t say the Huskers just needed to clean up a few things and execute better and all would be right with the world. No, Pellini said Nebraska “HAD” to win the rest of its games. That was it. There was no other choice.

Mike, you will remember how you offered a mild mocking of Mr. Pellini’s remarks since, hey, Nebraska obviously had some problems and they had six Big Ten games to go. What was the head coach going to say when they inevitably lost again?

We’ll never know, because Nebraska followed its head coach’s advice and refused to lose, coming back from big deficits late on several occasions to WIN every game it has played since the coach said that WINNING OUT was the ONLY option. And so, while Grandpa Ferentz is comfortable losing to Indiana and Purdue and Central Michigan et al., Coach Pellini is heading for the Big Ten Championship game and a great shot at the Rose Bowl.

It’s impossible to put into words the angst that any true Hawkeye fan must feel right now with Grandpa Ferentz flaunting his incompetence in everyone’s face. He is an embarrassment. No competitor could come in after that Nebraska game and say what he said. Iowa’s players gave a winning effort against Nebraska, and the ONLY reason it didn’t turn into a win is the abjectly poor coaching from Grandpa F and his doddering old fool, Greg Davis. By saying what he said, Grandpa F is laughing in his players’ faces and kicking dirt at the fans who make his outlandish salary possible.

No, Mike, no one associated with the Iowa football program should be feeling anything but major heat right now. This is plain and simple unacceptable in any context.

Iowa doesn’t have a great collection of football players right now, but they were good enough to have won at least 7 games this season, and they were good enough to beat Nebraska yesterday. And both of those things would have happened if Iowa had a head coach who had a clue instead of a rocking chair.

If Kirk sticks with Davis I hope he proves us all wrong and turns it around. But honestly I just don’t see it. As a Hawkeye fan I hate to admit that this was one of the most inept college offenses that I have seen in my many years of watching college football. And I am a football junkie.
Next year they will be better but I dare to say with the same offensive scheme probably underachieve once again. Take away Vince Young (by far the best football player in the country at that time) and Davis’ really had limited success at Texas. Just ask Texas fans and they are not at all surprised by our offensive struggles.
Yes some of the offensive success lies in the talent you have. But who’s responsibility is that? Yes injuries impact your game, but everyone has injuries. Look at Northwestern, they were playing with almost an entire 2nd team defensive backfield when we played them and we still couldn’t pass the ball. Most offensive success is because of coaching scheme. Look at Northwestern again. Have they had more talent then us the last (5) years? Has Iowa State? Especially look at Penn St this year versus last year. Much improved offense in just one year because of scheme. They should have had less talent this year, not more given their situation. They weren’t talking about learning the new offense as an excuse still at the end of the season.

Mike thanks for your honest reporting. I know its not easy being around the coaching staff after writing openly. I think we all wish that we were in the position with our jobs to have as poor of results as coach Davis did this season and have our boss say everything looks ok. Its not OK and to say it is is either dishonest or arrogant.

Should we expect Iowa to be 10-2 every season. Absolutely not. But given the weak non-conference schedule we play an 8-4 record only means beating the non-conference teams that we have superior talent, resources, facilities and etc than. And then going .500 in the big ten. Sure every once in a while we could slip up and go 7-5 or maybe even 6-6. But 4-8 should not happen with this schedule. Sure bigger name schools have the same down years. But usually they make changes somewhere in their staff as a result.

So given our offensive problems who should be changed?
Brian Ferentz, offensive line coach? Not going to happen for obvious reasons and probably shouldn’t.
Lester Erb, Running Backs coach? I would say he has done his job. We have gotten output from that position despite all of the turnover.
Erik Campbell, WR’s coach? Hard to say on this one. Our WR’s under Campbell have been OK up until this year despite limited talent. Maybe we should expect him to do better at recruiting but that will be difficult with the current offensive scheme.
Gregg Davis, Offensive Coordinator? His one year track record at Iowa is about as bad as it gets. So much in fact that if you treat it like a resume I doubt he would be able to get a job anywhere else.

It will be difficult for fans to swallow if a change isn’t made and next years offense turns out just like this years.

It would have been a great story and I was pulling for it. 5th year senior rallies team to big upset in border rival game. Didn’t happen. Now we have no QB’s coming back with any experience. Was it really such a foolish gamble to start a red-shirt freshmen to get some game experience and see what he could do. He’s been in Davis’s offensive just as long as James. Watching James try and fail on multiple attempts in the 4th quarter was one of the hardest things I ever had to watch. I still feel in the right offense James could have been a star. So sad just like the season. Any objective assessment of the staff during the off-season has to show that Davis was criminally negligent as a coach. The plays came in late all season giving James almost no time to audible. The plays were horrible inappropriate for the situation in many cases. The offensive was poorly executed, took almost no shots downfield, and were completely devoid of any imagination.
Now is the time for a Barta intervention. Find a coach that looks more like a coach than a retired shop teacher and wants his shot at the big time. Iowa needs hungry coaches like James and Parker. The earlier the better.

This is a copy/paste from Marc’s piece on “Turn in the Gear”…thought it was just as relevant here. The only thing I would add is that what made Greg Davis successful at Texas was not his system. It was his talent. When you have Vince Young and Co. and Colt McCoy and Co, you don’t need to coach, let alone should you even try to coach – just let ‘em play. Mack Brown did that while GD gets some credit he may not deserve. In any case, someone recruited both of them, and their talented peers….. Can Greg do that here?….:
It was just one of those years. It happens. It’s hurts, it’s very frustrating. And we shouldn’t have lost 4-5 of those games, and wouldn’t have if our 6 yr old kids had had the chance to call a few key 3rd ‘n short plays over the course of the season. No argument there.
For all the greatness of Kirk, I will never understand how he lets some of those play calls happen, game after game, all season long. It really doesn’t make sense. Not playing Jake or another QB makes sense, or at least there’s an argument for that that is logical. But play calling this year was a mystery that is hard to even hypothesize about.
However, we could have easily been 2-10 or even 1-11, for what that’s worth. We could have almost as easily been 9-3. Nothing went our way. Nothing. And we created a lot of our own misery, for certain. But even with the bad play calling, if we catch just half of the dropped passes we had this year, we win 2 or 3 more games, no doubt.
For some perspective…..go deep into the ’09 season, and do the same honest assessment of that year, game-by-game. We could have just as easily been 6-6 or 5-7. We were lucky or very lucky to win UNI (you don’t block two FGs in a row in practice in 7th grade – ever!), PSU, Arkansas St, Mich, MSU and Indiana that year. And Minnesota wasn’t a walkover. A play or two here and there, and the AZ and WI games were a loss. Now we’re at 3-9 with bad breaks, dropped or tipped passes, blah blah. I don’t find it hard to see how 3-9 could have been reality in ’09. But we were 11-2. Amazing.
Now to 2002….The ’02 season would have been a totally different 8-4 had we not pulled out Miami(Ohio), PSU and Purdue. And had we lost those 3, who knows how the rest of the year would have played out, even with the talent we had on that team. How quickly we forget what led to those so-called glory seasons.
And when we talk about how next year will be a disaster because we won’t have a QB who’s played a down, we forget that Brad Banks hadn’t played a down of DI ball until that Akron game in August of ’02 (ok, he might have played a few downs in ’01, but not many. And we have a JC guy ready to go, so I’m not comparing Banks to Jake never having played a down of college ball)
I wrote in a reply to another comment here the other day that I’d bet we go 7-5 or 9-3 next year. No one agreed, of course, and they’re probably right. Or not.
But I never know how the Hawks are going to do. That’s part of what makes it so exciting to be a long-time, true Hawk fan. In two very well-thought-out scenarios of my own back in August, I had us down this year going easily 3-9, or fairly easily 8-4, maybe 9-3. With a break or two, 11-1 wasn’t out of the question (we always lose one we shouldn’t lose), IMO.
Obviously I was wrong on both assessments, but the point is obvious. We will always be a fragile team, like 110-115 of the 124 FBS/D1 teams in the country.
Enjoy the winter. Enjoy not having to make the decision about “do I drive to Phoenix, or fly? Do I stay with Aunt Vivian & Uncle Frank in Scottsdale and save $500, or do I take the Hawk-fan hotel and party all night?” Take December off, and relax.
Fran’s BB boys are back and they’re fun to watch. And we’ll all be eagerly awaiting next August once this pain wears off, which it will by mid-next-week.

Who ever says that we cant expect 10 and 2 every year is wrong. Husker fans feel that way and they have to deliver. They just move on to another coach until they get there, Hawkeye fans need to stop getting use to filling the seats and ending up in any ole bowl game. Coach Morgan goes into Millard north and Omaha Central and recruits there best players. Not to mention that all of them are in the NFL. If we can do that we are in the same league as those stinkin Huskers. The Hawks will be better next year, 6 and 5.
Why thats good enough for Hawkeye fans is beyond me. Someone needs to get to Ashton and have him lay down 20 mill so KF can start packing.

Herman Edwards once famously said, “You play to win the game.” Watching the Hawkeyes, one wonders what Kirk Ferentz plays for. I know he is a very decent guy, but I’m tired of the excuses. Iowa has a small population (Nebraska is smaller), we don’t have beaches (neither does Ohio State), we can’t play out west, we can’t play night games, etc. Has anyone ever heard him say he wanted to win Big 10 titles? Instead we’re constantly told we’ll be lucky to win–whether it’s Michigan or Central Michigan. When we loose, it’s because the players didn’t execute. Really? Who’s calling 3-yard plays when 10 are needed? Preparing to play Iowa must increasingly feel like a bye week for other teams–they know exactly what to expect. None of this is what you would expect from one of the highest paid coaches in America. I’d rather have a coach with some passion to win than one who’s motto could be “Que sera, sera.”

WOW what a newspaper they only allow comments to an article when they know everyone will bash the coach.

That just shows sanji’s age….always calling the coach a name. How old are you?

Hey Larry Melvin I sure hope you enjoyed this 4-8 season and by the way in the last 29 games under Captain Kirk the Hawks are 12-17, don’t you just love that.

“Ferentz: “I’m comfortable with everything right now.”" – ladies and gentlemen – a new ‘king’ of denial! someone has lost total vision of reality.

should we expect Iowa to go no worse than 10-2 each season? i would argue that we SHOULD. TOP FIVE pay in the nation should have TOP FIVE results. period.

Look what Brian Kelley has done in THREE YEARS in South Bend? an UNDEFEATED season, and in the NC game. Meanwhile, let’s look at Kirk Ferentz (while being paid more) in FOURTEEN seasons? Rose Bowls: zero. National Championships?: sorry, i had to recover from losing my breath while laughing so hard! non-shared big-ten championships? ZERO.

The difference between Iowa City and South Bend? In South Bend the fans, the administration, the AD’s office, the boosters, the donors, all EXPECT a return on investment. You don’t bring home the hardware, you’re out! In Iowa City, all of these people are too afraid to return to the “Nagel years” and will accept T H I S . gladly accepting 7-5, 6-6, 8-4 as “good enough”, and i am sorry, it is NOT. Not for this kind of money anyhow. Iowa can pay a LOT less to get these kind of results. For this kind of cash, there are simply no excuses…there is no excuse for not recruiting well enough to have ‘interchangeable parts’. If the QB isn’t making the grade, swap him out with another (I’ll bet that high school girl QB in Florida could have performed better in some of these games)! If the first team can’t find the motivation, swap them out with the practice squad (they couldn’t have done worse) and i’ll bet the first team FINDS that spark or motivation.

what i really DON’T get…so many fans are so willing to run off their basketball coaches for ‘mediocrity’ or because they aren’t taking us to the next level, but these same fans are willing to allow the football coach to turn out efforts like this? i guess this girl doesn’t understand football at all…

Before the season started, I listened to a Blackheartgoldpants podcast with the the guy who blogs for BurntOrangeNation who talked about Greg Davis and if you heard the same podcast you’d know that what was said about Greg Davis is exactly what we got – horizontal passing game, stupid calls (3rd and with a 4 yard pass. Sound familiar? This guy is a loser and why in the world Ferentz rolled the dice with him is beyond me. Believe me, I was no KOK fan but after this year, I’d pay him a bonus to come back. I think as several have said that with the kind of money Ferentz is getting, a 4-8 season with average recruiting and a Greg Davis for OC is completely unacceptable. Losing to I State, Central Michigan, Indiana, Purdue? Are you kidding me? Davis has to go now. The shoddy defense? Everybody who played them said they could be schemed. What does that tell you? Linebackers were better than they were coached. Yet what really concerns me is recruiting. We will now continue to get Tier 3 and now Tier 4 players. We don’t have the players to complete for any Big Ten titles. Oh yeah, how ’bout the Insight Bowl? Got THAT going for us! What a bust this is!