Welcome to The Wednesday Grift, a special edition of Blue’s News dedicated to the conmen leading the sport we love. Today, we’re focusing on a coach and program who’ve escaped ire for the better part of twenty years. Despite his contract extension through 2029, Iowa’s lackluster offense is finally wearing the shine off of Kirk Ferentz.
Kirk Ferentz is trying to sell us a lemon.
In fairness, all coaches, in one way or another, are grifters. Coaches are the overzealous preachers at traveling gospel revivals, wooing downtrodden folk and making them true believers through the power of seed money. They’re online energy healers selling spiritual consultations over Zoom. They lead cults of young men, boosters and fans along winding paths, making up spiritual doctrines to maintain power and keep a firm grasp on the flock.
That is, until the illusion begins to fade. Fans and media eventually find the man behind the curtain operating the mighty Oz, more often than not. It could take half a season like it did for the Dublin Dad in Jacksonville. Or, perhaps, the glamor fades after a coach leaves, as it did when Brian Kelly jumped ship for LSU.
For Ferentz, though, he has maintained an iron grip on the program and Hawkeye faithful for over twenty years, despite last winning the Big Ten in 2004. He even kept favor after he hired his own son to coach at Iowa in 2012, despite breaking the university’s nepotism guidelines such that Brian must report to Iowa’s athletic director instead of his father.
It’s that same failson – who, by the way, is the focus of a federal lawsuit alleging racism in the Iowa football program, yet magically didn’t get placed on leave like Chris Doyle did – that may be Ferentz’s undoing. Of course, it likely won’t be because Iowa fans or the university are bastions of morality and pillars of anti-racism, but rather, Brian Ferentz is bad at his job.
And, not only is the younger Ferentz bad at his job, but the old one seems to be completely fine with it. And people are beginning to notice.
The prevailing opinion was that Iowa’s offense wasn’t great last year. Somehow, in only two games, it’s proven itself far worse. Iowa has 316 yards of total offense, which is the worst in FBS by a large margin. They’ve gained 3.9 yards per passing attempt and 1.9 yards per rushing attempt.
The rest of the bottom-six offenses in FBS can at least try to point to one side of offense where they might have something going. Iowa is simply bad at both running and passing the ball, in a way that should be completely unacceptable for a division winner that isn’t rebuilding.
I have done a lot of research on Iowa, perhaps more than is healthy for the human brain. I’ve read about them, written about them, watched them.. I’ve scoured stats, started following the Iowa beat, all of it… I’m invested in this band of losers, for better or worse. So naturally, when my Bucket Problem co-host Connor Southard let us know that Kirk Ferentz’s post-Iowa State press conference is on YouTube, I had to act.
The following are a few selected quotes from his presser, grouped by their relevance. I’ve also added some, um, context to some of the things Ferentz cites (or, well, doesn’t cite) as reasons Iowa has struggled out of the gate.
Not His Fault: Spencer Petras
On sticking with Spencer Petras:
To me, [in] both these games, he’s still not getting enough help to really do a fair assessment. He hasn’t been perfect, obviously nobody has. But we’ve got a lot of moving parts right now on offense, and then, you know, we’re short-handed a little bit at a couple positions, so we’ll keep working through it. We’ll talk about it tomorrow, and, you know, see what happens moving forward.
Spencer Petras, so far, is 23 of 51 on the season for 201 yards, no touchdowns and two interceptions. He has a 45.1% completion percentage and an overall QBR of just 3.4.
On whether or not Petras will start in week three:
I didn’t say that [for week three], I just said today he played the whole game. In my judgment, it was the best way to continue through this game and, you know, [I] gave it some thought, but it felt like it was our best opportunity, but we’ll reassess everything tomorrow.
They assessed it, alright, and apparently Spencer Petras has the “body of work” to do the job. Petras will be starting week three against Nevada.
Here, for those of you playing along at home, is that body of work:
(Note: Petras was injured against Northwestern and did not return until Iowa’s contest against Nebraska, where he played, but did not start.)
On comments from Brian Ferentz re: finding “someone else to do the job” under center, and whether Spencer Petras can do said job:
We’ll assess all that tomorrow. Obviously, the statement [was] made about points scored. We’re not gonna win moving forward if we can’t score more points than that. We’ve got a really good defense right now, but you’re not gonna win a game seven points, ten points a game, as a rule.
No shit.
On why Ferentz, in general, does not pull quarterbacks:
I would agree with that comment, or that statement, if in fact that quarterback has built up some credit. [Petras has] got an account going. We’ve been around Spencer three years now, this is his third year playing as a starter. We’ve been around him, seen him do really good things. As a person, as a young man, he’s stellar. He’s been really good. He’s got all the attributes you’re looking for, but it’s not going well for him right now. It’s not going well for anybody on the offense, quite frankly. If making a change is the best thing, then we’ll consider it. If not, we’ll just keep pushing forward and seeing what we can do.
Do I need to go up and tap the Petras chart from earlier? Don’t make me tap the Petras chart.
On what Alex Padilla and Joe Labas are missing that they aren’t taking over for Petras:
It’s really not that. The best way I can phrase it is, we have a lot more exposure to what’s going on with our players on a daily basis. You get to see them on Saturdays obviously, you get to interview them, talk to them and all that, but we see them on a daily basis. And this goes back to the spring and last fall as well. It’s been our estimation that Spencer’s the starter and wanted to give him that chance again today. But, we’re sitting here right now. Clearly we have to do better. We’ll reassess everything this week.
Throughout the presser, Ferentz said a lot to that effect. Fans, media and neutral observers alike are missing out on all the great things that seem to be happening in practice. That said, practice doesn’t win football games.
It’s also pretty telling – and perhaps damning – that Padilla and Labas aren’t up to snuff. It’s almost as if the quarterbacks coach hasn’t adequately prepared either of his backups for either to start against Nevada. Huh. Wonder who the quarterbacks coach is.
On why he wouldn’t use a more mobile quarterback:
Well, I don’t think it’s necessarily quarterback runs that are going to do it, although we had a good one today, and that’s a good thing. I don’t see us making a wholesale change in what we do, but we’ve got to do things better. We’ll reassess it over the course of the next couple days.
That good run… was seven yards. It was also effectively neutralized on the stat sheet by a six-yard loss.
More on wholesale changes in a bit.
Kinda Their Fault: Other Position Groups and Injuries
On how the offense got to this point, and if the struggles are more than missing players:
Yeah, I don’t know about that. I think it’s certainly a factor. It’s not an excuse, but it is a factor if you do the math on it. You know, by my account we got three guys that were out pretty much from the start of camp that play outside on the perimeter. Not so much Nico [Ragiani]’s, [that] was during camp, and then Diante Vines got hurt during camp, too. He was doing really well. So you take those two guys, [Brody] Brecht was out, Keegan Johnson’s been out – that’s four players that last December I would have told you we were counting on.
On injuries to scholarship receivers preventing Iowa from running its full offense:
It just limits what you can do, realistically. So, it is what it is, and we gotta try to coach around that and that’s our job to try and figure out a better way to move the ball and be successful. Right now, there’s really nothing that’s looking great and that’s, we gotta try and figure that out in a short time.
It’s hard to dispute that losing four scholarship wide receivers, as well as Charlie Jones to the transfer portal, takes a toll. However, Iowa only added two JuCo receivers and lower three-star recruits at the position. By our estimation, before injury, they had the twelfth-best receiving group in the conference. There’s a deeper issue at play than injured receivers.
Also, I cringed when Ferentz was asked, “How did your offense get to this point?” It gave me a case of secondhand embarrassment that I have never felt before in my life.
On his young offensive linemen making changes week over week:
It’s really tough to evaluate the line in total without seeing tape, but procedurally, with Logan [Jones] last week. He was having a hard time getting the ball snapped, his mind’s going a million miles an hour, it was all new to him. I don’t think we had that issue today. How he blocked, I’ll have to wait and see, but the thing I’d say about him in particular again is, think last week, everything about him he does is high quality. I’m not saying he’s gonna be a great player here, but I’m pretty confident he’ll be really good here in time, and he’s practiced as well as anyone we’ve got on our football team. So you know, that’s that. Connor [Colby] seemed a little more comfortable today, but I’ll have to check that on the film.
Again, there has been a clear drop in talent on the offensive line after Tyler Linderbaum went to the NFL. But damn, he didn’t have to say it like that the way he did about Jones.
Their Fault: Bad Officiating, I Guess?
On the contested third-down catch and quick snap by Iowa State, and whether Ferentz had considered a timeout:
In retrospect, I wish I had called a timeout. In our conference, one major difference apparently between conferences – I learned something today – that play would’ve gotten stopped in the Big Ten. That’s just the way it goes, any bang-bang play, they stop it. They don’t let the opponent quick-snap it, and credit to them, that was a smart move on their part. I still don’t know if it was a good catch or not but I just know, it would have been nice to have a review on that.
On whether or not the fumble at the one-yard line was actually a touchdown:
From where I’m standing, you can’t tell. The people upstairs thought it was a touchdown, they thought he broke the plane. And if you break the plane, it’s a touchdown.
[…]
A touchdown there really changes the complexion of the game – a touchdown for us. But you’ve got to live with what gets officiated and that’s what we did and still came up short.
Ferentz further clarified that, by “people upstairs,” he meant in Iowa’s camp in the boxes, not the referees. He then joked that it would have been a touchdown, “at least in the Big Ten.”
I really don’t think it was bad officiating, my friend.
Not Necessary: “Wholesale Changes”
On the disconnect in practice versus in a game scenario:
Hopefully practice goes fairly smooth week in and week out. You’re not going – at least now – against our first defense, so you hope you can go out and execute and we’ve seen some really good things. I thought we got better this week, I really did. It didn’t show today necessarily, but that is the deal. And then the challenge – everything gets judged by what happens on the game field against good competition, and Iowa State played a really good game defensively. But I think right now, because of our personnel, people can cheat a little bit and it’s making it a little bit tougher for us to climb that hill.
“Everything gets judged by what happens on the game field against good competition.” Yeah dude, it’s called football.
On whether Ferentz is considering any scheme changes (since he has kept Brian Ferentz on as offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach):
I’m not sure that’s going to help us right now. Really, we just need to find some ways to move the football and score. I’m not sure that’s going to be going through a gimmick [i.e. wildcat] or a wholesale change. I mean, as I said earlier, we’re two weeks into it now. We should have a better idea of what we can do and what we can’t do, and where the hot spots are, and try to compensate for that. Hopefully we’ll get some personnel back too. Nico has a chance this week, hopefully Brody Brecht is [week four], hopefully we can get him involved. Hopefully, that’ll be part of the solution. But we don’t have a quick fix right now.
On why it’s difficult to make “wholesale changes” once the season starts:
Because your team is your team, your roster’s your roster. And as I mentioned a minute ago, you got four guys that look pretty good at receiver that aren’t playing right now, so I think that would impact any team in the country, even if you had ten. It’s just a pretty good percentage.
Here’s another wholesale change that’s difficult to make. Kirk Ferentz signed a contract extension in January until 2029, and currently has a $48 million dollar buyout.
Gary Barta will probably not fire Kirk Ferentz. Hell, the athletic director job is probably Ferentz’s whenever Barta leaves or retires. But something’s gotta give now, and if it’s not Kirk, it has to be Brian. The offense he runs isn’t conducive to recruiting, retaining or developing players. It puts Ferentz’s legacy on the line, even if I think his legacy is nothing short of “the dealership’s best used car salesman.”
Maybe firing Brian won’t even be that bad! No hard feelings! After all, he already has well-wishes pouring in.