Kirk Ferentz says ‘no magic answers’ to fixing Iowa offense

Iowa Hawkeyes head coach Kirk Ferentz knows that his offense has some issues. It’s hard not to be aware that things need to be fixed after losing 31-0 on the road at Penn State. At the same time, Ferentz also wants to be clear that there isn’t an easy answer to what ails Iowa.

Following that loss to Penn State, Ferentz shared how Iowa is trying to get better mid-season on the offensive side of the ball.

“Just try to get better in every phase,” Kirk Ferentz said. “There’s really no magic answers and [we’ll] see what we can do to improve in each and every phase.”

The Iowa offense never found any success against Penn State. For the entire game, the Hawkeyes had 76 yards of offense. That included 56 passing yards and 20 rushing yards. Iowa had a total of four first downs and was one for nine on third down conversions. The Hawkeyes lost four fumbles to Penn State and only possessed the ball for 14 minutes and 33 seconds.

“We get judged on performance, basically, and how the players perform,” Kirk Ferentz said. “That’s our job to get them ready and clearly Saturday we were not competitive compared to Penn State. It was just a thorough beating, quite frankly, and that’s what it was. So, we’ve all got to do better. There’s no magical one area. It’s just everybody’s got to do a little bit better, a little bit more.”

Iowa did make several changes on offense coming into this season. That included adding quarterback Cade McNamara out of the transfer portal. However, Iowa did not make a change to offensive coordinator, choosing to stick with Brian Ferentz, the son of Kirk Ferentz.

However, Brian Ferentz’s contract was reworked in the offseason. Now, in order for it to be renewed, the Iowa offense must average 25 points per game. Through four games, Iowa is averaging 21.2 points per game, short of that mark. Still, Kirk Ferentz isn’t looking to make a change at playcaller mid-season.

“That’s not part of the plan, but every week we — and we’ve done it for 24 plus years — after every game you go back, look at what you did, what could you do better, whether it’s play calling, what are our thoughts going into the game, or those types of things. How the opponent matches. Yeah, I mean, we’ve been doing that for 24-25 years offensively, defensively, special teams. It’s just part of what we do on Sundays. Then, you shift over to the next opponent,” Ferentz said.

“So, we’re just gonna try to do better. There’s really no simple answers or easy remedies. It’s just a matter of execution, playing better, and trying to do what our players are capable of doing a little bit better.”

To this point in the season, Iowa is 3-1. However, the Hawkeyes are 105th in scoring offense (21.2 points per game), 104th in rushing offense (118.5 yards per game), 125th in passing offense (127 yards per game), and 129th in total offense (245.5 yards per game).

Kirk Ferentz announces Iowa TE Luke Lachey is ‘out for quite awhile’

The Iowa offense suffered a major loss that it will need to overcome. Tight end Luke Lachey is injured with what is being described as a significant leg injury and will be out for an extended period of time.

“I feel most badly for him obviously,” Kirk Ferentz said. “He’s the person most affected. Just an unfortunate development, but he’ll be fine here in time. It’s a significant injury, so he’s going to be out for quite awhile here.”