OPENING STATEMENT
Thank you guys for coming. It's good to be here four weeks into spring ball. It's a little easier than coming out week 1 and not having anything to talk about. We're 12 workouts in. Certainly we're making progress. We're improving. A lot of work left to be done before September 1st. But right now, pleased with the progress we're making.
With that, I'd open it up to questions.
Q. Where are you at running back?
BRIAN FERENTZ: Where are we at? We've got two guys back there that have carried the ball in games. I know we have two young guys that haven't. I think we feel confident that we have talented players, and I know we're inexperienced, but certainly not as inexperienced as we've been at other positions in the past. You've got both guys that have carried the ball in live action when it counted, not just in mop-up duty. So both guys have made plays for us in games, in tight ballgames. They just haven't made as many as maybe what we're used to bringing back the last few years.
I feel like a little bit unproven, but certainly not just an unknown.
Q. How do you feel about the development of the depth of your offensive line, and any guys that have kind of jumped up this spring?
BRIAN FERENTZ: You're always trying to build that depth. Where we're at right now, I don't think we're at seven or eight, which is where you'd like to be. Probably feel good about five or six guys, and with Levi missing time now, we're going to find out about some other guys. But the depth is never where you want it to be. Some guys have done a nice job this spring. Cole Banwart, especially, coming off of knee surgery, I feel like he's done a really nice job in his development, where he's at. Mark Kallenberger has done some good things for a young guy, young tackle, which really he's about the same age as one of the other tackles and a year younger than the other one, but he's certainly the young guy in the group right now, but he's done a nice job. I thought Levi Paulsen was doing good things before he had his injury. His brother Landan has done some nice things.
But as far as finding a six, seven, eight, I think we're still in flux and in that process.
Q. What do you look at in terms of is there a metric you look at to know if you're having a successful offense? Obviously points, but beyond that --
BRIAN FERENTZ: Points would be a good start, yeah.
Q. What do you look at when you try to --
BRIAN FERENTZ: You can look at a thousand things, but I think at the end of the day, what you're trying to do is make sure you're doing things you need to do to win ballgames, and if you look at the NCAA as a whole or if you look at the Big Ten Conference, and certainly we've done studies, and we've looked at all that information, some of the things are pretty obvious. What's important, points is one thing that's important, scoring offense. You want to talk about winning critical situations, whether it's in the red area, whether it's 3rd downs, or sometimes turnovers can be a misleading statistic. Obviously it's important to have a good turnover margin. Time of possession has been one thing that's kind of come up throughout probably the history of the game as something that's critical when you actually look at the numbers. It's not always as critical as you'd like.
I really think that a lot of it has to do with the ballgame you're playing in and the team you're playing against. You're going to play in certain games where certainly points are at a premium. You're going to play in other games where field position is at a premium. You're going to play in other games where time of possession is at a premium. But you're trying to balance all those things, so I think when you look at the end of the year, it's difficult to just point to just one thing and say, hey, this is the be-all-end-all. And this is going to sound cliché, and I know this is no fun to write about, but at the end of the day, the No. 1 metric we're looking at to figure out if we're where we need to be offensively is are we winning games or are we losing them.
Our job is to play complementary football. Like I said, each game is a little bit different. But certainly I think if you had to pick one thing, scoring offense is pretty important, just like I think the inverse of that, scoring defense is much more important than the yards you're giving up.
Q. You may have the exact same answer for this, but what at the end of the season in your mind would constitute a satisfying offensive season?
BRIAN FERENTZ: Yeah, did we maximize our potential as a football team. Did we win as many games as we'd like to win, and ultimately the goal of the program is to win the Big Ten Championship. To me I feel like if we win the Big Ten Championship, let's start with the Big Ten West, then we have a pretty good offense. I'm not really interested in what the numbers are, other than the wins and losses.
Q. Three years ago you were a play away from the national playoffs and your Big Ten Championship you spoke about. What do you need to do to get from here back to there?
BRIAN FERENTZ: What do we need to do? We need to be consistent. We need to execute at a high level. And I think we just need to get back to maximizing our ability, and if you look at that group, we had a pretty veteran group, and I know we had a new quarterback, but he had played. We had a lot of offensive linemen coming back. We had replaced two tackles. We had a pretty solid interior coming back, including a veteran center. So we felt like we were veteran there. We were veteran outside. We weren't necessarily veteran in the tailback room, but we had guys with experience that had played, and we had two really good tight ends that year. Both guys are playing in the National Football League.
We had a lot of talent, but more importantly, we maximized what we had that year. We played really tight, really together, and when the games were close, we found a way to win those games, and I don't know if there's a metric to measure that. I just think it comes down to playing good football and executing at the level you're capable of executing at, whatever that is. Each team is a little bit different.
Q. How cognizant are you of balance from a play calling perspective? On 3rd down especially, I looked at the two different years, and in 2016 when tight ends or fullbacks were on the field on 3rd down, you ran 45 of 47 times, whereas last year it was 57 of 80, and the same thing with passing. 74 out of 75 third down plays with 11 personnel in '16 were passes, whereas last year it was I think 73 of 98. So just you're running more in 11 and you're passing more out of other ones. Was that a goal of yours, something you strived for, or is that just the way it organically worked out?
BRIAN FERENTZ: You've confused me with a lot of those numbers at this point. (Laughter.)
I think I understand the gist of your question, and really it's kind of like the question Chad asked. It just varies by ballgame, and it varies by situation. I think if you look at our 3rd down numbers as a whole, that could be a little misleading. It may not tell the whole story because here's a good situation. It's overtime last year in the Northwestern game. They go down, they score a touchdown. So we take possession on the 25-yard line. Immediately you're in four-down territory, right? Field goal doesn't help you, you know you need to score a touchdown to prolong the game, extend the game. So when you look at a sequence like that from a play calling standpoint, really 3rd down doesn't happen until 4th down. So in some ways when we're in a four-down situation which we are fairly often, we try to be aggressive with our mentality and trying to score.
Some of those 3rd downs are probably more realistically 2nd-down type calls, and I just remember that sequence in particular because we were sitting at 3rd and 8 or 3rd and 7, and we felt like we had a good call on 4th and 4 or less, probably better call than we felt like we had on 4th and 7, so we hopped in the shotgun and we gave a slight passing look, but hammered the ball up in there, just to try to get three or four yards and get into a more manageable situation.
I don't know if it's fair to compare it year to year because I think the situations change. But certainly you want to try to run the ball a little bit on 3rd down if you can. It becomes difficult.
I think if you really broke it down and look at where those runs happened, a lot of them are in four-down type territory, or they're in 3rd and 16, and I don't think it takes a genius to know in play calling there's not many good calls. Sometimes you just want to protect the punt, as no fun as that sounds. You just don't want to do something dumb.
And if you look at the flipside of that, we threw four interceptions last year. Two of them came on 3rd and longs, and they were just -- they weren't good football plays, and we certainly would have been better off just taking a knee. So I think you've got to factor all those things in. You try to be as unpredictable and exciting as you can be to some extent, but at the end of the day, sometimes the most obvious call is the best call.
Thank you guys for coming. It's good to be here four weeks into spring ball. It's a little easier than coming out week 1 and not having anything to talk about. We're 12 workouts in. Certainly we're making progress. We're improving. A lot of work left to be done before September 1st. But right now, pleased with the progress we're making.
With that, I'd open it up to questions.
Q. Where are you at running back?
BRIAN FERENTZ: Where are we at? We've got two guys back there that have carried the ball in games. I know we have two young guys that haven't. I think we feel confident that we have talented players, and I know we're inexperienced, but certainly not as inexperienced as we've been at other positions in the past. You've got both guys that have carried the ball in live action when it counted, not just in mop-up duty. So both guys have made plays for us in games, in tight ballgames. They just haven't made as many as maybe what we're used to bringing back the last few years.
I feel like a little bit unproven, but certainly not just an unknown.
Q. How do you feel about the development of the depth of your offensive line, and any guys that have kind of jumped up this spring?
BRIAN FERENTZ: You're always trying to build that depth. Where we're at right now, I don't think we're at seven or eight, which is where you'd like to be. Probably feel good about five or six guys, and with Levi missing time now, we're going to find out about some other guys. But the depth is never where you want it to be. Some guys have done a nice job this spring. Cole Banwart, especially, coming off of knee surgery, I feel like he's done a really nice job in his development, where he's at. Mark Kallenberger has done some good things for a young guy, young tackle, which really he's about the same age as one of the other tackles and a year younger than the other one, but he's certainly the young guy in the group right now, but he's done a nice job. I thought Levi Paulsen was doing good things before he had his injury. His brother Landan has done some nice things.
But as far as finding a six, seven, eight, I think we're still in flux and in that process.
Q. What do you look at in terms of is there a metric you look at to know if you're having a successful offense? Obviously points, but beyond that --
BRIAN FERENTZ: Points would be a good start, yeah.
Q. What do you look at when you try to --
BRIAN FERENTZ: You can look at a thousand things, but I think at the end of the day, what you're trying to do is make sure you're doing things you need to do to win ballgames, and if you look at the NCAA as a whole or if you look at the Big Ten Conference, and certainly we've done studies, and we've looked at all that information, some of the things are pretty obvious. What's important, points is one thing that's important, scoring offense. You want to talk about winning critical situations, whether it's in the red area, whether it's 3rd downs, or sometimes turnovers can be a misleading statistic. Obviously it's important to have a good turnover margin. Time of possession has been one thing that's kind of come up throughout probably the history of the game as something that's critical when you actually look at the numbers. It's not always as critical as you'd like.
I really think that a lot of it has to do with the ballgame you're playing in and the team you're playing against. You're going to play in certain games where certainly points are at a premium. You're going to play in other games where field position is at a premium. You're going to play in other games where time of possession is at a premium. But you're trying to balance all those things, so I think when you look at the end of the year, it's difficult to just point to just one thing and say, hey, this is the be-all-end-all. And this is going to sound cliché, and I know this is no fun to write about, but at the end of the day, the No. 1 metric we're looking at to figure out if we're where we need to be offensively is are we winning games or are we losing them.
Our job is to play complementary football. Like I said, each game is a little bit different. But certainly I think if you had to pick one thing, scoring offense is pretty important, just like I think the inverse of that, scoring defense is much more important than the yards you're giving up.
Q. You may have the exact same answer for this, but what at the end of the season in your mind would constitute a satisfying offensive season?
BRIAN FERENTZ: Yeah, did we maximize our potential as a football team. Did we win as many games as we'd like to win, and ultimately the goal of the program is to win the Big Ten Championship. To me I feel like if we win the Big Ten Championship, let's start with the Big Ten West, then we have a pretty good offense. I'm not really interested in what the numbers are, other than the wins and losses.
Q. Three years ago you were a play away from the national playoffs and your Big Ten Championship you spoke about. What do you need to do to get from here back to there?
BRIAN FERENTZ: What do we need to do? We need to be consistent. We need to execute at a high level. And I think we just need to get back to maximizing our ability, and if you look at that group, we had a pretty veteran group, and I know we had a new quarterback, but he had played. We had a lot of offensive linemen coming back. We had replaced two tackles. We had a pretty solid interior coming back, including a veteran center. So we felt like we were veteran there. We were veteran outside. We weren't necessarily veteran in the tailback room, but we had guys with experience that had played, and we had two really good tight ends that year. Both guys are playing in the National Football League.
We had a lot of talent, but more importantly, we maximized what we had that year. We played really tight, really together, and when the games were close, we found a way to win those games, and I don't know if there's a metric to measure that. I just think it comes down to playing good football and executing at the level you're capable of executing at, whatever that is. Each team is a little bit different.
Q. How cognizant are you of balance from a play calling perspective? On 3rd down especially, I looked at the two different years, and in 2016 when tight ends or fullbacks were on the field on 3rd down, you ran 45 of 47 times, whereas last year it was 57 of 80, and the same thing with passing. 74 out of 75 third down plays with 11 personnel in '16 were passes, whereas last year it was I think 73 of 98. So just you're running more in 11 and you're passing more out of other ones. Was that a goal of yours, something you strived for, or is that just the way it organically worked out?
BRIAN FERENTZ: You've confused me with a lot of those numbers at this point. (Laughter.)
I think I understand the gist of your question, and really it's kind of like the question Chad asked. It just varies by ballgame, and it varies by situation. I think if you look at our 3rd down numbers as a whole, that could be a little misleading. It may not tell the whole story because here's a good situation. It's overtime last year in the Northwestern game. They go down, they score a touchdown. So we take possession on the 25-yard line. Immediately you're in four-down territory, right? Field goal doesn't help you, you know you need to score a touchdown to prolong the game, extend the game. So when you look at a sequence like that from a play calling standpoint, really 3rd down doesn't happen until 4th down. So in some ways when we're in a four-down situation which we are fairly often, we try to be aggressive with our mentality and trying to score.
Some of those 3rd downs are probably more realistically 2nd-down type calls, and I just remember that sequence in particular because we were sitting at 3rd and 8 or 3rd and 7, and we felt like we had a good call on 4th and 4 or less, probably better call than we felt like we had on 4th and 7, so we hopped in the shotgun and we gave a slight passing look, but hammered the ball up in there, just to try to get three or four yards and get into a more manageable situation.
I don't know if it's fair to compare it year to year because I think the situations change. But certainly you want to try to run the ball a little bit on 3rd down if you can. It becomes difficult.
I think if you really broke it down and look at where those runs happened, a lot of them are in four-down type territory, or they're in 3rd and 16, and I don't think it takes a genius to know in play calling there's not many good calls. Sometimes you just want to protect the punt, as no fun as that sounds. You just don't want to do something dumb.
And if you look at the flipside of that, we threw four interceptions last year. Two of them came on 3rd and longs, and they were just -- they weren't good football plays, and we certainly would have been better off just taking a knee. So I think you've got to factor all those things in. You try to be as unpredictable and exciting as you can be to some extent, but at the end of the day, sometimes the most obvious call is the best call.