Kirk Ferentz: 'I'm an expert in getting my ass kicked'

It’s not a secret that Iowa has struggled on offense in recent years under head coach Kirk Ferentz. That culminated with the announcement that his son, Brian Ferentz, won’t return as offensive coordinator next season.

Because of the team’s offensive struggles, there are a lot of questions. That includes why Deacon Hill is going to start despite being one of the worst quarterbacks in the country in terms of turnover worthy plays.

“Those are your words, not mine, certainly,” Kirk Ferentz said. “I wouldn’t say any of our guys are that bad. I mean, they’re playing major college football.”

Deacon Hill, of course, isn’t the first choice at quarterback for Iowa. Cade McNamara was, but a season ending knee injury forced Hill into action.

“Again, we go through. We’ve been evaluating since the start of spring practice. You look at the body of work. Believe it or not, at least I think we know a little bit more about our guys because we see a lot more. Our judgment is 100 percent correct rarely, when you talk about player evaluation, that type of thing. But all you can do is try to make the best decisions based on what the evidence is and what you see on a daily basis and then move forward,” Ferentz said.

“By you saying somebody else might be bad is suggesting the other guy is bad, too. I don’t look at it that way. I try to look at guys who haven’t been able to grow very much and see how well they can move forward and how quickly they can move forward.”

Iowa is 86th in turnovers lost this season, having either fumbled or thrown an interception 13 times. That includes three interceptions to only two touchdowns from Deacon Hill. Kirk Ferentz knows that it’s tough to win like that, when you’re putting yourself in bad positions through turnovers.

“I’ll go back to the first point, and to your point, if we’re going to beat ourselves, it’s going to be tough to win. So far we’ve lost two games this year. So, we’ve had [the] experience of losing. 25 years, I’ve got plenty of experience with losing,” Ferentz said.

“I’m an expert at getting my ass kicked. That’s one thing that I’m an expert in. But you get back on your feet and move forward.”

Kirk Ferentz focused on now, not the future, after news about Brian Ferentz

Following the announcement that Brian Ferentz will not return to Iowa, head coach Kirk Ferentz said that his focus is on and his loyalty is to the football team.

“I had access to the announcement that you read, we all read, over the weekend. So yeah, it was the timeline. My plans are like they always are: to worry about this game and bigger scale, bigger picture, the these four games — that’s where my focus has been this entire season. Obviously, it’s more than four games a week ago or two weeks ago. That’s what I think about, that’s… each and every year, it’s been pretty consistent, just like the other things I referenced,” Ferentz said.

“Okay, so let’s kind of go back here. Really, what I’m really worried about right now: the next four weeks. And I think anything beyond that’s getting way ahead. That would be an injustice for our football team to be thinking about any of those things that you mentioned. And that’s my first loyalty… is to the football team. So, you know, things are in your control, which I think that is — you know, it’s just, you do what you can do that’s going to give us our best chance to be successful, knowing that all four of these games are going to be really challenging. You know, it’s not going to change, so it’d really be foolish to be giving too much thought to things that are outside of the realm of that.”