---
These are rough quotes and notes from Kirk Ferentz's weekly press conference. We'll have the full transcript a little bit later today.
---
Opening Statement
Good afternoon. Obviously good to see everybody. I'll just make a couple remarks about last week and then we'll move on to this Saturday.
Certainly it was good to come off the field 1-0 and get a win get against a good team and quality opponent. As I said the other day, there's nothing easy about winning football games, so just happy for our players. We've got a lot of work to do now.
I think the big thing is our guys played with good effort out there, certainly with a lot of things to correct, and that's what we're facing right now, trying to do a good job there.
As I said, our veterans did a really good job of leading our football team the other day, and that's going to be imperative if we're going to be a good football team. I thought the younger guys did a solid job out there. There are a lot of things that we're going to have to work on and try to improve, but it was a good first time out for a lot of those guys, and first time for a lot of our players playing in front of fans.
Somebody reminded me this morning, Tory Taylor, just to mention a guy who's a good football player and had a good season last year, first time he's played in front of a crowd. Some little things that you kind of forget about.
The big thing right now is just seeing how much we can do to improve in some areas, make corrections from the game Saturday, and like always, it's always a race against time.
Every team faces that, and that's one of the challenges that we're working through right now besides getting ready for a top-quality opponent.
Just a quick aside, too, I am happy for Riley Moss. He's gotten a lot of nice honors as a result of his effort last week, and he'd be the first to say it was a really good team effort, but certainly he had an outstanding game and I am really happy for him.
You know, just shifting gears now looking forward to the Iowa State game, first of all, just general comment here, it's I think a great thing for our entire state. It's a game that's been really heated and a great rivalry through the years for a long, long time.
You think about what it is right now, first of all, it's a tough contest for the people involved, the players and coaches. Tough preparations I'm sure on both sides. I know it is at this end.
You just think about the fact that our state, 3 million plus, has two top-quality Power Five programs. Throw UNI in there and then a lot of good Division II and Division III programs, as well, it's really amazing. I don't know if there's another state that can say that. I think it's all good for everybody.
I've always thought this series is a good thing for our state just in general. This is one week where people in the state, a lot of people are talking about football, which is a good thing for college football fans certainly.
When it comes to Iowa State, they're not only a talented team but they are very experienced, and on top of that really well-coached, certainly since Coach Campbell and his staff have gotten into Ames. They've just done a wonderful job building a great program. I think we've all witnessed that last year, over the years but certainly last year, and they're off to a good start right now.
As I said, they've got really experienced players. They've got all the right players at the critical positions. A lot of guys with very deserved honors. It's going to be a big, big challenge for us.
Offensively you can start wherever you want to start. They've got a running back that had close to 1,600 yards last year. He's an outstanding football player, a couple very talented and outstanding tight ends, veteran offensive line, good group of receivers, and then the quarterback has done a great job for quite a while, and he certainly is their leader on that offensive team, and they've got a great scheme. It's a tough preparation for us that way.
Defensively, again, it's a very unique preparation. They've played good defense; basically once they got settled and got established, they've been playing good defense for quite a while in a conference that maybe that's not as common. So to me I think that's really helped separate them.
Their guys play extremely hard. It's a unique preparation, as I mentioned, and they've got a lot of veterans there, and that outside linebacker is a tremendous player. The safety is an outstanding player, but they've got a lot of other guys that do a great job, as well. Again, just a challenge there.
Then special teams, really well-coached, play hard, very, very productive. So really it's just a very big challenge for us right now. All you've got to do is look at the last three times that we've played, and they've all been basically one-possession games that went right down to the wire. I know a couple years ago it ended up being 10 points, but we had a score late. At that point it was a three-point game, I believe.
It's just a tough football team that we're playing, and big challenge for us.
Our captains are the same guys. We have Tyler Linderbaum, Jack Koerner, Matt Hankins and Spencer Petras will lead us out there. Kyler Schott is still out, and we'll see what it looks like next week or the week after, but he's still out. Other than that we're in pretty good shape.
Our kid captain this week is Cece Hoover, who's an eight-year-old young lady from Urbandale and we are happy that she'll be our kid captain this week.
Last thing I'll say, I think it's just great after a year's hiatus from this -- last year was an unusual year in a lot of regards, so it's good to have the series back. I think it's great for the entire state and it will certainly be exciting on Saturday. I'll throw it out for questions.
Last edited:
