Following the announcement by interim athletic director Beth Goetz that offensive coordinator Brian Ferentz will not be returning for the upcoming season, Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz spoke with the media on Tuesday. Brian will work for the rest of the season as a staff member.
Kirk talked about his thoughts on how everything happened, his future intentions, his preview of Northwestern, and much more inside the Iowa football facilities. This concludes everything he had to say.
First of all, going back a little bit, coming off a bye week right now, and that’s sometimes a good thing, sometimes a bad thing. This time of year it really was helpful for us. We’re a little bit banged up physically. It gave us a chance to rest our players that have been playing pretty extensively, give them a mental break also, cut back a lot on what they did and then also move some of the younger guys forward. It’s always a good opportunity for the team to move forward. Hopefully that’s what we got accomplished last week.
We’re back into a game week mode and right now our focus is on getting ready for the game in Chicago.
Captains this week are Joe Evans, Jay Higgins, Luke Lachey and Logan Lee.
Injury-wise, T.J. Hall is still out, but fairly realistic to say everybody else will have a chance to play and a little bit healthier than they were last time we were on the field. Certainly a good thing.
Northwestern looks to be a team that’s really playing well, playing with confidence, playing with energy, and showing improvement week to week.
I think their head coach’s comments reflected that yesterday with his press conference, and I would verify that, just having a chance to watch them right now, They’re gaining momentum and playing with confidence. They have a new quarterback, who’s played the last three games. Seemed like a catalyst for them Saturday, doing a nice job out there.
Basically two things that really stand out to me, if you look at last week’s game against Maryland. They had a seven-point lead. Maryland took the ball down to the 1 yard line, had three shots from the 1. Northwestern got three stops, which is pretty impressive and difficult to do. More impressively, Northwestern took the ball and drove it, whatever it was, 77 yards and got a field goal out of it.
Basically went from Maryland had a chance to tie it up, and next thing you know Northwestern has a 10-point lead and took control of the game from that point. That says a lot about them.
If you go back to the Minnesota game earlier, the fact they were down significantly, came back and scored 21 points in that fourth quarter and won in overtime, tells you a lot of people are doing a lot of things well up there, and their players are responding.
That being said, we look at this as another tough Big Ten road game, expect it to be competitive and really tight. I’m guessing both teams are looking at it that way as we go into it.
This week’s kid captain is a young man from Maquoketa named Lincoln Veach. At age four, Lincoln received a leukemia diagnosis. A potentially fatal illness during his course of treatment made things more difficult. approximately a hundred days were spent at the Stead Family Hospital. That was a difficult journey indeed—ten operations, chemotherapy, and ongoing treatment. Progressing and improving. He’s currently a kindergartener. really strong man. When we head to Chicago later this week, we’ll be thinking of him and his family.
