What did Kirk Ferentz say about QB change?

For those who have followed Kirk Ferentz over the years, one of his least favorite topics is probably quarterback controversies. But, he might have a full blown on following Iowa’s 40-14 win over Northwestern. Former Wildcat quarterback and current Hawkeye, Brendan Sullivan came off the bench and lead Iowa to the win. Ferentz discusses the change, the plan going into today for the quarterback position and much more.

KIRK FERENTZ: Obviously, really good to get the win. It was hard-fought. Really proud of our guys. Nothing was easy today. Anticipated that coming in.

As much as anything, impressed with the way the team stuck together. That first half was tough. Second quarter, right on through. At halftime I thought everybody was in a good place, everybody was thinking the right way. Pleased with the way they did things and the way it turned out.

Really everybody made big contributions. The defense played an outstanding game. One of the stranger shutouts that you’ll see that way. They got involved in the scoring, Jay with the interception in plus-territory, great field position. Obviously, Wetjen with the punt return. Rhys did a really nice job with his punting.

Maybe I’ve been around where somebody has put four inside the 6-yard line. Pretty impressive, especially for a young guy. That was good.

12-7 at halftime, it was a rough time. That’s what you expect in conference play. But to come out and play the way we did in the third quarter, really great. That’s a credit to everybody. You get 28 points, it makes life a little bit better. Really happy about that.

Really happy with the way the guys responded. All week long, put a good week in. No moping around, pouting, that kind of stuff.

I think the other good thing is we still have a lot of things we can get better at, get more detailed on. We’ll start that work again tomorrow.

First and foremost, just encouraged the guys to really enjoy this. They earned it. Wins in the conference are hard-earned. Enjoy it tonight, not too much, not too late. We got a big week ahead of us.

Last thing I’ll say, too, what a great crowd. Homecoming is always kind of neat. You have a lot of things going on on campus. Tremendous crowd. Couldn’t have had better weather either. Turned out to be a really nice day.

Q. What kind of prompted the decision, thought process, to making the switch to Brendan when you did? Is he now your permanent starting quarterback?

KIRK FERENTZ: We’ll see on that. ‘Permanent’ is a strong word, right?

We made the decision during the week we were going to rotate Brendan in a little bit on the third or fourth series. It just worked out that way. He did a really nice job.

Cade was shook up also after the hit he took.

Q. Brendan’s mobility, do you think it really opened things up for the offense, made things easier, especially on Caleb?

KIRK FERENTZ: That’s a clear contrast. I think that’s one of Brendan’s strengths. He’s a really good athlete, really good at that.

The other thing is he commanded the game. No matter what your style is as a quarterback, you have to do that. It was a good outing. Yeah, I think we got into a little flow in the second half. That was certainly encouraging.

There’s give-and-take with everything you do. Happy with the way he stepped in. Played with great poise. Didn’t think about it too much. Playing against his former team, you always worry about emotions a little bit. Didn’t worry too much about it. Didn’t seem to be a factor either.

Q. Take you back to Sunday, then Monday. Sometimes teams when their goals are put on ice, they react certain ways. Sometimes teams quit buying in, move on mentally. How did this team not do that? What made it to where they’re focusing, it’s kind of out of their control now?

KIRK FERENTZ: I mean, may have figured out, I’m kind of a doom-and-gloom guy. I always come up with the bad scenarios that could happen (smiling).

To your point, a couple things. The goal is to win every game. When we lost our first one, that kind of went out the window. I think you have to be careful how you frame goals, how you discuss them. You have to keep things adjustable, especially when you play in conference like this. It’s just part of the deal.

Specifically I did have the thought going back to ’03, we played Purdue. That was our third loss that year. I remember Grant Steen really being emotional in the locker room. It struck me. He was thinking about national championship, all that stuff, the playoffs, whatever it may have been. It struck me. I wasn’t expecting that. Had that thought this week.

At the end of the day that season turned out really well. We had a really good season. Guys did a great job, finished up strong. I think you just have to be flexible with your thinking that way. You got to communicate that to your players, it’s still all about this week. It’s a weekly conference, I’ll keep saying that, because it is.

We’ll do the counting, all the math, all that stuff, at the end of the year. Right now it’s about trying to do what you can each day, and hopefully it shows up on Saturday that you did a good job.

Q. Obviously it’s a lot easier said than done to send a captain like Cade McNamara to the bench. How would you say he handled moving to the bench? What can you say about his leadership through all of his struggles?

KIRK FERENTZ: Yeah, he’s been great. Can’t say enough about that. He’s been really good. He was never healthy. He’s been great this entire year, going back to January. Never got on track a year ago, so that’s hard. That’s hard. But he’s been tremendous.

I don’t know about ‘we ‘sent him to the bench?’ This was preplanned. We communicate with everybody, especially the parties involved, just what our plan was and why.

I didn’t see it as a demotion as much as like Brendan has been doing a good job, we want to learn more about him. We feel like we’ve grown with both of them. Keep our fingers crossed.

To that point, a week ago Monday, I know it was a big topic. Two weeks ago Monday it wasn’t a topic about who our quarterback was. That’s the nature of football. You can’t worry too much about that. Our job as coaches is to try to do what’s best for the team.

Q. Injury updates? Reece Vander Zee? Maybe a couple other nicks and bruises.

KIRK FERENTZ: Yeah, both those guys came out and couldn’t go back in. Luke was available for emergency. I think he’ll be okay. Fingers crossed.

We’ll have to see with Reece. He has a lower leg deal. I don’t even know how many snaps he got. It was painful, so he backed out of there.

Q. With Kaleb Johnson, Mason Richman said Kaleb has learned how to run angry, he just runs angry. Can you explain the maturity process over the last couple years?

KIRK FERENTZ: He’s always been talented. Yeah, I think this year a couple things. He’s more focused on the right things. There’s a lot. Every position has a lot of things they have to be wired into. I think he’s got a better approach just in general terms.

I’ve always said usually year three is a year where guys start to come into their own. There’s exceptions to everything, but that’s usually a big year. I think he’s had a lot of good runs since then.

I think one of the most encouraging things I saw was week two, in the four-minute, we were trying to bleed the clock. Two runs he had where he moved it five, six, seven yards. Blocked for one maybe. To me, this is a good sign, he’s starting to figure out what he has.

As you saw, he’ll step through tackles if he can get them through there. That’s really tough for them to bring him down. He’s really doing a good job finishing runs. He’s been delightful.

He showed off today. His high school coach was here who actually brought him up here about three years ago. Helped keep him from going to Cal. Thank goodness (smiling). He’d be playing in the ACC, right? How about that?

Q. Your defense played outstanding today. Did you put special emphasis on that this week after the Michigan State game or was it business as usual?

KIRK FERENTZ: We did this tackling drill. I’m teasing, being smart (laughter).

Had a completion early in the first drive right in front of our bench for 15 yards, whatever it was. They have a good running quarterback, Northwestern does. We let him out around our left side, his right side. He threw it down there for another completion. We kind of started a little bit slow. After that our guys made a lot of really good plays.

We are who we are. We do what we do. I just try to remind the guys one game doesn’t define you. We all have bad days. We’ve all had them. We had one last Saturday night defensively. Michigan State had something to do with that, too, to their credit.

You have to be ready to go. The guys played really well today. They were happy afterwards, deservedly so.

Q. Do you know the severity and nature of Cade’s injury?

KIRK FERENTZ: He’s shook up. Hit the turf pretty hard. Took a pretty good shot from that guy. We’ll see what he feels like here.

Q. Do you want to land on one quarterback the remainder of the season? Are you okay with rotating?

KIRK FERENTZ: We did it in ’81. You weren’t alive (smiling). It worked out OK.

I mean, yeah, we’ll do what’s best for the team. Going back to the point earlier about the rotation. It wasn’t we were benching Cade, we were going to give Brendan a chance, too. He’s done some good things. Gives us a chance to look at him.

He did a lot of really good things today, a lot of things he’ll get better at, too. That’s encouraging. Hopefully we have two guys we can win with.

Q. How have you seen Brendan be ready for this role in the last eight weeks? Couple three-and-outs early on there. Seemed ready once it got going.

KIRK FERENTZ: We’re going to have three-and-outs. That’s part of it, too. We’re playing good teams. These guys are feisty on defense. They played and made it hard on us. We knew it was going to be that way. When it’s 7-5, I’m like, Here we go again, one of these weird games we end up in sometimes.

Yeah, can’t say enough about Brendan because he got here in June. Tim got here first of February roughly. He was really playing catch-up not being here this spring. There’s a lot to learn, a lot of words, all those kinds of things. He’s worked hard at that.

Same thing about Jacob. Those guys jumped in there and did a really good job being focused on the right things. They both have good work ethics and they’re mature guys, which I think helps, too. He’s experienced.

Fun fact: Brendan was actually the losing pitcher in this game last year. Today he’s the winning pitcher. How much does that happen? Interesting. On different teams. Both were the right way, too, by the way (smiling).

Q. Nestor and Fisher, do you have any update in terms of their status?

KIRK FERENTZ: Fish, I don’t want to say he called in, but he came in sick yesterday morning. It was not any better today. We know it’s not Strep. They eliminated that. Hopefully he’s feeling better right now. He was hurting. I expect he’ll be back Monday, but I’m not a doctor.

Nestor, I’m not sure. He has a soft tissue thing. We’ll see that how that comes back.

Q. You end up with three defensive first-time guys all from the same high school. Have you ever had that happen before? What stood out to you about your Xavier guys?

KIRK FERENTZ: I don’t know if we ever had three guys like that. I don’t know. That’s a good question.

Yeah, just really pleased with everybody. Those guys really worked hard today. It was good to get back on our feet. That felt more like the way we want to do things.