Hawkeye Football: Kirk Ferentz updates Iowa’s QB situation against Nebraska

Another completely normal, drama-free week is over in Hawkeye football country.

NOT!

That was about the most dramatic week I can remember in recent memory, and yet we came back from College Park with a win, lol. This team makes no sense.

Now the regular season is coming to an end, so we can determine which SEC team of secondary players is sure to beat us. But until then, we have to beat Nebraska on Black Friday. Very important because fuck these guys and fuck this state. Does Kirk Ferentz agree? Let’s find out!

Let’s start with the injury news:

KIRK FERENTZ: Reece Vander Zee will definitely be out. Still a long way to go. Hopefully we get him back for the bowl game. Then I start to go around the corner a little.

Jemari Harris won’t be able to go. Dunker, pretty sure he can’t walk either. He’s improving, but I don’t think he’ll make it.

Hmmm, maybe Cade’s grammatically terrible Instagram post was accurate?

Q I want to ask about injuries. What is Gennings’ injury about?

KIRK FERENTZ: He’ll be fine, yeah. He’s fine. I don’t think he’ll make it to Friday. It’s a shame. He worked so hard. He did a great job.

He will come back to get the bowl. I imagine he would probably be up for it if we played next week.

It’s a shame, he had a nice season. I’m glad he’s coming back for the bowl at least.

Q How is Brendan recovering from a quarterback perspective?

KIRK FERENTZ: Seems to be feast or famine. All three of us have been out there for the last two days. They both look good. The guys who weren’t there yet, Cade and Brendan, are both practicing. An interesting dynamic.

He was pushed to fourth place by Max White as number 2. He’s not really happy at the moment. He did a great job. Real honor for him. He was a great team player for us.

God, what a strange year at QB.

Q Do you know who your backup quarterback is at this point? How much can Brendan do now?

KIRK FERENTZ: So far, so good. Obviously there was some skepticism yesterday because I went to training. But he handles everything well. He looks good. We’ll see how it goes this week. It’s almost a week. We don’t have much training time on the field. Cade looks good. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that both are ready to play, then we decide on the batting order.

Q With that in mind, is Jackson your starter right now?

KIRK FERENTZ: Yes.

I think this is the right decision, especially when it comes to Sullivan. I think he shouldn’t play in the bowl game again at the earliest, but I would also be fine with Stratton being our guy for the rest of the season. At this point I really can’t think of a reason to play Cade in a non-injury situation, so just let the young guy go and get some video.

Q Mason Richman said throughout camp that (Jackson Stratton) was able to make some really nice throws. What have you seen from him so far?

KIRK FERENTZ: Yeah, whenever Tim saw him in California, he was impressed with his feet, the way he threw the football.

It’s always interesting with the quarterback thing. I always laugh at the NFL. When the guys do their workouts, there’s no pass rush, there’s no one defending other receivers. If someone can’t throw, that’s probably a bad sign. You never know for sure.

He did a good job. The most amazing thing from my perspective is that until a few weeks ago he was a scout team player. That’s a lot to blame. Not that he does everything. He handled it really well.

As I mentioned on Saturday, the fact that he had more than a week to think about it was another hurdle to overcome. Sometimes you start thinking, “How did I get here?” What am I doing here? This can also work against you a little.

He seems really stable. Unwavering is probably a strong word at this point because we don’t know him that well. Really gets things done with flying colors. It’s been impressive so far.

He didn’t play perfectly the other day, but he did a lot of really good things. I was really impressed with his poise and his ability to stay out of trouble, which is sometimes easier said than done, especially at this position because you’re involved every snap and have the ball in your hands every snap. A lot can go wrong.

I agree with Kirk’s assessment here, and I also agree with Tim Lester’s initial assessment here. I think it will pay off for this team to have a guy with real QB experience recruiting QBs. Stratton is by no means perfect and not much was asked of him, but in both games I saw him play I was pretty impressed with what he was able to do. I want to reiterate that I think he should get most, if not all, of the snaps on Friday.

Q In order not to give away any state secrets or anything like that, there is a possibility that we will see two or three quarterbacks on Friday or…

KIRK FERENTZ: I hope it’s a start to finish and everything goes really well. I mean, but sometimes that’s wishful thinking.

We are not planning any rotation. It’s only Tuesday at the moment. We have a lot to discuss as employees. I can’t foresee that at the moment. I think we’ll try to get through it from start to finish.

In the end, we think we’ll do what’s best for the team, which will give us the best chance of winning here.

Well, that’s it. I appreciate that Kirk isn’t trying to be cute here. I’d love it if he said, “Shaggy’s our guy for the rest of the season,” but I’ll take that. I don’t think anyone in the fandom wants to see Cade play another Snap. Let’s take the slightly better option, beat Nebraska and deal with whatever new hell the bowl game brings later.

Let’s end with this:

Q The backbone of any team is often the substitute players who may not even be allowed to play. Next year many of these numbers will disappear. Did you have to have conversations with any of the players that you knew you weren’t going to make? At this point there are probably 25 or 30 players left, which brings with it another 25.

KIRK FERENTZ: Of all the things that have happened, as we all know, there are a lot of unintended consequences. We’ve already figured this out with the NIL transfer portal, which I think will at least be a little more structured rather than this crazy chaos we’re living with right now. So there is optimism there.

I think one of the most unfortunate things is the number 105. When we left the Big Ten meet in May, I don’t want to say we were confident, but I was optimistic that the number would be 120. I think as a group we agreed. It seemed like there was good support for this. But things happen.

Anyway, here we are at the reality of 105 and there are still many questions to be answered. The details aren’t… I don’t think there’s anything in black and white anymore. We’re nearing the end of the season, about two days, three days here.

To answer your question, we haven’t had these discussions. That’s something we need to do in December, to be honest, with our players, to let them know that you may not have a spot, just so they… If they want to pursue other options, they will do that opportunity.

I think it’s really a shame. For me it was a missed opportunity. Seems like it would have been more logical to go down a notch, 115, 105, whatever. That wasn’t part of the discussion, at least we didn’t notice it.

We have to deal with it and try to deal with it as humanely as possible. The other downside is that I think ten of the 23 guys got a role on our team. Otherwise they wouldn’t be here. You are part of our team, valued and important. We reduce the chances.

The other component: Dallas made this cut. From a football perspective only, Dallas Clark made his breakthrough after his first year here. When I came here in the spring of 1999, I was a full-back on the third or fourth team. I wonder how many of these stories that might have happened or would have never happened.

At a school like Iowa, that’s important. Maybe not so much at other schools. You know our stories better than anyone. We have many of them. That’s another unfortunate byproduct. We’ll figure it out and just try to act smart.

Most importantly, of course, we try to be really transparent with our players and make it so that they have an idea of ​​what’s going on there. This means that we will have to really flesh out our thoughts here next week. At the moment everything is on hold until we play on Friday.

Really interesting insight here from Kirk on the future of walk-ons and college football rosters. It’s going to be a really interesting offseason for this program in many ways. Once again, I’m amazed at the fact that Kirk continues to have to deal with all these big, big changes, but I think if you want to die in the middle of the game as a coach in a 3-2 win against Illinois, you’re going to take all the changes that come to you, accept it as long as you are still in the field on Saturdays.

Enjoy your turkey, everyone. Go Hawks and fuck Nebraska. It’s been a fun, strange and frustrating season here and I appreciate you all taking the time to read and comment and make me feel comfortable complaining about Iowa football.