KIRK SPEAKS: Iowa State

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Folks, welcome to Week 2 of the CFB season! And it’s the best/worst week of the year: HATE WEEK! But this year it does feel a little different because almost everyone feels like Iowa will beat the pants off of Iowa State in…-checks notes- Jimmy Rogers’ debut season for the Cyclones after Matt Campbell left for Penn State.

Now I don’t know how good or bad the Cyclones actually are this year, but judging off of how much talent they had to replace in the portal, I don’t think this should be a game that Iowa loses. But, it’s a Kirk Ferentz Iowa team in the dumbest annual game of the season, so really anything goes.

But you don’t want to hear what I think, you want to hear what the man in charge things. So let’s get into it! Check out the full transcript HERE and my really smart insights below.

But before we get into that, I do want to send positive thoughts to the family of Derek Phillips and the entire Hawkeye Marching Band family. As an HMB alumni myself and as a parent, this hits me particularly hard — we lost a member of our very large HMB extended family way too soon. It’s going to be a special performance in Kinnick this Saturday, that’s for sure.

And now, to business:

Let’s start with injuries!

KIRK FERENTZ: Injury-wise, Tyler Brown won’t make it again this week. That was anticipated. Then LJ will not be able to make it either. Hopefully that won’t last too long, but those are the basically two takeaways from the game.

Q.  Coach, do you have a timeline on LJ Phillips, or is it still too early?

KIRK FERENTZ: It will be week to week, but definitely not this week.

Well, it sounds like the team certainly dodged a bullet with LJ Phillips’ injury. It looked pretty gnarly on replay and I wouldn’t have been surprised if it was announced that he was done for the season. I admittedly did not love all that I saw from Phillips on Saturday in the few snaps he played, but that also could be because Kamari Moulton was just an absolute monster from his first play. It’s tough to compare against that. But regardless, running back depth will help the team long term.

Speaking of Kamari Moulton, Kirk basically says the same thing that I just said about the running back room here:

Q.  As far as the plan for running backs go, I know you talked about Kamari Moulton’s confidence and he’s faster and looking for explosive. Is he capable enough now physically to be able to handle 25-plus carries this weekend? I know Xavier Williams and Nathan McNeil probably didn’t have the showing you’d like, but saw enough good things last year. Talk through the approach when it comes to running back without LJ?

KIRK FERENTZ: I think it’s a good group and LJ was a great addition. Really pleased to get him and he’s just a tremendous young guy.

To your point, Kamari, that’s as good as we’ve seen him. It’s funny, Jay and I were talking about that in the locker room after practice today. As much as anything, it’s just confidence and experience. You’ve heard me say it a million times: You can’t hand experience to anybody.

He’s more confident, seeing things better. That’s the beauty of experience and playing. I thought he was as fast, as quick, and decisive as we’ve seen him look. He’s done good things prior, but I think that’s just part of the process.

Happy about that.

And then you transition into Xavier and Nathan. I think that’s just what they need more of. Probably more exposure out there, more work. Both of them have practiced well.

I would say Saturday didn’t translate — I think there was one run, I think it was Nathan, who got a little ahead of his feet and his mind was down there and feet were back here. That didn’t have a good outcome, but that’s just part of not playing enough probably.

I think that will work itself out as we continue to move forward.

I mostly just wanted to put this here because I wanted to reiterate just how good Moulton looked on Saturday. I mean damn. Clearly the competition will get steeper as the year goes, but when you’re looking that fast, and you have an offensive line that is opening chasm-sized holes for you, good things are going to happen, and I hope they continue to all season long.

Now to the meat and potatoes, the reason you’re all here — QUARTERBACK!

Q.  I wanted to ask about quarterback. If you have a plan set for this weekend and maybe if we should expect to see two quarterbacks again?

KIRK FERENTZ: I’ll start backwards there. Yeah, probably. We haven’t really talked it out yet, but I thought we saw a lot of good things from both guys. Encouraging things, a good start, a positive start. Both of them a couple of plays they’d like to have back, like everybody on the team, but thought it was a positive start for both guys.

We’ll keep pushing forward here. I can say this, yesterday and today we’ve split the reps just like we did last week. We haven’t sat down and talked about what the plan is or the strategy at this point, but pleased with both guys. We’ll just keep pushing forward.

I still don’t know where I quite fall on who I want to be QB1 at this point, so I guess we’ll keep going with this. All we realistically need is a serviceable quarterback (allegedly) so let’s see what happens. If I had to guess, I’d say Hank Brown probably has the edge at this point, but I do think it’s fair to say that he got worse as the game went on last Saturday.

Q.  You said probably both quarterbacks would play. You said expect a really hotly-contested game. Do you envision a situation where it’s probably going to be hot hand type continues once you kind of establish each guy getting some series in?

KIRK FERENTZ: At some point —

Q.  How do you go through that process?

KIRK FERENTZ: Yeah, at some point that will probably be a consideration, for sure. Yeah, the bottom line is it’s kind of like I said a week ago, we weren’t trying to be coy; the competition is really good. I’d still say it hasn’t changed an awful lot.

Right now we got confidence in both guys. We wouldn’t put anybody out there right now that we thought was going to tilt the field the other direction.

We’ll just kind of let this whole thing work itself out. I wish I had a blueprint or a formula, but I’m not sure there is one. We’re just going to play it as we go.

But the good news is, again, I think we all walked away from Saturday feeling like, hey, that was a positive day.

Not a lot of nuggets in there except that it’s still a competition and that the coaching staff still thinks positively about both guys, so maybe the aforementioned regression from Brown was also noticed by the staff. I would be more than ok with having ample opportunity to give both guys plenty of reps this weekend because it’s a blowout instead of having to go with a hot hand in a close game. A boy can dream, can’t he?

Q.  How would you describe Tony Diaz’s character maybe off the field, and how does that translate to his success on the field?

KIRK FERENTZ: I was just going to say, he seemed like a fairly quiet guy, but the way they are around us and then what happens when they’re all together. I remember Jordan Walsh always seemed like he was the quietest guy in the world, and then we heard he’s not so quiet with the rest of his buddies, and that’s fine. That’s good.

He’s just got a good demeanor. We were talking about him this morning, too. I was saying to somebody, he just really enjoys playing football. I mean, there’s a youthful exuberance.

He’s aggressive to the football. He has been since he’s shown up, which is a really good trait for a receiver. It sounds kind of silly you would say that, but he is really aggressive to catching footballs and sometimes puts himself in a little bit of risk. But, boy, that’s a great temperament. It’s fun.

Then he can run pretty well too, so he’s a really delightful young guy. He’s been a really good teammate, and we’re really glad he’s here with us.

I think the fanbase collectively fell in love with Tony Diaz during the first drive of the game on Saturday. How nice is it that we finally have an actual wide receiver in an Iowa uniform? I was nearly beside myself watching the game on Saturday seeing him so easily beat his defender and create space for himself. I think as the season goes we will see some really great things from him, and I for one am excited. It’s nice to see someone who was hyped up in the offseason living up to what was billed…and it amazes me that the coaching staff managed to get him here.

PLEASE DON’T LEAVE US FOR GREENER PASTURES IN THE OFFSEASON, TONY

Let’s end with this:

Q.  With the red zone kind of goal-line offense, that was an area that could have used improvement from the first game. Two seasons ago you kind of used Brendan Sullivan in those type of situations; last season with Mark’s running ability. Are there any adjustment you see? I know it’s a small sample size, but ways that maybe put you guys in a better position around that red zone goal line area moving forward?

KIRK FERENTZ: I think that’s probably a discussion we’ll have. Coincidentally it’s going to be this afternoon after this. We’re going to be in the red zone and goal line in this afternoon’s meeting. So yeah, we’ll probably talk about all the possibilities, right personnel groups, wrong personnel groups, all those types of things.

But, again, you don’t want to I don’t think rush off to a decision. Some of this stuff is correctible, teachable from the film, so we’ve got to execute a little bit better. Things that can be repaired.

If it becomes an issue, then yes, certainly we’ll have an open mind to however you want to do it, whether it’s — there’s a multitude of things you could do, but in a perfect world you like to kind of settle in and start developing something from early in the season. We’ll be looking at it. Hopefully we’ll have a better report Saturday night.

This was definitively a weak spot for the offense with both quarterbacks last weekend. I don’t necessarily think either of these guys are a Brendan Sullivan/Mark Gronowski red zone specialist type player, but we cannot afford to have drives methodically stall like they did in the red zone by the time conference play starts. We can’t expect big plays every drive. But, the more time goes on, the more faith I have in Tim Lester, so I think we’ll be ok in this regard…but it definitely needs to improve.

See y’all next week — GO HAWKS BEAT STATE!

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