Tell me about Iowa Football, Kirk Ferentz, and stuff

I will give you my opinion and one I think a lot of fans share.

I like KF. He is a stand up kind of guy. He is the kind of guy I would want my son to play football for.

That being said it is frustrating, I believe Iowa is one bad coach away from becoming what Minnesota, Purdue, Nebraska, Illinois recently are. As much as I hate 8-4 every year I like it better than 6-6 which is what I think we would be if hired another coach. When we do hire another coach, if we dont hire BF, we would have to hire a big name coach or a coach that knows Iowa football.

What I mean is if we hire a Matt Campbell who utilizes wide receivers then how do we get a big name WR recruit? Likely the big names wont come until he gets successful. Then the tight ends, our bread and butter, wont come because this guy doesn't have a reputation for putting TE's in the NFL. What I think that would translate to is poor offensive production (worse than we have now).

If we hire someone who knows our programs (Ferentz, Stoops, etc) then recruits would still be comfortable coming here because its "typical Iowa".

What most fans have a problem with is the inability to win in an easy conference. Take this year for instance. All four games we lost within the last 5 minutes of the game. We could (pretty easily) be 12-1 now but instead we are 8-4 again. I think fans have gotten comfortable with 8-4 and now want something better. Just like other programs who are 6-6 demand to be 8-4. I will add an edit in a bit to continue but I need to make a call quick.

Edit: My historical complaint about the Hawkeyes is lack of offensive production. They did do better in 2018. I saw a stat somewhere where the offense went from average being in the 100+ range to close to 60th this year, so that is improving but if I wasn't a Hawkeye fan I would not watch a Hawkeye game. The game we play is just too slow to be attractive to playmakers and it is hurting us. Hell I resorted to watching Nebraska and Iowa State to see some offense.

The defense is phenomenal and Phil Parker is a god in Iowa City as he should be. Chris Doyle (our S&C coach) also works wonders and Iowa will suffer a big loss when they are done.

Overall I think Hawkeye fans have been spoiled and now want more without realizing how big of a challenge winning 10+ games is for a school like Iowa.

All of this IMO and sorry for the jumbled mess lol

Edit #2 KF donated a million to the children's hospital and his wife does a bunch of stuff for the community, they are a big part of IC and I will be sad to see him go.

I think we do well for the recruits we get, we do a good job getting the best out of a lot of them. A lot of people feel like ferentz does just enough to keep his job and nothing extraordinary and maybe thats true but imo he's alright. I don't mind a lot of 8-4, 7-5, 9-3 or whatever seasons. not every coach can be saban

I'm not sure how much of a novel you want to read, but I'll give it a go.

I think the Ferentz era of Iowa football can be broken down into three different parts: from 2001 to 2010, Iowa teams were really good. Our S&C took under-recruited 2* guys and turned them into NFL players. Our offensive and defensive schemes weren't state-of-the-art, but they were modern enough that they didn't really ever hinder us. We played well in bowl games, won a few Big Ten titles, and even in our down years, we had a good team that was just unlucky. Fans were pretty happy in that era.

Then came 2011 to 2014. Kirk went from a conservative coach who sometimes took smart risks, to mind-numbingly conservative and completely afraid of risk. Our offense was outdated, our recruiting was absolutely terrible, and it wasn't bad luck anymore that cost us games - it was Kirk. He went with the safe quarterback, he converted a fullback to running back even when we had more explosive guys behind him. Our tempo was as slow as possible and players were benched half their career for a couple fumbles. 2014 was the closest Kirk's been to being fired. It looked like the game had passed him by.

After the 2014 season, Kirk made a lot of changes in the program, leading people to dub him "New Kirk". He changed up the way the program was run internally, started embracing analytics stuff such as going for it on 4th down, special teams trickery, etc. He benched Jake Rudock for C.J. Beathard, who was clearly the higher-upside guy. That led to 2015's 12-2 season. That team wasn't a top 5 team, but it was a lot better than the top 50 team people like to pretend.

I think we're still in the New Kirk era right now. We're actually recruiting guys who have other P5 offers instead of just flipping a bunch of MAC recruits. Instead of running our running backs into a wall, we're going deep down the field to punish teams who stack the box. We changed our defense to a 4-2-5 to deal with spread teams. We have an 8-man rotation on the DL, when in the past we would stick with our four best and just let the other team wear them down.

I think the modernization of our schemes, better recruiting, and better in-game coaching shows a clear path to Iowa raising its floor and ceiling as a program. I like what Kirk's doing right now, and I fully support him. He's obviously not the best coach, but I think he's definitely in the top 20 of college football and I wouldn't take any G5 rising star over him.

Kirk is good coach and a great guy. If we played the coaching carousel game we would probably be Minnesota tier instead of a B1G West contender.

This season was rough, but we were less than 10 plays away from being in the B1G Championship.

This is unpopular, but I have zero problem with Brian taking over when Kirk retires.

I think the biggest thing to know about Iowa football is that the difference between a 10-2 Iowa and 7-5 Iowa is literally maybe 5 plays in a season. For instance this year: the interception on the goal line at Penn State, the diving touchdown catch by Northwestern, and the holding calls on our last drive against Purdue. If all those go Iowa’s way they’re 11-1. 12-0 not impossible either if they get one stop on Wisconsin’s 88 yard game winning drive. In 2015 Wisconsin fumbled on the goal line, Des King had a huge punt return late vs Iowa State, and Iowa didn’t secure victories until late against Purdue, Illinois, Nebraska, and Minnesota. If you watch Iowa football closely you’ll see that losses are rarely blowouts (the most recent ones I can think of are Minnesota in ‘14 and Penn State in ‘16). Sometimes it just comes down to the ball bouncing a certain way. I think Iowa, more than most programs, understands the importance of every play, every snap because of how razor thin the margin of error is for them to have a decent season (8-4) or an elite season (10-2 or better).

Ferentz keeps Iowa from being Illinois or Indiana and few understand that

I don't want to discount anything anyone else has said here and don't want to come off as holier-than-thou, but not enough has been said about what a great guy KF is. He has always done a great job of turning the young men in his program into good people and teaching them to be citizens of the world. He's always shown being a good person comes before being a great team, and his actions have backed this up. To me this is worth giving him a lot of leeway when he has a down season, especially in an era when not all teams exemplify these values.

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George Kittle had more receiving yards in 9 games this season with the 49ers than he did in his entire career at Iowa under Kirk Ferentz and the awful offense this guy has concocted to wreak havoc on Iowa football fans.

I'm trying to add something that hasn't been fully addressed here. KF has at best been hesitant to evolve Iowa's style of play to what the current officiating, etc seems to be driving more and more teams towards. There has been some evolution on defense, where we are now having a starting in a 4-2-5 instead of a 4-3, basically adding a safety (currently the NFL bound Amani Hooker) for a linebacker as to set up better against spread offenses. That would be about the only key change in the last few years on D. On offense, there seems to be a hesisatancy get the ball to the best player (just google Noah Fant). There is also not an evolution towards getting players the ball in space. A good comparison might be Ohio State, which runs the power spread. It is still a zone blocking scheme (which seems to be religion with KF) but in the era of no cut blocking and faster defensive linemen, this power spread seems to the obvious evolution of the zone running, play action passing offense that KF wants to play and he and BF won't/haven't yet evolved. On special teams, they are evolving (see rugby style punts, crazy trick plays galore, etc), which may just be him handing the reigns to Lavar Woods, or it could be an evolution. In summary, pretty slow to evolve with the game.

I'm a newer fan. Became a fan just a few years ago because I didn't have a team and my wife to be is from iowa so it all fell into place. I'm a bears fan so I'm used to this style of football.

I think KF is the type of coach that will get the absolute most out of someone's talent. He can make walk ons look like studs. I get the feeling that players would go to absolute war for him and that's an awesome quality to have. Can he bring iowa to the playoff? maybe it they add it to an 8 or 16 team playoff. otherwise no.

however like the guy at the top said he brings consistency to the program and 8 or 9 wins is good every year than bringing a new guy in and maybe dropping to 6.

sure wish we could win the big ten though!

I love him. Hard not to like a coach who cares so much about his players and community.

He isn’t a winner. We haven’t won a big game that has mattered in 10 years. Yes we’ve knocked off some highly ranked teams like Michigan and Ohio State bit it was after our season was already in the toilet. We get the shit kicked out of us in every bowl game, we haven’t won our division or a big 10 title in a long time and we have a horrible record against ranked teams. Firebarta.com ( Our AD) lays out our record against ranked teams. We essentially get a few wins against our easy non conference schedule and then sprinkle in 3-5 more wins against the easy teams in the big ten to make it to our bowl game. Every now and then we get a nice ranked win but never when something of real value is on the line. This games we always squander away and can’t close them out. Kirk had a decent run during his first 10 years but now he just is good at winning the easy games. I agree with everything you say about developing good nfl talent and that is nice.

Earlier this year in one of our important games we were down by 6 late with 1st and goal at the 2 and instead of running on to get a touchdown, he opted for a pass play even though our an hurt his hand and had a horrible completion percentage post injury and he threw a pick in the end zone on the first play. Dumb decisions like this are constantly made and it really sucks as a fan to see all these winnable games go the other way. I realize you can’t win them all and sometimes shit just happens but other times it’s clearly the wrong strategy.