University of Iowa Football

Media Conference
Tuesday, November 1, 2016

Kirk Ferentz
COACH FERENTZ: Overall, we had a really productive
bye week. Main things we're trying to get
accomplished, give our veteran players, the guys that
have played a lot, a chance to recharge a little bit but
also to move forward, keep moving forward. And then
certainly, some of the younger guys who haven't played
a lot, give them a lot more extensive work and try to
move them forward as well. So I think we got both
those things accomplished for the most part.
Then in addition to that, gave the guys a chance to get
caught up a little bit academically. Things tend to stack
up a little bit in season at times. A couple of them were
lucky enough to maybe have dates on Friday and
Saturday. Maybe, I don't know. You could check with
them on that one.
So we returned to practice on Sunday. We got back to
trying to get ready here. Basically, like during the week
last week, our focus has been on trying to improve the
little things, see what we can do to play our best
football this last month.
Where it stands right now, big picture-wise, obviously,
we've got two-thirds of the season done. Still have four
big games in front of us. So that's where it sits. It's
about as clean and simple as you can get it.
Right now the big thing for us is what we do this month,
the month of November. Best way to do that is just
handle it a day at a time, week at a time. That's really
where our focus is right now.
As we move forward with captains, same four guys.
C.J. Beathard and Leshun Daniels on offense.
Desmond King and Josey Jewell on the defensive side.
Mathematically, we're certainly in better shape than we
were last time we visited. Guys have had a chance to
recover a little bit and get some healing time. I'm not
going to sit here and say that everybody is perfectly
healthy. That would be unrealistic even if we hadn't
had a bye week, or had two bye weeks. Nobody this
time of year is 100 percent healthy, but I think we're
moving forward right now. Most of the guys got to work
this morning.
We'll get an extra seven hours before the game on
Saturday. Hopefully, we'll have everybody ready to go
on Saturday. And we'll probably need that for sure.

Rev #2 by #177 at 2016-11-01 19:58:00 GMT

Big challenge as we move forward here this weekend.

Traveling to State College. Penn State's got a really
good football team. They're playing well right now. It's
a tough environment, very challenging environment to
play in. We've got our hands full right now. They've
won four straight ball games. They're playing really
well. They're in sync and playing with great
confidence, rightfully so. And the challenge for us right
now is to have our best week of preparation possible
and be ready to go at 7:42 p.m.
So we're looking forward to that. We've got two good
practices under our belt here. Hopefully, we'll finish out
the week and be ready to go on Saturday.
Q. When people think of bye week, they think the
physical recuperation. What do you hope the guys
get mentally out of that week?
COACH FERENTZ: I think a chance to just step away
a little bit. That's really important. It's certainly
important in anything you do. If you're working hard at
something, if it's competitive, academically, whatever it
may be, it's good to step back a little bit and just get
some air.
I think it's especially important right now. You know,
the way college football is, it used to be they have the
week of Thanksgiving, which I thought was a really
healthy break for everybody, get a chance to go home
and just get away from football, get away from school
for a week. They didn't have that luxury. Classes
weren't cancelled last week. So our guys had to be on
campus, obviously.
But it gave them a chance to get away from football a
little bit and just kind of get their houses in order
socially, academically, and then hopefully come back -and it didn't look great on Sunday, I can promise you. It
looked like we had three weeks off instead of a couple
days, but they fell back in line yesterday and looked
more like a football team.
I just think that separation is really important. I never
coached a winter sport, but I've got to think it's
important in those sports, maybe more so, because
their seasons are so long. I think the chance to step
back is good for everybody. It's good for the coaches
too, not that we step back totally, but a little focus on

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recruiting maybe instead of just football. So it's

probably a healthy break.
Q. Whenever you have a chance for everybody to
do something else off campus, kind of what runs
through your mind?
COACH FERENTZ: Not a lot. We talk to our guys
every time they leave campus, whether it's spring
break, after the bowl game, or whatever, just about
being smart and being safe. But they're college age
guys, and things happen to people of all ages, but
certainly college guys.
For those that could go home, that's a good thing. It's
good to go home and get a home cooked meal if
you've got that available, sleep in your own bed, those
kinds of things. Other guys couldn't, but I think there's
good camaraderie on our team. That goes back to my
coming here in 1980. I always thought there was a
good closeness for our guys.
It's good for them. You've got to trust your folks. It's
just like your kids. You raise them and hope they
understand what's important, and you hope they're
making good decisions knowing that they're probably
not always going to, but you hope that they are.
It's really no different on the football field. It's kind of
the same thing. At some point, they've got to make
decisions on their own, and you just hope they've got a
good foundation to go off of.
I think most of them are pretty tired anyway. So that
kind of takes some of the excitement away.
Q. George Kittle didn't really look like himself
obviously against Wisconsin. What do you expect
to get out of him this week?
COACH FERENTZ: He'll be two weeks down the road
from then. Hopefully, a lot better. He's been better in
practice. He's not 100 percent, nobody is right now, at
least the guys that have had injuries. He's a lot further
down the road. I was really surprised he was able to
play at all against Wisconsin. So that was a pleasant
surprise. He tried to gut it up, but it's tough. As you
might imagine, he did very little with us last week, a lot
with the trainers.
So just have that window of opportunity to get some
guys back on the road, that was a good thing.
Q. Same with Boone Myers. He appeared -- he's on
the depth chart -COACH FERENTZ: Boone and all those guys,
hopefully, they'll be ready to go. I don't know if they'll
be 100 percent, but I think it will be tough to keep them
out.

Rev #2 by #177 at 2016-11-01 19:58:00 GMT

Q. This is a series that for most of your career has

been super competitive. It's not one of the quote,
unquote rivalry games necessarily, but up until four
years ago, you guys played almost every year in
really tough, intense games, then it rotated off with
Big Ten realignment. Is it almost kind of a shame
that you don't get to see these teams on a regular
basis anymore?
COACH FERENTZ: It is, and that's the one downside
of expansion. Maybe there are other ones too. I don't
know. It's just hard to have a flow when you have 14
teams in your league, and we're not the only ones
going through that.
So to that point, it really does seem strange playing
Penn State again because it seems like forever. I
mean, it was, what, four seasons, but it seems like 14.
So that part is a little bit strange. We kind of went
through that with Illinois. I remember driving over, I did
an event, spoke somewhere in -- I guess it was across
the river. I'm blanking out. I should know that. Yeah,
Rock Island or Moline, somewhere around there. I
went there a couple springs ago.
And it dawned on me, we haven't played those guys
since '08, five years at that time, which is really strange
when it's a border school. But that's expansion. You
know, it's expansion. No offense to the people in
Moline or Rock Island, holy smokes. I knew it was a
quad city. Sorry about that. It was a very nice
luncheon too, by the way. I'm glad I went.
Q. Akrum mentioned that in certain practices he
has practiced a little bit in the slot. Is that an effort
to jump start the passing game?
COACH FERENTZ: It's really a wildcat, and we've got
a triple option with a pass off of it. All kinds of razzle
dazzle stuff. So we're just fooling around with different
looks and what have you. Nothing major.
Q. You talked about little things, meaning that's
what you needed to focus on. Can you change
much X and O-wise at this point?
COACH FERENTZ: Not wholesale, but you're always
worried about your team every week with every
exposure, especially game days and those types of
things, how guys are coming along. You're always
going to try to lean left or lean right based on what
you're seeing performance-wise and also health-wise.
Those two things really factor into it.
Yeah, it's a constant evaluation. And the other part is
we had more time as a coaching staff last week to not
only sit down and do not only self-scout, but really talk
more about what ifs and those types of things where
you're a little more limited in game weeks.

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It's not like we're going to look a whole lot different, I

can assure you that, on Saturday. Hopefully, we'll look
better, sharper, crisper, and a little better execution.
Q. Historically, you guys seem to thrive when
you're the underdog, and you go on the road -something about Iowa football the last 18 years.
Do you like this role that you're kind of going in?
COACH FERENTZ: Hopefully that's the case again.
Hopefully we don't break history if that is the case. I'd
rather be undefeated. We were last year, which was
more fun. We aren't right now. We're 5-3. But the
bottom line is there's still four games left to play. That's
what it gets down to, and really it's what we do every
day here that's going to define this season for us.
At the end of the day, we'll evaluate the team based on
what we did effort-wise, how we improved, those types
of things. Those things are really important to us as
coaches. And we have an opportunity right now this
coming month. It's exciting.
Unbeknownst to the experts, many of the experts I
heard this past season, our schedule looks a little more
challenging than it did back in July. I heard a lot of
judgment about how easy our schedule is. I think
we've got three ranked teams on the schedule right
now plus an away game, but that's great. It's like going
into Penn State. This is not going to be easy. It's going
to be a whiteout, unofficial whiteout, 110,000, whatever
they put in there. It's going to be loud, crazy, all that
stuff.
But you like college football, what more can you ask for
than to go into a good environment? That's one of the
neat things about our conference too. There's so many
really good environments to play in that are challenging
and tough. So it gives you a good test to measure
yourself and measure the team by.
Q. The Penn State sack numbers are pretty high
this year. Given some of the struggles in the pass
protection for you guys this year, how do you
prevent that this weekend?
COACH FERENTZ: We've got to play better.
That's the biggest thing we're focused on. Like the
entire passing game, it's not just the line. It's
everything -- guys getting open, getting the ball out on
time, that type of thing. Certainly, protection, whether
it's the linemen, backs, tight ends involved.
Everybody's got to roll.
It's going to be a team effort, and we know it's going to
be a big challenge. Hopefully, we can rise to that. The
only thing we can do hopefully is maybe help ourself

Rev #2 by #177 at 2016-11-01 19:58:00 GMT

with the situations, put ourselves in more manageable

situations. Not that we've been perfect there, but our
third down success has been pretty good when it's a
manageable, three to six area, as opposed to those
10s and 12s. Those are hard for anybody to make. So
we've got to do a good job of that.
Q. Do you work more with an extra blocker given
the looks they give you.
COACH FERENTZ: There's pluses and minuses to it.
That's an age old debate in football because you take a
receiver out of the equation, obviously, when you do
that. I think there's a time and place for that. One
thing I learned when I was in the NFL, you go against
Buddy Ryan, his coached teams, whether it was in
Houston, later on in Arizona. It might be a blitz, 4 out
of 9, maybe 4 out of 5 or 5 out of 5 snaps. So if you
just do one thing or settle in, they're going to pick you
apart.
So I think it's usually good to be a little bit multiple and
at least give them some things to worry about so they
don't always know where you're going to be at.
Q. What makes Barkley so effective?
COACH FERENTZ: Oh, boy, I don't know where to
start. The guy is a really good player. He played well
last year, and he's playing better now. He's tough and
strong, start with that, and he can run.
And you might think you have him. Looked like
Minnesota had him -- contained. Not bottled up, but
contained. And then, Boom, he makes the biggest play
of the game. So that's what great players do. They
have you on edge every play of the game. We've faced
some backs like that, and it's tough duty.
Q. How much better is their offensive line? That
seems to be where they struggled right after the
sanctions. They seem to be a lot better now.
COACH FERENTZ: We scouted them a while back,
and they seemed to be having some trouble there.
Now they're a lot more veteran. The young guys they
do have playing are playing pretty well. One thing
about Penn State, I'm trying to remember the last time
I've seen them with guys that weren't real heavily
recruited. They've got guys that look the part and play
the part.
So a lot of times, just a little bit of experience and that
type of thing.
Q. Do you put an emphasis on the front seven
because of how prolific they are on offense,
particularly in the run game?
COACH FERENTZ: Yeah. It starts there, but
everybody has to have a role in the run game too if

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we're going to be successful. The thing that makes it

tough about them is they've got good receivers. Tight
end is a good receiver, very tall guy. And the
quarterback is a guy who can run or pass. He'll hurt
you both ways.
So they put a lot of pressure on it. It's not just standing
up and take one thing away. If you do, you're going to
pay for it. I've seen a lot of big plays they've been able
to create, whether it's the receivers, tight end, or the
quarterback just keeping it. So you're focused on the
running back, and there's a lot more to it. That makes
it a challenge.
Q. Heading back to Pennsylvania, anything spark
some nostalgia?
COACH FERENTZ: The biggest issue is, when you go
home, a lot more ticket requests, hotel requests. I'm
not sure how many hotels are available in State
College, not a whole lot. So those kinds of things kind
of factor into it. But I grew up a long way from there.
So I guess no, to answer your question. It's a big game
for us, not because it's the state I grew up in.
Q. If somebody brings up the 2008 Penn State
game, what's the first play you think of?
COACH FERENTZ: The first play I think of is Mitch
King drawing a holding penalty, which may sound
strange to you, but that put them off rhythm. They
threw a ball that ended up getting picked off by us,
which they would not have had had that holding penalty
not taken place. We forced them into a turnover
situation. We got the turnover, and the whole drive
was really well done.
So first play, I think, was that holding penalty. Second
play would be what the call was on the safety, not
safety. They ended up with a ball on the one-inch line
and had to punt it into the wind. That was kind of an
interesting play. I'm still not sure what happened. I just
know we ended up getting it back in good field position.
Q. With Daniel Murray and that kick there, he hadn't
kicked in a while. What was your confidence level
in him?
COACH FERENTZ: You know, it just gets down to what
you see in practice. It really is. I think all of us as
coaches tend to believe in our players, and at that
point, it just seemed like he was the right guy to go to.
He'd been doing a good job in practice very quietly.
He'd gone through some adversity during the year,
during his career. It wasn't smooth. But he kept
working and kept doing well in practice. When he got
his opportunity, it ended up being a huge play certainly.
Q. Have you or will you use the '08 team to kind of
motivate? It seems like it's kind of in a similar

Rev #2 by #177 at 2016-11-01 19:58:00 GMT

situation.
COACH FERENTZ: I reference a lot of our teams for
situations that pop up and just, you know, the what ifs.
We've had situations too where we haven't responded
maybe as well as you need to in November. So it's a
matter of choice for our football team, and that '08 team
certainly, the one thing I'll always remember about
them is the way they responded. We're 3-3. The sky
was falling outside. It was doom and gloom
everywhere you turned, yet those guys never flinched.
They just kept pushing. And it wasn't perfect. They
lost one game over at Illinois, but they kept pushing
week to week to week.
The next thing you know, they ended up 20th in the
country and won in a very convincing fashion down at
the bowl game.
So as much as it's like judging our schedule back in
July, as much as people want to categorize and have
perceptions about things, it's all about what happens.
That's one of the great things about sports, and then
one of the great things about sports, as opposed to
real life, the opportunity is pretty equal. 7:42 on
Saturday, and we both got a chance. I know it's not 5050, but we both got a chance to win the game. In
some situations in life, that ain't the case. But in this
one, it's a chance to go out there and win a ball game.
Q. Do you feel like, if your run defense plays the
way it did against Wisconsin, that you guys will
have a say in how it goes?
COACH FERENTZ: We'll have a chance. That is the
one thing -- our record wasn't perfect over the last
three weeks, but we certainly saw improvement in our
football team in some areas. That probably would be
number one on the list. It's so important -- and not that
we're -- we don't have it figured out or ironed out by
any stretch. We're running a really good test this week
and beyond. But it's really hard to win in any
conference, especially this conference, if you can't play
the run.
Q. This is a weird question, but I hear players every
week mention the word -- the term eye discipline.
When did you first start hearing that? What was it
before it was eye discipline?
COACH FERENTZ: As a coach, I always talked about
eyes. I wasn't smart enough to use the word discipline
or like gap integrity, those buzz words. You go to
clinics and all that stuff. To me in sports, your eyes are
so important, just in anything you do. I don't know
anything about golf or kicking, but it seems like it's
important there. Hitting the baseball, throwing the
baseball, you name it, what you're doing with your
eyes. And so many mistakes you see in sports, to me,
are usually related to that. Concentration is a big part

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of that.
I don't want to bore you. I remember going back to
Pittsburgh, just got to watch practice, like '84, '85,
somewhere in there. They got Randy Dixon, who
played for the Colts for a long time. I had never seen a
guy like that. Just stood behind just watching him in
drills, and his eye focus was unbelievable coming out of
the huddle. When that ball was snapped, he was wired
in.

actually watch the film and study it. I know we're living
in an era too -- this is amazing to me. The longer you
get involved in this stuff, it's fascinating the stuff that
happens. All of those companies that analyze players,
right? Pro players, college players. I think it's going
down to college players as well and their performance.
Ultimately, you answer to yourself, and in a team
activity, you answer to the people that really are the
ones that are working with you.

To me, that's how mechanics -- you have a chance to

have decent mechanics if your eyes are where they
need to be. And your young players don't have, quote,
unquote, discipline. That's some of our more
sophisticated coaches. Certainly not Phil Parker. I'm
not including him in that group, but some of our other
guys who have a little bit better vernacular.

So he's a strong guy, and he's a tough guy. I think he's

proven that time and time again. He's part of the
solution. He's just working hard to help lead and do his
part and bring everybody else along with him. We've
got a lot of guys doing that, but he's doing fine. I hope
he doesn't listen to a lot of that stuff. Maybe he does,
but I doubt it.

Q. You have so many almost epic events in the

program's history in a place like this. You think
about 2000, kind of the first real coming out
moment, '02 that overtime game, where you
survived. And then '09, down 10-0 and were able to
come back the way you did. It just seems
remarkable to me at that location. How are you
guys able to maintain the poise and play through it
in a place like that?
COACH FERENTZ: Those are all great memories. I
appreciate bringing those up. I can remember a couple
that weren't as good. But those are games we really
played well in. (The game in) 2000 was really a big
day for us because it was the first time the cumulative
effect of the work we were putting in really showed, and
it showed up the next week. And then we got brought
back to earth two weeks after that game, which was
probably a healthy thing in retrospect because we
weren't going to the Rose Bowl anyway that year. So it
gave us a little bit of humility.

Q. He doesn't seem like the kind of guy who needs

handling. He kind of seems like -- you saw this
coming. You saw struggles coming because he's
been around football. He's understands
performance.
COACH FERENTZ: Everybody needs a good word,
encouraging word at some point. I've never met
anybody that didn't. He's a guy that's real mature.
He's been through it. He's faced adversity, whether it's
physical, mental, et cetera. You play long enough,
that's what happens.

Moments like that are all -- those are things you can go
back and point to and use a teaching examples just
about sticking with it. That game couldn't have started
any worse. We talked about getting off to a fast start,
take the crowd out, and holy smokes. It couldn't have
gone any worse, but the guys just kept playing.
Whether it's a game, season, that's what you got to do,
and that's really what life is all about. You take the
hand that's dealt you and work hard at it and see what
you can do to make it a winning hand.
Q. C.J. doesn't seem like the kind of guy who
needs hand holding, but in in his struggles in the
passing game, he's taken some slings and arrows
here and there. How does that play with you? It
doesn't seem like it's really -COACH FERENTZ: First of all, no arrows from us. We

Rev #2 by #177 at 2016-11-01 19:58:00 GMT

So that's why he's what you want at quarterback. He's

wired right. He's a tough minded guy. That's really, at
the end of the day, what it takes to be successful. You
really have to be a mentally tough guy to do this and to
do anything that's hard and competitive.
I'm not too worried about him, but everybody needs a
kind word every now and then. It's a good thing. But
we all realize too, this is a competitive exercise, and
we're competing against good people, and all you can
do is all you can do. He's certainly doing that. He's
totally committed.
Q. When you look at Josey, he was -- a lot of your
great players have been last day recruit types, and
Josey among them. What did you see -- was that a
very last minute thing to grab this guy?
COACH FERENTZ: If I learned one thing in 18 years, if
Reese mentions a guy a couple times, then I need to
really kind of tune in to it. Whether it's Brett
Greenwood, go right through, he seems to have a guy
every year that he really kind of likes. He won't sell
him, push him, but he really kind of likes.
So that was part of it. The other part was we went
back and looked at the film, and I talked about this last

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week to our guys again. I just wish I -- there's a way

because -- you pull the film out again. There wasn't
like there was anything overwhelmingly good about him
on the film other than you could tell he's a tough
competitor. He's tough and competitive, and his team
won. That was big too. But it wasn't like he was overly
dynamic.
I remember saying that with Abdul Hodge. I thought
Abdul was a good player, but I'll never forget the first
time we were out there standing behind him on the field
for 30 seconds, and we said this guy is quicker and
better than I thought he was off of tape. So film is the
starting point, but there's something about being
around him -- how we almost missed Josey Jewell, I
don't know, because this guy is a really good football
player, unbelievable guy. Everything you want in a
football player, he is.
And I remember back whenever it was, 2001 or 2002, a
couple of guys went back and dug out Dallas Clark's
high school film just to see. Kind of the same thing.
Good player, quarterback, all that. So go find a 6'2",
190-pound quarterback that looked like he was a good
player and recruit him, and it's going to be the next
Dallas Clark. There's just something about guys when
they elevate, and that's certainly what Josey's been
doing and continues to do.
Q. How much does the opposite happen where you
see a guy on tape -COACH FERENTZ: A lot.
Q. -- and they're different when they get in here?
COACH FERENTZ: I just read an article about a guy in
the past, who is something we never got and his career
never got either. It just ended up being we didn't get
him, one of those shots. So it's kind of like predicting
schedules, what a schedule is in June, next year's
schedule. Oh, geez, that team's not bad. That team's
not bad. That other team's not bad. Things change,
and people develop, teams develop.
So it's an inexact science. That's why Tom Brady is a
seventh rounder, or Pujols is the 400th guy in the draft
in baseball. I don't know who the other 400 guys are,
but I had the privilege of being in the dugout with that
guy one time. Whew.
Q. During recruiting, how important is it this month
to get some wins? 9-3 is a better selling point to a
recruit, for example?
COACH FERENTZ: I'm not saying I'm focused on
recruiting right now because you can't ever back off of
that, but I want to win for our football team. It's just like
every other coach. You want your players to
experience success and feel good about themselves.

Rev #2 by #177 at 2016-11-01 19:58:00 GMT

It's not that you can't feel good about yourself if you
don't win, but I can tell you this, you feel a lot better
when you do win. Even if you played bad, you still feel
good.
So that's the most important thing we're focused on
right now is just making the most out of -- you only get
-- our seniors only get this season. This is it for them,
and that's the most important thing. This 2016 team
gets one crack at it. So that's really what's paramount
in my thinking. The better you do, sure, it helps
recruiting, no question. But the most important thing
right now -- this is the one time of year where we're
really focused on our team. As crazy as our lives are
where we're recruiting all the time -- most of the time,
not all the time, we're recruiting tenth graders, ninth
graders, all this stuff. This is the one time -- that's the
great thing about being on the practice field. You're
just out there with your team, no cell phones or any of
that stuff. It's really good. That's what teams do in
sports.
The rest of our life has been turned upside down, but at
least this is the experience that you really look for and
really enjoy, and the relationships and all that stuff, with
guys that you're actually working with, not projected to
be working with. So that's the fun of it all, and that's
really what's at the core of this whole thing.
Q. Josey Jewell seems to be one of those solid
aware types. He's a farmer's kid, hard worker. He
seems to command the huddle without being
overly vocal.
COACH FERENTZ: He's very genuine. I just
mentioned Dallas. You go back through all the guys
that we've had here that have really been -- the guys
on that wall -- just genuine people, in their own ways,
their own personalities. Josey is a pretty quiet, intense
guy, as you noticed. He's not real talkative. I bet he's
fun to hang around with, but in his own way, I think.
But I just flashed back, my Kodak moment for him was
at the end of that TaxSlayer Bowl where the game was
not in question at that point, but there was a guy flying
around at a whole different speed than everybody else.
That, to me, is just like that's unique. It's really unique
to find people like that. That's how the guy's wired. It's
that way every day with him. If you want him to slow
down, you've got to pull him out. That's the way it
goes. That's a coach's dream there.

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