Coach Ferentz News Conference Transcript

March 22, 2016

First of all, welcome back everybody. It’s good to get started again. Just a couple news items to touch base on really quickly. Yesterday we had our 2015 Senior Pro Day, and I think that went really well. I know it’s always an anxious time for the guys that graduated. They’re anxious and eager, not all, but most of them are trying to get into an NFL camp.

So they’ve been working hard and also want to pay a compliment to Chris Doyle and his staff, the work that they do with the guys after they get back. In fact, they come back before our players, the current team gets back to school, so they begin that training. Our strength staff does a lot of work with those guys as well as guys that are in the NFL right now. They train them as well. So those guys really go above and beyond. I know our players really appreciate that.

We’ve got our high school clinic this Friday and Saturday. Friday with all the lectures. We’ve got a really nice group of high school coaches, both in state and out of state coming in, and then Tom Moore will be the headline speaker. Tom’s a graduate, obviously, and coaching down there in Arizona with the Cardinals. Just a tremendous guy. So it will be good to have Tom back on campus.

Des Moines practice will be Friday, April 8th, and we’re going to do a Friday evening work, somewhere between 6-6:30 somewhere in that ballpark, and try to have a little fan interaction type thing, so we’ll have more details coming out on that. But we’ll return to Central Iowa. We’re excited about that and also eager to change the date. I think it will be more family friendly to do it in the evening and try to make it interactive for the participants.

No real update on Drew Ott. We’re still appealing that. We’ve had some encouraging news from some other cases, a basketball player from Temple had a case similar to Drew’s. Just learned actually yesterday about Case Keenum who is playing for the Rams right now, when he was at Houston he actually got a sixth year, redshirted one year, played three and then was injured in his fifth year and got a sixth year.

So there are some cases out there that give you encouragement. We won’t know until a final decision is given. When we get that, we’ll pass that on to you, but we’ll keep our fingers crossed on that front.

Personnel-wise a couple updates. One position move, Brady Ross is going to move over to the fullback position. Brady was a walk-on linebacker in the fall, freshman linebacker from Humboldt High School and really did a nice job. In fact, in December we toyed with him a little bit on offense and he’ll lineup at the fullback position. So nothing really major there.

Then medically we’ve had a couple other medical issues that have come up since last time we met. Guys that are going to be kept out of spring ball, Ben Niemann, Derrick Mitchell, and Greg Mabin, three guys that were in the two-deep last year will not be able to really practice this spring, so they’re going to have to stay in tuned mentally and try to grow that way. That’s in addition to a couple guys I mentioned earlier, James Daniels and Josh Jackson. Those guys will be either out or limited in what they do.

It’s been a little bit of an unusual off-season. We’ve had a little more activity on that front than normal. Even a couple cases of mono just to top it off. It’s just been one for the books. But we’ll work through that. The teams did a good job working through injuries last fall and we’ll try to do the same this spring.

The last thing on a personnel update, Kelvin Bell, certainly excited to have him join our staff as a recruiting coordinator. Kelvin, as I think you know, is a graduate of Iowa. Played in the program, he’s been a staff member and really just a tremendous guy. So I think he’ll be a great addition, a great fit, and probably a sign of my age, but excited that we have three former players now with Kelvin joining us, three former players in the program coaching. Seth is a former graduate assistant, and you take three other guys, if you look at Chris Doyle, Phil Parker and Reese Morgan, those guys have 50 years experience in the program.

So just really feel good about our staff right now. I think there is a real good understanding about our culture and the value we place on character, on academic achievement and football development. I think everybody on the staff right now has a good feeling of that. For us to move forward, that’s really important.

So, again, really excited about Kelvin joining the program and looking forward to having him in this role in the future here.

As far as the winter phase goes, we just finished that up before spring break. The guys did a really good job. Chris and his staff, that is their in-season time. They do a tremendous job with our players, but most importantly the players have worked hard and just really pleased with the way the testing turned out. I think we’ve made good progress. It was a rigorous period and very important period for our team’s development. So it’s a positive step.

You don’t play football in a weight room, certainly, but it’s something we wanted to maximize. Think the guys did a good job. Compliment them on that, and now we really get started on a really important phase. Needless to say, we’re eager to get back on the field tomorrow morning. So it will be good to get started with the football team.

Going back to January 19th, that was our first team meeting after the break, after the holidays. We just talked about turning the page and the great thing each and every year is in January you start new. There is no credit for last year. There is no debt. You start with an even balance and get to move on to a new year with a new team and new opportunities.

So that being said, the objectives for spring ball remain pretty much the same as they always are. First and foremost it’s a chance to install our system offensively, defensively, and special teams-wise. See how the guys do learning skill and technique development is a critical part and something that’s ongoing. So it’s a good opportunity for us to work there. You’re always working on your teamwork, and then the fourth thing is trying to raise the overall performance of our football team.

Again, you can’t practice football in a media room. You can’t practice it certainly in a weight room. So this is a really important time for us. We have limited opportunities, and really the objective is to make sure that every meeting we have and every practice we have during this period are productive and we can close the book on those at the end of the day and say that we moved forward as a team.

So that’s the objective right now. We’re eager to get back on the field, and I’ll open it up for questions.

Q. Those injuries are they hangovers from last season or something that happened off-season?

COACH FERENTZ: It’s pretty much stuff that’s lingered. Most cases you try to hold off on surgery if at all possible. In the three cases I cited, it was stuff that at some point we decided had to be addressed. The good thing is they’ll be back in June full speed, but they’re going to miss this period unfortunately.

Q. You have five offensive linemen that have started. Talk about Brian (Ferentz), he doesn’t have to go back to basics, but trying to blend them together and get them on the same page?

COACH FERENTZ: We’ll still go back to the basics and we’ll do that with everybody on the team. We’re certainly in a little different situation than a year ago. We had a lot of question marks about how guys would produce in game situations. To your point, at least we’ve seen all these guys in a game situation now. But that being said, there is a lot of growth to be had.

One of the reasons we had a successful football team last year was that we did improve. Our oldest guys played like our oldest guys, and whether you look at it that way or how they progressed from March till December, they improved there too. So that’s going to be — that’s always kind of been the theme and it will remain that way.

Q. Is it a little strange not having Blythe and Jordan? They’ve been there so long.

COACH FERENTZ: Yeah, those guys, it’s funny, they came in together. Jordan lived with Austin that first summer in his house out in Williamsburg. We were talking about that yesterday at the pro day. Those guys have played a lot of football. They’ve done a great job.

That’s the good thing and bad thing about coaching in college and high school, there is graduation and every year you’re going to have those kind of stories where you lose guys that really make great contributions and have been around a long time. So it’s kind of the rights of passage, if you will. They’re moving on to bigger things and now we have some other guys that have an opportunity.

Q. CJ was hobbled a little bit late in the season, how is he coming along health-wise since his procedure?

COACH FERENTZ: I wouldn’t describe him as a hundred percent, but I think he’s close to it now. He should be able to practice full speed out there. We’ll be careful about what we do with him because he’s still a little bit delicate at this point, but he’s doing really well with his rehab. Typically after those guys get the repairs on the sports hernias it’s a matter of climbing the ladder.

Q. This was the first spring for your two freshmen quarterbacks. What do you hope to get out of them this spring?

COACH FERENTZ: It’s a really good opportunity. We do some work during the fall. Not as much as we’d like, but some work. We got a chance in December to do work with those guys running our offense, not an opponent offense. So it’s a really good learning experience. They’ve been in the room with two guys that really study it well and work at it and have been good mentors. But there is nothing like being out there. So we’ll have to figure out how to cut those repetitions out a little bit this spring, but both of them are getting great exposure and good opportunity for them to move forward.

Q. Is there a long way to go to catch Wiegers, and is Wiegers pretty entrenched as a back-up?

COACH FERENTZ: Fortunately for him, but unfortunately for us, with CJ missing so much time, Tyler got more time than a normal number two quarterback would get. To his credit he really benefited from that and made it pay off for him. So he was clearly a better player in December than he was back in August or September. That was a tough circumstance for the team, but good one for him. So it gives him a big jump and big part of any position is just learning how to play within the scheme of things.

But we like both Drew and Ryan and are both good young guys. We have good feelings about them and eager to see how it pans out this spring.

Q. They’re both equal now going in to spring?

COACH FERENTZ: In our minds they are. They’re different kinds of players a little bit, physically and all that. But we’ll give them both equal opportunities and see how they compete.

Q. With Boone Myers, you had him as your left tackle most of the year. He got injured off and on, and Cole came in and played most of the Big Ten, I think all of the Big Ten actually at tackle. What was the reasoning for moving him inside?

COACH FERENTZ: Probably a little bit more flexibility there. It’s ironic, Cole ended up playing more than anybody even though he didn’t start at the beginning of the year. That’s kind of been his career. When he came in, was a good football player, but the question was was he going to catch up physically? And he started to catch up. Certainly last year he did a really nice job.

You can flip a coin a little bit. We haven’t worked Cole inside. Ike a little bit, but not a lot. So I think the flexibility of things that we felt like Boone should be able to handle it pretty well and he can still go out to tackle, so it’s nice to have that flexibility. Hopefully it will prove to be something that helps us down the road. Certainly last year it would have helped us.

Q. VandeBerg came in as a gray shirt?

COACH FERENTZ: Yeah, that shows us how good we are in evaluating. I think both he and (Julian) Vandervelde are two gray shirts and both played really well for us. That’s personnel evaluation to a T. Some players are really obvious and others you’re not sure about. A really good start to the intangibles players possess. You talk about Julian Vandervelde what he did once he got here, and same thing with Matt. Matt has worked extremely hard, actually played as a true freshman.

So a guy gets an opportunity, comes in with a great attitude. You talk about intangibles like that, and that certainly is Kevin Kasper. They’re not the same player necessarily, but have those attributes, and those are certainly good attributes.

Q. You’re looking at positions critically, do you think you need to see different players in the spring?

COACH FERENTZ: Yeah, our whole team, I worry about everything. It’s the nature of coaching, I guess, you worry about everything. But our wide receiver position certainly we lost two really good players there with Tevaun and Jake, so you know how are the young players going to come along and develop and push forward. I felt pretty good knowing what Matt VandeBerg is and who he is and how he’ll play. Then after that I think we have some questions.

I’d say the same thing about tight ends. Henry Krieger Coble is a guy who maybe wasn’t flashy in his play, but he got selected for The Senior Bowl, went to the combine. Really had a good day yesterday. Personally, I think he’ll have a nice NFL career. I don’t know if he’ll be drafted or not drafted, but I think he’s good enough to play. Just a really good football player.

And that’s kind of my overriding concern. We lost 21 seniors, not all were starters, but what they did collectively, that’s a big void to fill right there. So that’s our first challenge. Forget about possessions, but you move 21 guys that did things on a daily basis really well, really modelled great behavior for our entire football team. So can we fill that void? And then if other guys rising up to fill that void, what about the void that’s left in the wake of that? So a lot of moving parts on the football team. That’s why I said it’s a new year, new team for sure.

Q. Center is such a critical position. What are your options there? I imagine James Daniels is an option.

COACH FERENTZ: James is one option, but he won’t practice. So that takes that off the table. Steve has made a lot of progress, Steve Ferentz. Thought he made a big jump coming into camp last year and he had a wrist deal during the season that kind of impeded his progress a little bit. And we’ve moved Sean Welsh in there and Sean will practice.

Sean’s probably our most versatile lineman. If you look at grades, he probably graded out as well as anybody last year on the football team, not just the offensive line. So we’ll try to make sure we have our bases covered. Like to come out of spring, we’re not going to be able to look at James, but knowing where Sean and Steve are and we’ll just kind of go from there.

Q. Can you tell who might fill leadership roles, or are you looking for them to get through spring ball?

COACH FERENTZ: There are some obvious names that come to surface right away. CJ was a team captain last year all season long, and then on the permanent captain ballot. And Josey Jewell the same thing. I think, you guys know better than I, I think it’s the first time we’ve had a sophomore be named as a permanent team captain in my 17 years. So it’s a pretty good starting point.

We’ve got a lot of older guys that I think are doing a good job in that regard. But like I said, those guys move up, and there is another void to be filled. So those are the things that you’re looking at during the course of the spring just to see not only what guys are doing on the field, but what they’re doing in terms of just handling the situations that they’re confronted with.

Q. Sean’s jump last year was kind of unprecedented. He played a lot as a freshman, but he was out all of spring and just questions to what his future may hold and what he did play so well, moved out to tackle a couple of times. With a really big spring can he develop into one of your better offensive linemen?

COACH FERENTZ: Yeah, we think he’s a pretty good player. I hate to throw this out, because I don’t want to start this train going, but Marshal comes to mind. If Marshal was in college what he is now, he would have been a first round draft pick if he could go back and do it again. But I’m bringing it up because what whatever we asked Marshal to do when he was here, he did it pretty well. He wasn’t necessarily flashy or an eye-catching guy. Testing-wise, all that kind of stuff, height, width, all those types of things. He really blocked guys well, no matter where we put him. We put him at guard and tackle. Earlier in his career I remember watching Baltimore and they were trying to block, they had a guy trying to block James Harrison, and it’s Marshal Yanda who was blocking him, and Harrison’s a darn good player. He was kind of good with us too. Put him somewhere and he’ll get the job done.

In that regard, Sean’s like that. Wherever we move him, he seems to handle it really well. He’s not 6’6″ and 330 pounds or any of that stuff, but he’s just a really good football player, really productive on the field. We make a living off players like that, really that type of guy. He’s got an unbelievable attitude.

But it’s a real credit going back to last year. His perseverance and sticking with it and working through some tough situations. Came back and just had an outstanding season. You can really be proud of what he’s done.

Q. Against Illinois in that first half, Jerminic (Smith) made some spectacular plays as a true freshman. How important is his development?

COACH FERENTZ: We lost a really good player in Tevaun, certainly. So that whole group, we’re going to need some guys to step up. We’re pretty young in that group. Jerminic is one of the guys, he and Adrian are guys we played as true freshmen. Looking down the road like we did with Tevaun and Drew Ott three years ago, looking at the future and maybe we need to get these guys involved. Not that they’ve played a lot, but involved in the offense on a daily basis and what have you.

So hopefully that experience will carry over and give them a chance to push forward. Wouldn’t expect him to play like a senior next year or Adrian the same way, but that’s going to be VandeBerg’s job and McCarron’s job to play like seniors. But hopefully that next group coming up, those guys have to be in that group, this will be a big spring for them and a good opportunity.

Q. He seems like he was able to stretch the field last year. Do you see that from practice?

COACH FERENTZ: Yeah, he does. He runs well and he’s got a good sense out there as a receiver. He really plays the position well. He’s tough, tough-minded and competes for the ball. He does a lot of good things. That was integral in our thinking as far as playing him last year. Hopefully the experience he got, again, it will help him progress here this spring.

Q. Now that you’ve sustained success, and also rebuilt, is it hard to be back in the sustaining mode?

COACH FERENTZ: Every year is new. We haven’t sustained so well at times. It really gets down to the same story. Every January you start over again. Typically you have some good players coming back, and you’ve lost some good players typically. It’s all about the opportunity for everybody. But it’s everybody at every level. The older guys, guys like CJ and Josey, if they play the way they played last year, it’s not going to be good enough. We need them to play better, and that’s true of all the guys that have played, and the guys that haven’t played have to deal with the guys we’ve just talked about. Jerminic and Adrian have to step in and be able to play a role.

We’ve got to have younger guys supporting those guys and moving along because you just never know when somebody’s going to get called into action. There are a lot of moving parts, but it’s a new challenge every year, for sure. But we’ve got new opportunities as well.

Q. I know you have to wait for the NCAA’s bureaucratic schedule, but whether or not they approve Ott, how has he looked in his rehab, whether it’s for you guys one more year or the next level?

COACH FERENTZ: I don’t know if I can pinpoint. I think he’ll be ready in camp, be ready this summer. He’s working at it really hard. For him the toughest part is not knowing. It’s like anything in life, if you don’t know where you’re going and what the future is, that’s always a tough thing to deal with.

But it doesn’t affect his rehab. He’s doing a great job and working hard. I saw him this morning. He’s in training. He’s doing more and more each day. The good news for him, he’s got a good future whichever direction it goes. Several of the guys mentioned him yesterday. They’ve got him on their radar certainly.

So the question they have, do we use a draft pick? Do we try to get him as a free agent, that type of thing? I think he’s a great investment. A heck of a football player and heck of a leader. If we get him back, that would add current leadership as well as a really good football player. But it could go either way, and we’re going to wish him well no matter what happens here.

Q. You have a 6’8″ defensive end, 6’7″ defensive end and you have a 6’5″ coming in. Is that a change in philosophy?

COACH FERENTZ: No, not necessarily, but we have a couple potential rebounders for sure. We have upgraded from Nate Meyer if it’s on the basketball front. I don’t think Nate would be a very good point guard based on what I know about Nate. He’s more about power forward. They don’t use those terms anymore, it’s all one, two, three, four, five. But, anyway, it’s not by design necessarily.

Matt Nelson’s a guy we really liked and wanted to recruit, felt the same way about Anthony and they happened to be linear-type players. But good players are good players and we’ll try to recruit anybody that we think is a good player.

Q. What have you seen from Matt’s development?

COACH FERENTZ: I thought he got better. It’s not the same story but similar from the tackles a year ago. We were watching behind the scenes, knowing Nate was graduating for sure and Drew Ott was injured, so Parker got thrown in there. But in some ways we were looking at those two guys like we were Boettger and Boone Myers a year ago. Just watching and seeing how they progressed and knowing they were going to have to be in there.

I think Matt’s done well with every turn. Every phase of the program he’s done well. He had good off-season. He tested well a week and a half ago. He’s worked hard. He’s tough minded and I’m anxious to see him out there. He’s, I think, a really good young prospect for us.

Q. It’s been four months now since Drew said he filed paperwork for this thing. Is there something wrong when it takes that long?

COACH FERENTZ: I’m not going to make judgment on that. It’s just, yeah, it’s really hard to put a finger on. It’s what it is. We’ll bide our time. Everybody’s working hard on it. You have to get the right people all together and that type of thing.

Q. Do you expect it here any day now? Do you have any idea?

COACH FERENTZ: I think probably within weeks here. The clock is kind of ticking a little bit too because the NFL people are at some point going to make a move too. I would imagine they’d want to bring him in for physicals and those types of things. He got checked at the combine. He got an exemption for that. So that gave him a baseline. But if they’re going to ask a guy to join their team, they’re going to want to know where he is physically. We’re still probably a couple weeks away, but clock is running right now.

Q. A kicker from Central Michigan? With him in and the walk-ons you guys often for kicker/punter will that be it or are there more bodies that you might want to add to that?

COACH FERENTZ: Yeah, first thing, I can only speak about players that sign national tenders, letters of intent, so I’ll leave it at that. But at the same time that’s one area that we don’t talk about much, but we lost two senior specialists, a punter and a placekicker so we’ve got work to do there. We’ve had guys on campus that we think are moving along.

We talked about Matt Nelson. But we’re also open to trying to help our football team anyway we can. If there is opportunity and somebody’s interested in, we’re certainly eager to talk to them about that and see where it all goes.

Q. I’m looking at four names at linebacker we haven’t seen much. Is that where you like to see these guys now?

COACH FERENTZ: You always look for a silver lining and that is one. If a good player is out, other guys are going to get an opportunity to go out and work at maybe a higher level than they would have. And players look different sometimes when they’re with the first team than they do with the second team. So if there is good news, it’s going to give us a chance to look at guys a little harder, they’re all good football players. We like what we’ve seen thus far. This will be a good chance to evaluate them.

Q. They weren’t on there before. Did they do something to rise up there?

COACH FERENTZ: No, it’s the best of who is left standing. Angelo and Nick are guys that we believe are good prospects. Red-shirted last year and they’ll hopefully have a chance to develop here in the next 15 days.

Q. How’s Akrum Wadley’s off-season progress been?

COACH FERENTZ: He’s made progress. Wadley is 189, 190 somewhere in that ballpark, and it’s been consistent, so that’s a positive.

Q. There was a hunger around here last year given the performance of the team, how do you recreate that?

COACH FERENTZ: Those are the challenges that come. If you have a tough year, two weeks ago having a tough ending like we did last year, you respond to it or you get in the fetal position and let people run you over. Now the other challenge is how do you handle a little bit of success? But, again, it gets back to the point that a lot of guys that were key players in that success aren’t here anymore. They’ve left collectively and individually, so it’s a new opportunity for us.

The one good thing not every year but for most years over the last 15 at least, we’ve had a chance to have a good, competitive football team. There are a lot of things that go into it. Some you can’t control, but the things you can control, that’s the key. You really have to do that.

As an athlete or a coach, you have to look at it in the light of it’s a new year. We had our banquet a couple weeks ago… you love to honor the team and all that, but it’s like, hey, it’s 2016. We need to move on. So that’s kind of got to be our mindset. We just got to realize we don’t have any debt right now, but we don’t have any credit either. Two years ago or 15 years ago, that’s not going to help us this year.

Q. You’ve offered assistants multi-year contracts over the last few years, do you see that as a benefit?

COACH FERENTZ: Yeah, that’s probably an individual decision. I learned this when I was an assistant in the ’80s, the best thing is to be in a program that has stability. We’ve been through two head coaches here since ’78. That was one thing I always felt pretty good about coaching here. We did have contracts in the ’80s, maybe we did.

I don’t think the world’s changed that much whether it’s the NFL, high school or college. If you’re in a good stable environment, good stable place, that is probably the most important thing.

Q. Lot of your divisional competitors have had a lot of change. What’s kind of your assessment of that and having to compete against?

COACH FERENTZ: The world is changing. First of all, Bill Cubit’s a guy I’ve known for a long time. I’ve got a lot of respect for Bill. I’m sure he knew back when he agreed to terms with them that it was a little bit of a tenuous situation. I’m sure he knew that. He’s a tremendous person and tremendous coach. I’m sure he did an outstanding job in what appeared to be a tough situation.

Lovie Smith I’ve only met once, but outstanding guy, outstanding coach, and very well respected by everybody in the industry. It’s just the nature of the world we live in. If we looked around the country last year, just last year in itself in college football is different from any year I remember from that standpoint. Going back to stability, it’s just something I appreciate. There’s no guarantees in life in any realm, but to work in a stable environment, it’s a good thing, I think. To me it’s productive for having success. I allude to the Steelers and keep going back to them and they’ve been pretty good.

Q. Will you use Desmond King the same at last year?

COACH FERENTZ: Yeah, I think so. That’s our plan. The biggest thing was to allow him to do more on special teams early. It was productive. He likes doing that, and that was a factor in a couple of games. So that’s of our plan right now. I don’t know if he’ll get as many balls thrown his direction, but that’s the way it goes.

Q. Would you use him on offense and consider it?

COACH FERENTZ: I haven’t thought about that. We’ll have to take that to the drawing board.

Q. We saw a lot of Jonathan Parker using his speed as a freshman, didnâ?^TMt see a lot of him last year, how is his development coming?

COACH FERENTZ: We talked about receivers, and he’s part of that group, certainly. I would call last year a developmental year for him. He didn’t get a lot of touches in game situations. But like I talked about the two freshmen, you’ve got a lot of quality work at that position. It was new to him. Every position is different, so there is certainly a lot of learning going on. We feel like he’s improved, and we’re all, as a staff, eager to see him on the field in the next 15 practices, because players in college tend to improve as they’re doing things right.

He works hard. He’s got a great attitude. So I think he’s obviously got good speed and good talent, so hopefully he can hold us off there.

Q. Did you anticipate Marshall Koehn running a 4.6?

COACH FERENTZ: We knew he was fast. We don’t time our guys in 40s, so I don’t know if I would have predicted that. I don’t know that I wouldn’t have. I’m not surprised. He’s really fast. He’s really fast. Plus he got paid for it, that’s even better.

Q. What’s Kyle Terlouw’s status?

COACH FERENTZ: I should have mentioned that. Kyle decided not to return for his fifth year here.

Q. Seems like right now with recruiting there are a lot more resources allocated. You guys changed your whole structure a couple years ago. Do you see that as a trend that’s going to continue to grow and grow as far as money and resources?

COACH FERENTZ: Yeah, I guess. That’s kind of the nature of the world right now. It seems that everything’s rising in terms of cost. But I don’t know how our numbers came out this year. But I think in the big scheme of things we don’t do things really accessibly, I don’t think. We’re not over the top in any one area. For us it’s about finding the right players, right fit. Hopefully they gravitate to what it is that we’re trying to promote. The things I mentioned earlier, being guys of good character, guys that are serious about getting their degrees. They’re working hard during their careers, four- and five-year careers how they can improve as football players. That’s what we’re looking for probably like everyone else.

We go about it in a practical way. Not over the top. But there is cost involved certainly any time you travel.

Q. When you see some of that going on nationally with Gene Chizik showing up in a limo sometimes (Indiscernible). You see some things that are excessive. How does that make you feel?

COACH FERENTZ: We try to be as honest as we can and straight-forward with what we offer here. We think this is a great opportunity for a young guy to come into. But we’re not selling the glam our part of it because they’ll probably be disappointed if that’s what they’re in it for.

What we’re trying to do is sell the things that we believe are important. Good education, good experience in football. We are going to coach them and demand of them and expect them to grow and improve and basically just give their best.

I know every guy’s not going to give their best in music appreciation, I was guilty of that in my freshman year in college. But doing things right and trying to push forward. There is some glamour and glitz. We have a really nice building. But I would also say this is a functional building and it was built with function in mind. There are no waterfalls or anything that’s non-functional in the building.

That’s how we operate. That’s our personality. If it resonates, great. If it doesn’t, then it’s probably going to work out anyway. Ultimately the player’s probably not going to be happy here. It’s a bad marriage that way.

Q. You didn’t know Marshall was that fast, but you knew he was fast, is that the reason for the increase in fake field goals last year?

COACH FERENTZ: It’s part of the reason he was involved, certainly. You don’t get a guy like that — he was a really good athlete in high school, multi-sport athlete. If you have a guy with that type of athletic ability and can feature that a little bit, it just makes sense. He did a good job of that.

Q. Related to the recruiting, do you have a timeline for Kelvin’s spot now?

COACH FERENTZ: I think we’re probably three or four weeks away from that, and we’re in good shape there and feel good about it.

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