Kirk Ferentz News Conference Transcript | Sept. 16

KIRK FERENTZ: Like always, will look back at Saturday real quickly and then move forward here. First of all, pleased to say that as far as we know, the injured player, TJ McGee, is doing fine. He was able to travel back there Sunday and everything turned out fine. Obviously, good to get positive news on that front.

I thought overall, pretty much what I said Saturday night, I thought our effort was pretty good as a team overall. Passing game was a little bit better. We still have areas to improve on there, and ball placement, drops, those types of things, a couple protection issues we're going to have to work through.

Defensively, I thought we played hard. A little disappointed we got thrown out there on the field in a tough situation and couldn't keep them out of the end zone afterwards, so it was a little bit of a disappointment in terms of response.

Then we're still missing way too many tackles right now, which hopefully we'll get better with that as we move forward, but some things there.

Then special teams, obviously some mishaps in the field goal and PAT area. Anytime you can survive a punt block in a game, that's rare, so definitely need to get that cleaned up.

Then on the positive front, the return game was just outstanding. We just had a big night, but blocking was good, everybody was working for Kaden, and that's certainly a good development for us there.

I want do congratulate Kaden on being the Big Ten Special Teams Player of the Week. His career, now he's has a rushing touchdown, receiving touchdown and then both a kick and punt return touchdown. Puts him in a pretty exclusive category, that's for sure. Well deserved; he's a high-effort guy, really does a great job and has been doing that.

Then also, I was remiss not to mention Mark Gronowski sitting the record, 51 wins, so that's pretty rarefied air there, too. Happy for him as well.

Shifting forward now with Rutgers, it's the same four captains again with Ethan Hurkett, Koen Entringer, Logan Jones and Mark Gronowski. Those guys will be the captains leading us into it.

Vander Zee is still out, and then Xavier Williams was injured on Saturday night, so he'll be out, probably out at least a couple weeks. He'll be fine, but we're going to lose him, unfortunately.

Positive front, looks like Kamari has got a chance to be back. He worked yesterday and today and looked fine, so hopefully we'll get him ready to roll in the game as well.

Always good to start Big Ten play. Certainly it's a different feel. Got a little taste a couple weeks ago in terms of the intensity and all that, but it's certainly a different feel. Big challenge going to Rutgers, short week against a good opponent, so we're going to have to be really focused. Don't have much time to waste here.

Rutgers are a good football team, 3-0 right now, and they're extremely well-coached in all three phases. I have a lot of respect for Greg Schiano. Greg has been there, this is his second tour of duty, and both times he's been there he's done a great job with the program and the teams that he coaches. It's been extremely consistent.

When you look across at what they do, they're very sound in all areas. They play physical football. Just admire the way they do things. They have an identity in all three areas as well. That's a good thing, but it's also a challenge.

If you look at their offensive side of the football, the coordinator there has been at a couple places in the Big Ten. He's an excellent coach, they have an experienced quarterback. We've seen him at a different school, and he's playing at a high level right now, second year at Rutgers, and made some real improvement from last year. Doing a really nice job throwing the football.

They have a good offensive line. Pat Flaherty was with us 20 plus years ago and has done a really good job with their offensive line. Got a talented group of receivers, three good tight ends, and then their running backs, it seems like they always have somebody who's tough and hits it up in there, and that's certainly the case right now.

Defensively, a big physical group, play a front that's very similar to us, and some of what we saw last week. They're a big physical group up front, and same thing with their DBs. Their DBs are involved in the run game. Their safeties do a good job there. We're going to have to do a good job trying to account for those guys.

Then special teams, you can tell they invest time and really work at it, and they're good in all those areas. Had a couple blocked punts last week, punter is good and the kicker is good, so they have good players as well on that front. Just a good all-around football team.

Kid Captain this week is is Liam Bartleson, a young man from Altoona. Two days into his life he experienced a lot of seizures and as it turns out he has a very rare form of epilepsy. At times he would have as many as 200 seizures a day, which is amazing that they can track that.

But long story short, people with this rare condition don't last past a year typically, but he's an 11-year-old now and is just doing a great job, and the people that have been treating him have done a great job of finding new treatments, discovering things, which obviously have helped Liam but also helped kids all over the world.

He's definitely defied the odds, and we'll be thinking about him and his family members certainly on Saturday when we take the field.

In closing, exciting to get into Big Ten play. Got nine weeks ahead right now, and again we have a big challenge with a short week, playing a good team, and walking into a tough environment, it's going to be a Blackout there, and expect the place to be pretty electric that way.

A big challenge for our football team. It will be a test of our maturity and ability to focus, and hopefully we'll be at our best Friday night, but it's going to be a tough challenge.

Q. Thinking back to the Maryland game last year, Kamari Moulton had a 68-yard TD run, gave you some explosion in the run game, something that you've lacked so far. Do you think that can help in his return? And in conjunction, Nathan McNeil every time we've seen him looks really good to us. You've seen him more than we have; what's keeping him off the rotation right now?

KIRK FERENTZ: Right there, his youth. He's a little new to the scene, got here in January. I've said before, just a young man we are really impressed with. He's focused and steady, solid on the field, in the classroom. Everything he's done since he's been on campus is really impressive, so we're high on him, but we just want to bring him along at a pace that's best for him hopefully. He has real potential.

But there's some things he's still got to work on, too, and he knows that. So he'll do a good job there.

Getting Kamari back is always a good thing. Anytime you get a good player back, it's a good thing, and we think Kamari is a real good player. He is capable of breaking some longer runs, and if he can do that, that would be a great thing. This is a tough defense to do that against. These guys have done a really good job.

Getting a good quality player back is really helpful. Unfortunately, we lost Xavier. I'd rather not do a prisoner exchange, quite frankly. I'd rather go 2 for none instead of 1 for 1. But the good news about Xavier is he'll be fine, but it's just going to take a little time.

Q. Kirk, two-part question. What's the status of Jarriett Buie? I know he hasn't played yet this season. Is there any update you can give us on him?

KIRK FERENTZ: I can go back to January. He's just had some soft tissue stuff that we can't quite get right. I don't think it's anything major right now, but it's been enough to keep him out, and it's hard as a receiver if you can't run, and that's kind of been the issue.

Q. After looking back at the film in the passing game, were you pleased with the progression? I know there were some drops and stuff that you still want to clean up, but do you see this as a foundational piece that you can build on over the next several weeks?

KIRK FERENTZ: Yeah, it's a step forward, and I think three weeks into it, I think there's been progress each week, especially what we see in practice. The challenge we had two weeks ago, it's a really -- it's a unique defensive scheme, unique coverages. Not a lot of clean looks. They do a good job not giving you clean looks.

I thought we took a step forward. Still things we can get better at, ball placement at times could be better, and then if you get your hands on a ball, you'd sure like to think we can come up with it, and if we're going to move forward, we have to do a little better job with both those things.

Had a protection buster, too, that we're going to have to get better at that as well because negative yardage is just tough to overcome. No matter how it comes to you, it's a bad thing.

Q. On the blocked punt, when you look back at it, what did you feel like broke down there?

KIRK FERENTZ: Basically it was just a technique thing. They did a good job, first of all, with their scheme, which was not a surprise to us. But we just have to execute better. I don't want to call it a routine play, but it's a basic look that we just didn't execute, and to that point, I've made the point with our guys, sometimes you hear the term "routine plays," and there is no such thing as a routine play, and I'm driving into work Sunday morning, sounds like that was the big play in the Notre Dame game was a dropped PAT. The holder dropped it and it ends up being a critical play. You never know how it's going to turn out, but it impacted the game.

You can't take anything for granted, especially in the kicking game. That's the two things that we do work on, both in spring and in camp, besides in season, spend a lot of time on the punt game and spend a lot of time on PAT and field goals. We don't do anything in the return game other than individual drills, but we don't do any team stuff in that, but we do in those two areas, and there's a reason for that, because everything starts with protection in the kicking game.

Q. Wondering, after Saturday's game, you set the record and everything. You probably received some messages from people, notes, phone calls, texts. Anything meaningful or interesting or fun that you heard from somebody that maybe you hadn't heard from for a while?

KIRK FERENTZ: They're all meaningful to me. I don't want to say problematic, but it takes a while to get through all that stuff. But happy about it, and another 10 days we'll be able to maybe just enjoy it a little bit.

But right now it's on to Rutgers. It really is. But it was a really special night certainly in a lot of areas, and enjoyed the evening, but it was a quick night, too. Whatever time we got home, it was approaching midnight, and we had to get up and get going here and need to be ready this week.

Q. I know drops were mentioned a little bit ago. It seems, whether you guys have a good game offensively or a tough game, that that has been a continued trend. How do you address it in practice? Do you talk about it with Coach Budmayr? How do you address it?

KIRK FERENTZ: Believe it or not, we coach not to drop it, emphasize catching. I always joke with the guys, that's why they call it wide receivers, not wide droppers. There's a name, why you call them wide receivers.

The objective is to catch the football. It's easier said than done sometimes. Sometimes it might be ball placement, sometimes a little bit behind, a little high, a little low, but you've got to flip it around, too, the quarterbacks have a tough job, and it's not always clean back there.

Everybody is just doing a little bit better, and a lot of times just concentration, and then sometimes I think guys try too hard and start fighting it. I don't know anything about throwing a football, but I know this, if you throw a baseball and try to steer it or aim it or try to overthrow it, the ball tends to sail on you.

That's why practice is so important, just concentrating, developing good habits in practice, and hopefully through game experience, it just keeps getting better as we go along. That's really every phase of our team right now. Hopefully we're going to get a little bit better every week here as we move forward.

Q. Two weeks ago you mentioned your two high school coaches having a big impact on you in your football career. Could you expand on the impact they had and kind of who those two men are?

KIRK FERENTZ: Well, Joe Moore is the most obvious, and prior to him was Bill Merritt, who was my first high school coach. He made a compliment to me in 10th grade. When I was in 10th grade, I got called up to the varsity; somebody got hurt, and he said something nice to me during practice, which he never said nice things to anybody.

So anyway, it really made me feel good. That's kind of when I decided I wanted to get into coaching and teaching maybe, and he was fired in a very controversial way, at least I would say so, and not to belabor the point, but it was kind of a political deal. I was convinced, like, this was the end of civilization.

Then Joe Moore ended up coming to our high school, and ironically he's a person that probably impacted me as much as anybody. Really took me in and allowed me to be his GA in 1980, his first year as a line coach at Pitt. Until his death, we almost talked daily.

Just like a lot of people in a lot of areas, a lot of times there are stories why you end up doing what you do, and I don't think anybody gets too far down the road without having people that really help them and invest in them and that type of thing.

A lot of guys on our team could tell you stories about someone in their lives in football that probably impacted their lives, and probably most coaches could, too.

Q. You mentioned the missed tackles but you have a defensive unit that's giving up under three and a half yards a play, I think third overall in total defense. Doesn't seem like they're letting a ton of guys behind them, I think just two explosive plays, so what's it tell you about your defense through three games that there's stuff to clean up but they're playing pretty good?

KIRK FERENTZ: Yeah, the good news is the guys are hustling overall, and so if somebody did miss a tackle, somebody else was there to close in on it and what have you. Those little things -- win, lose or draw, there's always something to be corrected and some areas that we can get better at.

I can go through the offensive line play in probably even more detail. But just aiming points and little things that if we can get those down better -- because the competition is going to keep getting tougher here starting this week.

We're going to play in a lot of close games moving forward just like we did two weeks ago, and those little things really tend to make a difference. It's like a PAT; you just never know which play is going to be the one. But the old axiom is true; usually there's five, six, seven plays you'd go back and look at. If you could change those, it would really impact the game. But as a player and a coach, you never know when that's going to be; that's why you've got to be at your best, and we've got to make sure we're working on getting better.

Q. We were just talking about coaches who have an impact, and KJ Parker we were speaking with today, and Matt Bowen we found was one of his coaches in high school. He said that he never heard Matt raise his voice. I wonder if that surprised you to hear that about Matt Bowen, and how much it means to you as a coach to have so many of your guys off doing that exact same thing, where even locally you've got Chandler and Kampman and Austin Blythe, lots of guys you've produced who have become coaches at the high school level, how much that means to you as a coach.

KIRK FERENTZ: I think it's awesome, and all those guys you mentioned, I could go down a long list of guys, but the thing I feel good about with that is I know those guys are going to be good with the kids they work with, and that's the most important thing. They'll have good impacts, positive impacts. We're all trying to win games, and that's how we all get evaluated, but it goes so much beyond that.

That's pretty neat, and I'm not surprised KJ talking about Matt, and that's one of the reasons KJ is here. Matt mentioned him years ago, and that got our attention because Matt doesn't call up and give us 12 names. He says, this is a young man that's really special, and KJ is, he's a great young person.

But yeah, Matt not raising his voice doesn't surprise me at all. Matt is pretty cerebral guy, and I think we all have to do things within our personality. That fits his, but what he says I'm sure has a lot of value.

I only got to work with Matt directly one year as a player, but obviously we've remained close since that time, and he's just a tremendous person, a great father, really good professional. Went to journalism school at DePaul when he was playing in the NFL, and he's putting that to use now. He's really a good journalist but also a pretty good coach apparently. Those guys win a lot of games, and they don't have a lot of kids in that school. It's not a big school.

Q. I think I'm pretty sure you coached against Greg Schiano when you were in the NFL. I don't know if you remember that.

KIRK FERENTZ: Mm-hmm, Bears game. After I got hired here actually. Yeah. I think we got beat, too. Thanks.

Q. It seems like you guys have a lot of mutual respect for each other. I'm curious when he kind of jumped on to your radar and what you've thought of him over the years.

KIRK FERENTZ: Greg went to Bucknell and had some experience at Penn State, and yeah, we practiced against the Bears at one point. We kind of overlapped a little bit, some mutual friends, that type of thing. But I've always admired him as a coach.

I think it was the year after we took this job I think he went to Miami as a coordinator and then went to Rutgers as the head coach first time around. Just watch the way he does things, and then Dallas played for him down in Tampa when he was in Tampa. Guys on some of our younger staff, Rob Smith, who's now the coordinator, is a young guy that joined him. Just a lot of respect for the way he goes about things, and to me -- over the years, you develop a feeling for programs and how they do things, and to me, Greg has just done a great job of setting the tempo there.

I can tell you from being out in that part of the country, Rutgers is not an easy place to coach, or it wasn't, at least, when he went there, and he really built them into a legitimate team. Had that big game against Louisville, whatever year that was, like '07, '08, something like that, and since he's been back, he's done a great job there, too.

Now we get four or five days here to look at their film every day. Unfortunately they're doing too good a job. A lot of respect for Greg, and he's a tremendous person on top of it, most importantly.

Q. Is there any chance Reece Vander Zee comes back before the bye week against Indiana?

KIRK FERENTZ: We're not counting on it, but we'll see. We'll see what it looks like next week, but not counting on it based on what I know. But I think beyond that, it looks pretty good. We'll see.

Q. Talking with Mark and some of the receivers, it sounds like you guys have planned for a team to present you guys with some sort of defensive scheme and then they come out and throw you something completely different in a couple of these games. How have you noticed this offense try to adapt to that in addition to some of the drops and some of the other struggles that this team has been working through the last couple weeks?

KIRK FERENTZ: Yeah, you just have to be prepared for everything. It almost feels like historically that's been the case with us. You think you're going to get one thing and then you get something else, for whatever reason.

I still go back to the year I was really entertained was '04. We couldn't run the ball at all. We were next to last in the NCAA. A lot of people played us like we were a running team, and it just amused me in some ways like do these guys watch film or not or even just look at the stats. You didn't even have to watch or film. So sometimes it is unpredictable.

But yeah, the other day they basically flipped their philosophy. I think part of your scheme and system, regardless of what it is, has to be flexible, and you've got to be able to adjust and adapt. That's really what ends up happening. That's what's going on during the course of a game typically after a while. Certainly you get a feel for how they're going to approach you, and then some people hang on to stuff for the second half.

You think you've got it figured out, and then boom, they give you a couple curve balls. That's part of the cat and mouse that goes on during the course of a game, obviously, and if you don't have a system that's got some flexibility, you're going to be in trouble.

Q. I saw that you recruited Kaliakmanis out of high school. Obviously seeing him at Minnesota, how does that familiarity help you guys this week, and what are some keys for your defense against him?

KIRK FERENTZ: Yeah, it doesn't hurt, but I think most guys when they go to college, it's such an area of growth and development. Really the story, I think, is the progress that he's made, which is typical of a good college player. Usually they get better each year.

He had some struggles four years ago, three years ago like any young player, but he's worked through it. He's really done a good job. He was a good player last year for them, but he's playing at a higher level right now if you look at his stats. It's significantly better right now, so he's playing his best football.

I think as a coach, Greg would probably tell you the same thing, that's what you're hoping for as guys get older, get more mature and get that game experience if they're benefiting from it, and he clearly is. He's done a nice job for them.

He's got a good supporting cast, too. They have good receivers, good skill guys, and they run the football well. It's going to be a big challenge for our defense. It's probably going to be the biggest one we've faced so far.

 

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