Citrus Bowl Notebook: Iowa's Offensive Identity & a Wan'Dale Comparison

Wednesday morning at the Citrus Bowl started early with coordinators from each program taking the podium to preview the upcoming game at Camping World Stadium. A couple of players spoke too. Will Levis joined Liam Coen and Yusuf Corker accompanied Brad White. Highlights from the conversation begin with hilarious quotes about Iowa’s offensive identity.

Iowa’s Offensive Identity

When your offense is objectively bad, what is your identity? Allow Iowa offensive coordinator Brian Ferentz to explain it in the most ridiculous manner possible. Instead of picking and choosing the most hilarious quotes, I’ll simply bold what made me chuckle as Ferentz made a round-about response that included talks of European soccer and the type of pads football players wear.

Well, I think when you think about the offense, you need to think about the team, right. So, I just got done complimenting Ivory on the kind of team player he was. Our goal is simple: We want to win football games, and ultimately we are trying to compete for and win a Big Ten Championship.

We weren’t able to do that this year. We came a little bit closer than we have in years past. I know offensively, you know, perhaps we haven’t had the statistics or the measurables or all those things, maybe we are not that exciting.

But at the end of the day, our job is simple: We need to change field position, and we need to score points. That’s really it, because we are a three-phase team: We play defense, special teams and offense. We win when all three of those phases are working together.

The identity is simple: We need to be a group that can support the team and win games, however, we need to win those games.

One thing that’s never going to change, and this is just one person’s opinion, football is a physical game. I think there’s two things that make football unique relative to other sports. One is the team aspect. There’s not many sports, you know, all due respect to European football, but I don’t understand that game particularly well.

But I know this: We share a similarity in that we have a lot of players on the field at one time, right. I’m not a big basketball fan. Very much enjoy watching ice hockey. Probably ice hockey and wrestling would be my next two. You think about those sports, wrestling, certainly an individual sport with a team element. Ice hockey is the type of sport where one player can make a very significant difference on the ice, right. If you have the best player on the ice, there’s less moving pieces; he can be super involved, much like basketball, right.

Football, the team element of football, 11 pieces moving together, tremendous execution required and tremendous synergy required. That can be a huge, huge benefit. Then, when you think about team football in a further aspect, you think about the three phases working together, that makes it a unique game, right.

If you have all three phases working together, you can overcome some challenges that you have in matching up against a particular point. That’s the team aspect.

And the second aspect, I know we are trying to take it out of the game desperately, but there’s a physical aspect of football. And the last time I checked, on Saturday we’ll be wearing full pads. We’ll have shoulder pads on, helmets, pants, the thigh pads, the knee pads — maybe not the knee pads, but at least the thigh pads, right, the whole deal.

They try to create rules where we can’t practice with pads on. They try to create rules where we can’t practice at all. But at the end of the day, this is a physical game. And you can make up the difference perhaps between you and an opponent, you can close gaps with the togetherness of team and with the physicalness of the game.

That’s what we are always going to be built on. And I think, at the end of the day, if you want to look program-wide, look, our job offensively is to fit within to that goal, but that’s always going to come down to running the football. I think you measure any football team by how well they run the football, how well they stop the run, and how well they cover kicks, which speaks to the physical aspect of the game.

You look at our last game, you look at the rushing numbers, I think that bears out the result. It’s going to be hard for us to win like that, right. So what we need to do, our identity is always going to be based on being physical and being able to run the football.

That doesn’t mean that you’re not going to do other things, right. Because you have to score points, and all of that — that’s the special sauce, right. So, that’s what you’re trying to build every year and find the right ingredients to get to those things.

But, at the end of the day, if you’re scoring points, and you have the ability to run the football when it matters, you’re going to have a chance to win football games.

So when I look at big picture, macro, global thoughts, that’s what we’re looking at identity-wise.

An offensive coordinator publicly acknowledged that his offense has “challenges” and must rely on the defense and special teams to win games. Nepotism exists.

White Praises the Iowa Offense

Of course, Brad White would never publicly take a shot at his next opponent. The UK defensive coordinator defended Iowa’s offense, but kinda sorta in a back-handed way.

“I think stats at times can be deceiving,” said White. “When you look at how they are able to control the game, and it fits into what they do. It is their identity.”

It’s the kind of spin Kentucky fans grew accustomed to at the end of the Eddie Gran era that I refuse to fall for now. However, even though it’s a bad offense, does not mean that Kentucky can fall asleep on defense.

Repetition and Fullbacks

Iowa is going to run the football and play physically at the line of scrimmage. When facing that repeatedly, it’s difficult to remain disciplined.

“You have to be really, really disciplined with your eyes. When it looks the same, it gets to be hard and they do a great job because of repetition,” said White.

Iowa will do something that Kentucky has not seen in the SEC: play fullbacks. When was the last time White prepared to coach against a fullback? “Probably inside the five-yard line,” White laughed.

“Our younger players that haven’t been around and have only seen spread offenses, especially in high school, they don’t even know what a fullback is. But that, it creates two-back run fits that create problems, and it stresses your rules. What you have to do you is have to key on that fullback.”

Kentucky has prepared for this situation in practice, but the scout team cannot replicate the physicality and the game speed they will encounter Saturday at Camping World Stadium.

A Funny Wan’Dale Comparison

An Iowa reporter asked Will Levis is Wan’Dale Robinson was similar to one of his former Penn State teammates, KJ Hamler. Levis responded, “They have the same number, so that’s one thing that’s similar.”

The one-liner produced some laughs from the crowd. All joking aside, the Wildcat shares a few things in common with the former second round pick.

“When I started working out with Wan’Dale, I instantly made that connection. Obviously, they are on the shorter side, so like that’s a connection, they play kind of similar slot position. They are both very instinctive players and football smart,” said Levis.

Schlarman Shout Out

The first thing Iowa folks notice is how familiar the two teams play in the trenches. Instead of piling on all the credit to Eric Wolford, Coen took time to recognize his late predecessor, John Schlarman.

“I think that it really started with Coach Schlarman and how these guys have been coached prior to our arrival. These guys were very well-coached. They had a sense of pride in the room for years. When I arrived, that was the first thing that kind of stood out to me was just the demeanor in that room, in the offensive line room. I think that was instilled in those guys from years past.”