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Why Great Leaders Make Big Mistakes: A Study of Iowa Coach Kirk Ferentz

SanMateoHawk

Scout Team
Oct 21, 2002
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I posted this on LinkedIn for a non-Hawk fan audience. Thought the board would enjoy it:

One of the great things about sports is that success is quantifiable and precise. Michael Jordan is not considered one of the best athletes of all time because he had the respect of his teammates or because he wrote a lengthy treatise on winning. His reputation stems from his six NBA championships, his astounding scoring, and his clutch plays.

The business world, alas, does not share such clarity. There are many CEOs who are better at self-promotion than they are at leadership, and thus get accolades for their “vision” and “strategy” when things go well only to delegate blame to underlings when things go poorly.

For this reason, sports often offers better lessons about leadership than business. While there is always an element of luck in everything, causation is much easier to identify in sports than it is in business.

I’ve been thinking about this lately as it relates to my favorite sports team, Iowa football. Iowa football has been led by Coach Kirk Ferentz for 24 years, making him the longest active coach in the NCAA. Ferentz has had astounding success at Iowa. As the official University of Iowa site will proudly tell you, Ferentz has:
  • Led Iowa to 19 bowl games since 2001;
  • Won 10 or more games in seven seasons;
  • Won national coach of the year twice and Big Ten coach of the year three times;
  • Led Iowa to finish in the top ten five times;
  • Coached 11 first-round NFL draft picks.
Pretty impressive, right?

And yet, in the last year, Ferentz has made some awfully strange decisions. Actually, let’s not mince words - he has made some terrible decisions.

Over the last ten games dating back to last year, he’s started a quarterback who has thrown nine interceptions versus just one touchdown. The QB's stats for this year so far: a 45% completion rate, 3.9 yards per catch, two interceptions and no touchdowns. Iowa has scored a total of 14 points in two games and four of those points came off defensive safeties.

The Iowa offense is dead last in the nation in scoring offense and their quarterback - Spencer Petras - is 120th out of 122 QBs in passing efficiency. All of this, by the way, has been against mediocre competition. The team has been booed numerous times by fed-up fans.

Meanwhile, during the offseason, Ferentz promoted his son, Brian, who was already the Offensive Coordinator, to the additional title of Quarterbacks Coach (as an aside, according to the University, Brian Ferentz wasn’t hired by his dad, which would violate University nepotism rules, but was instead hired by the University’s athletic director. Yeah right!)

During Brian’s six years as Offensive Coordinator, the best the offense has performed is 40th out of 131 teams with an average performance of 78th.

Great leaders analyze a situation and course correct if necessary. And yet, in this instance, Ferentz has done the opposite. In a recent press conference, reporters asked him over and over (for six minutes, to be precise) why Petras was still starting at quarterback. Ferentz mumbled something about “you don’t see how well he performs in practice.” The reporters persisted: isn’t practice irrelevant? Isn’t his on-the-field results (or lack thereof) the relevant gauge of success. Again, Ferentz gave a nonsensical response

So what’s going on here? How can a clearly great leader make such obvious blunders? Here are six deadly sins Ferentz - and all leaders - may make, and how to avoid them.

Confirmation Bias

Confirmation bias “is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one's prior beliefs or values.” Another way of saying this is that we often start with the answer we want and then selectively believe facts that support our answer and reject facts that don’t.

In Ferentz's case, he has hired his son to manage the team’s offense. What father wouldn’t put on rose colored glasses in evaluating his son’s performance? And now that his son is also the quarterbacks coach, Ferentz may be filtering out bad news about his quarterback and focusing exclusively on the good news (insofar as there is any).

The lesson: Great leaders make decisions based on the facts, without predetermined conclusions they are looking to validate.

Ego

In The Ego is the Enemy, Ryan Holiday notes: “The pretense of knowledge is our most dangerous vice, because it prevents us from getting any better. Studious self-assessment is the antidote.”

Kirk Ferentz has been told by millions of fans, University administrators, and sports journalists that he is an elite football coach. He has been awarded prestigious honors and has set numerous records.

Perhaps all of that flattery has gone to his head. Perhaps he has decided that, to paraphrase another ego-maniac, “I alone can fix it.” Lacking self-reflection and a willingness to listen to others, Ferentz’s ego may be leading him down a disastrous path.

The lesson: Great leaders seek out and listen to advice from others. When they are presented with evidence that shows that they need to change course, they admit they are wrong and change.

The Johari Window

The Johari window is a technique for classifying what we do and do not know about ourselves. There are four types of personal knowledge in this model:
  • What we know about ourselves that others do not know;
  • What we know about ourselves that others know;
  • What we don’t know about ourselves that others know;
  • What we don’t know about ourselves that others don’t know.
The most powerful knowledge we can obtain is from people that know something about us that we don’t know about ourselves. For example, perhaps we come across as arrogant when addressing employees, or perhaps we have an unconscious bias. These traits may be obvious to others and unobservable to us.

Kirk Ferentz is stubborn. When confronted with criticism, he appears to refuse to admit mistakes and instead doubles down on that mistake. He seems unwilling to truly consider valid critiques made by “outsiders.”

The lesson: Great leaders want to always get better and are open to constructive criticism from all sources.

Lack of Accountability

Lord Acton summed this one up by noting: “Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Leaders who feel (or actually are) immune to discipline become increasingly obstinate, obnoxious and oblivious. They act unilaterally and often make decisions based on emotion rather than logic.

Earlier this year, Kirk Ferentz signed an eight year contract extension worth $56 million. He runs a football team that brings in more than $50 million in annual revenue and tens of millions of annual donations to the University. Ferentz knows he can’t be fired anytime soon, and he knows that the University depends on him to be a reliable and very large cash cow. He can make bad decisions all day long and it’s unlikely his job will be in jeopardy.

The lesson: Great leaders need to be held accountable. They need to genuinely believe that they could lose their power if they make bad decisions.

Apathy

Let’s face it - after doing the same job for a long time, it loses a little of its luster. Some leaders just get tired of their job but can’t admit to themselves that they need to move on.

Kirk Ferentz has been the Iowa coach for 24 years. As noted, that’s longer than any other college football coach. The players on the team weren’t even born when Ferentz started coaching. I don’t know for a fact that he is tired, but it also wouldn’t shock me.

The lesson: Leaders need to bring passion and energy to their job. When a leader no longer gets excited about their job, they need to consider handing the reins to a successor.

Gut vs. Data

Sports at all levels has been transformed by data, as seen in the book, Moneyball. While there is certainly a place for intuition or “gut” in sports, relying entirely on your subjective observations without crunching the data is an increasingly anachronistic approach.

The data about Iowa quarterback Spencer Petras is unimpeachable. Petras just doesn’t perform at a college level. He may look great in practice but the statistics show that he is a mediocre college quarterback (and I’ll note, by all accounts he is a wonderful and intelligent person and will likely do well in life. Just not in football). And yet, Ferentz sticks by him, despite longitudinal data that shows that Petras is not up to the job.

The lesson: We live in a data-driven world. Great leaders use their gut but rely heavily on data. In most cases, great leaders let data win over gut.
 
Long dissertation, but overall, pretty accurate/interesting given Ferentz's behavior the last few years.

IMO Ferentz is just too comfortable ($'s, status, etc.) and he really no longer has the motivation to work/field a nationally competitive team at Iowa. Again, in MHO, the Iowa football program is headed south and it is going to get very ugly unless some dramatic changes are made in the coaching ranks.
 
Long dissertation, but overall, pretty accurate/interesting given Ferentz's behavior the last few years.

IMO Ferentz is just too comfortable ($'s, status, etc.) and he really no longer has the motivation to work/field a nationally competitive team at Iowa. Again, in MHO, the Iowa football program is headed south and it is going to get very ugly unless some dramatic changes are made in the coaching ranks.
I think most fans agree with you right now. I hope Ferentz gets some self-awareness quickly
 
What did your non-Hawkeye audience have to say about your leadership brief?
 
Great post. Helps to understand some of the psychology for anyone wondering “how can Ferentz be so stubborn or blind?” Especially while still appreciating the fact that he has been (and may still be) a great leader for the program. I enjoyed it both as a hawkeye fan perplexed by the current situation and also from a business/leadership perspective. Thanks!
 
I personally think considering KF an egomaniac, stubborn or unwilling to accept criticism as the problem of this season is absolutely ridiculous. He has ALWAYS been these things.

You are not alone in this opinion… Many people agree with you so I’m sure I’m wrong. But Unless you have been miserable and insulting him all these years I think it’s bogus to write all that about him now. Maybe you should read more about confirmation bias?

It’s a bad year and a bad job by him and I hope he retires. And I really envy the self confidence to give the man a leadership lesson on LinkedIn
 
Great post. Helps to understand some of the psychology for anyone wondering “how can Ferentz be so stubborn or blind?” Especially while still appreciating the fact that he has been (and may still be) a great leader for the program. I enjoyed it both as a hawkeye fan perplexed by the current situation and also from a business/leadership perspective. Thanks!
Thank you! I enjoyed combining the hawks and business in one post!
 
south park beat a dead horse GIF
 
I personally think considering KF an egomaniac, stubborn or unwilling to accept criticism as the problem of this season is absolutely ridiculous. He has ALWAYS been these things.

You are not alone in this opinion… Many people agree with you so I’m sure I’m wrong. But Unless you have been miserable and insulting him all these years I think it’s bogus to write all that about him now. Maybe you should read more about confirmation bias?

It’s a bad year and a bad job by him and I hope he retires. And I really envy the self confidence to give the man a leadership lesson on LinkedIn
The leadership lesson was intended for others. I can't imagine Ferentz spending much time browsing LinkedIn.
 
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Why in the world would Ferentz even give one tiny thought to retiring. Lifetime tenure and a huge salary. Also the added bonus of one million dollars annually for your over matched son.
 
finally got around to reading this,, at most levels the OC is also the QB coach. which is at should be. this past season the OL was a big problem.

in spite of the problems IA still finished at 8-5 and a bowl win. bitching about a winning season is Bitching at its finest. time for you posters to get off your high horses.

now then time to get back to reallity, IA is not recruiting at a level where winning at the level they have been. 4 straight top 25 finishes with recruiting classes ranked
2018 RSSR's class was rated 53rd
2019 RSSR's class was rated 59th
2020 RSSR's class was rated 58th
2021 RSSR's class was rated 42nd

now if you follow that progression IA was using MAC level recruits to produce all thos top 25 finishes . the 2022 season was the results of IA getting top recruits that left as JR's
now they have recruiting classes going forward that look like this
2022 RSSR's class was rated 40th
2023 RSSR's class was rated 40th
2024 RSSR's class was rated 41st
2025 RSSR's class was rated 35th
2026 RSSR's class was rated 23rd
2027 RSSR's class was rated 30th
2028 RSSR's class was rated 32nd

now if you look at what they did with classes rated in the 50's and 40's, the prospect of what they will do with the improved classes. just get prepared for more players leaving early,

the best part is that the NIL [Swarm] is growing for IA. so finding a replacement for a early NFL player. will be easier to find.
 
Kirk started Spencer because that was his best option. The offensive line lost too many recruits to injury or recruiting misses. There is your actual summary of the problems at Iowa. Have you ever spoken to kf? What an incredibly gracious and nice man. He has done what’s worked with what he has for all of his years in Iowa. Hall of fame coach vs mba thesis bs.
 
It’s really quite a bit simpler than all that…

He overestimated Spencer’s ability to put his product on the playing field!

He overestimated his QB room in general and his OL and then stayed out of the portal, likely because he wasn’t yet sure how to embrace it.

The Brian thing though frustrating is a nonstarter as KF has never proven to be offensive minded with any of his OCs and…..

Then a fairly remarkable and extremely unappreciated thing happened as a friend and Smart football mind pointed out to me a while back….

It became extremely obvious very early on that this offense was an absolute train wreck, and they were going to have to play, smart, calculated conservative football and lean, heavy, heavy, heavy on the Defense and ST to even get this team to a winning record…

Always positives and negatives in every single thing in life. I’m probably not going to hang out to dry a guy that has the kind of winning percentage he has had over the last 10 years of his 25 year career (not 1st 10) his last 10 when few actually get better, on the cross for people to take pot shots at.
 
I posted this on LinkedIn for a non-Hawk fan audience. Thought the board would enjoy it:

One of the great things about sports is that success is quantifiable and precise. Michael Jordan is not considered one of the best athletes of all time because he had the respect of his teammates or because he wrote a lengthy treatise on winning. His reputation stems from his six NBA championships, his astounding scoring, and his clutch plays.

The business world, alas, does not share such clarity. There are many CEOs who are better at self-promotion than they are at leadership, and thus get accolades for their “vision” and “strategy” when things go well only to delegate blame to underlings when things go poorly.

For this reason, sports often offers better lessons about leadership than business. While there is always an element of luck in everything, causation is much easier to identify in sports than it is in business.

I’ve been thinking about this lately as it relates to my favorite sports team, Iowa football. Iowa football has been led by Coach Kirk Ferentz for 24 years, making him the longest active coach in the NCAA. Ferentz has had astounding success at Iowa. As the official University of Iowa site will proudly tell you, Ferentz has:
  • Led Iowa to 19 bowl games since 2001;
  • Won 10 or more games in seven seasons;
  • Won national coach of the year twice and Big Ten coach of the year three times;
  • Led Iowa to finish in the top ten five times;
  • Coached 11 first-round NFL draft picks.
Pretty impressive, right?

And yet, in the last year, Ferentz has made some awfully strange decisions. Actually, let’s not mince words - he has made some terrible decisions.

Over the last ten games dating back to last year, he’s started a quarterback who has thrown nine interceptions versus just one touchdown. The QB's stats for this year so far: a 45% completion rate, 3.9 yards per catch, two interceptions and no touchdowns. Iowa has scored a total of 14 points in two games and four of those points came off defensive safeties.

The Iowa offense is dead last in the nation in scoring offense and their quarterback - Spencer Petras - is 120th out of 122 QBs in passing efficiency. All of this, by the way, has been against mediocre competition. The team has been booed numerous times by fed-up fans.

Meanwhile, during the offseason, Ferentz promoted his son, Brian, who was already the Offensive Coordinator, to the additional title of Quarterbacks Coach (as an aside, according to the University, Brian Ferentz wasn’t hired by his dad, which would violate University nepotism rules, but was instead hired by the University’s athletic director. Yeah right!)

During Brian’s six years as Offensive Coordinator, the best the offense has performed is 40th out of 131 teams with an average performance of 78th.

Great leaders analyze a situation and course correct if necessary. And yet, in this instance, Ferentz has done the opposite. In a recent press conference, reporters asked him over and over (for six minutes, to be precise) why Petras was still starting at quarterback. Ferentz mumbled something about “you don’t see how well he performs in practice.” The reporters persisted: isn’t practice irrelevant? Isn’t his on-the-field results (or lack thereof) the relevant gauge of success. Again, Ferentz gave a nonsensical response

So what’s going on here? How can a clearly great leader make such obvious blunders? Here are six deadly sins Ferentz - and all leaders - may make, and how to avoid them.

Confirmation Bias

Confirmation bias “is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one's prior beliefs or values.” Another way of saying this is that we often start with the answer we want and then selectively believe facts that support our answer and reject facts that don’t.

In Ferentz's case, he has hired his son to manage the team’s offense. What father wouldn’t put on rose colored glasses in evaluating his son’s performance? And now that his son is also the quarterbacks coach, Ferentz may be filtering out bad news about his quarterback and focusing exclusively on the good news (insofar as there is any).

The lesson: Great leaders make decisions based on the facts, without predetermined conclusions they are looking to validate.

Ego

In The Ego is the Enemy, Ryan Holiday notes: “The pretense of knowledge is our most dangerous vice, because it prevents us from getting any better. Studious self-assessment is the antidote.”

Kirk Ferentz has been told by millions of fans, University administrators, and sports journalists that he is an elite football coach. He has been awarded prestigious honors and has set numerous records.

Perhaps all of that flattery has gone to his head. Perhaps he has decided that, to paraphrase another ego-maniac, “I alone can fix it.” Lacking self-reflection and a willingness to listen to others, Ferentz’s ego may be leading him down a disastrous path.

The lesson: Great leaders seek out and listen to advice from others. When they are presented with evidence that shows that they need to change course, they admit they are wrong and change.

The Johari Window

The Johari window is a technique for classifying what we do and do not know about ourselves. There are four types of personal knowledge in this model:
  • What we know about ourselves that others do not know;
  • What we know about ourselves that others know;
  • What we don’t know about ourselves that others know;
  • What we don’t know about ourselves that others don’t know.
The most powerful knowledge we can obtain is from people that know something about us that we don’t know about ourselves. For example, perhaps we come across as arrogant when addressing employees, or perhaps we have an unconscious bias. These traits may be obvious to others and unobservable to us.

Kirk Ferentz is stubborn. When confronted with criticism, he appears to refuse to admit mistakes and instead doubles down on that mistake. He seems unwilling to truly consider valid critiques made by “outsiders.”

The lesson: Great leaders want to always get better and are open to constructive criticism from all sources.

Lack of Accountability

Lord Acton summed this one up by noting: “Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Leaders who feel (or actually are) immune to discipline become increasingly obstinate, obnoxious and oblivious. They act unilaterally and often make decisions based on emotion rather than logic.

Earlier this year, Kirk Ferentz signed an eight year contract extension worth $56 million. He runs a football team that brings in more than $50 million in annual revenue and tens of millions of annual donations to the University. Ferentz knows he can’t be fired anytime soon, and he knows that the University depends on him to be a reliable and very large cash cow. He can make bad decisions all day long and it’s unlikely his job will be in jeopardy.

The lesson: Great leaders need to be held accountable. They need to genuinely believe that they could lose their power if they make bad decisions.

Apathy

Let’s face it - after doing the same job for a long time, it loses a little of its luster. Some leaders just get tired of their job but can’t admit to themselves that they need to move on.

Kirk Ferentz has been the Iowa coach for 24 years. As noted, that’s longer than any other college football coach. The players on the team weren’t even born when Ferentz started coaching. I don’t know for a fact that he is tired, but it also wouldn’t shock me.

The lesson: Leaders need to bring passion and energy to their job. When a leader no longer gets excited about their job, they need to consider handing the reins to a successor.

Gut vs. Data

Sports at all levels has been transformed by data, as seen in the book, Moneyball. While there is certainly a place for intuition or “gut” in sports, relying entirely on your subjective observations without crunching the data is an increasingly anachronistic approach.

The data about Iowa quarterback Spencer Petras is unimpeachable. Petras just doesn’t perform at a college level. He may look great in practice but the statistics show that he is a mediocre college quarterback (and I’ll note, by all accounts he is a wonderful and intelligent person and will likely do well in life. Just not in football). And yet, Ferentz sticks by him, despite longitudinal data that shows that Petras is not up to the job.
Was this originally written with crayons ? What a load of garbage
 
It’s really quite a bit simpler than all that…

He overestimated Spencer’s ability to put his product on the playing field!

He overestimated his QB room in general and his OL and then stayed out of the portal, likely because he wasn’t yet sure how to embrace it.

The Brian thing though frustrating is a nonstarter as KF has never proven to be offensive minded with any of his OCs and…..

Then a fairly remarkable and extremely unappreciated thing happened as a friend and Smart football mind pointed out to me a while back….

It became extremely obvious very early on that this offense was an absolute train wreck, and they were going to have to play, smart, calculated conservative football and lean, heavy, heavy, heavy on the Defense and ST to even get this team to a winning record…

Always positives and negatives in every single thing in life. I’m probably not going to hang out to dry a guy that has the kind of winning percentage he has had over the last 10 years of his 25 year career (not 1st 10) his last 10 when few actually get better, on the cross for people to take pot shots at.
Yeah I would say the way South Dakota State abused our OL put them on notice.

There was a discussion with Kirk and Dolph sometime around the Michigan game on the radio where Kirk basically admitted significant issues on the OL and it wasn’t gonna magically get better any time soon.
 
Yeah I would say the way South Dakota State abused our OL put them on notice.

There was a discussion with Kirk and Dolph sometime around the Michigan game on the radio where Kirk basically admitted significant issues on the OL and it wasn’t gonna magically get better any time soon.

Didn’t know that, but it was obvious for sure. You can heckle him for poor QB, recruiting, poor QB development, poor offensive line, recruiting & poor offensive line development and refusing to use the portal when it was obvious, we needed to…

But past that, my guess is under the circumstances he probably did a pretty good job of bailing out the season… Yes, it’s maddening as hell that we lost to Illinois, Iowa State and Nebraska but it is what it is!
 
@HogLovinHawkeye thanks, you are my validation that I’ve said something hard to argue, when you come along with your LOL.

There is a whole cottage industry on emojis and their usage, and how dumb it makes people….


And you’re their king!!!
@HogLovinHawkeye 😘you are fun to torment. The general internet attitude is it suggests poor debate skills and general intelligence. Then of course when u do respond it becomes obvious!

Have a good 4th!
 
Iowa fans definitely do not want the media scrutiny being a consistently elite program brings down. You guys haven’t handled being fans of a somewhat good rarely great team.

Huh…. That doesn’t even make sense. We live in relatively unpopulated states in the Midwest. None of us receive the media scrutiny teams on the coast or in big metropolitan areas have. Once again, you open your mouth and prove to everyone your best discourse is the laughing, crying face!!

Stick to that, it is your friend, even though everybody understands it comes from a weak mind but seriously quit talking!
 
4 years of finishing in the top 25 and 2 more finishing getting votes in the top 25 voting.
that made 6 straight finishing in the top 25 or getting votes for the top 25. to bad this board is so full of IA hating MORONS. that these finishes are/were not good enough for them,

JFC this is so pathetic posters are never happy no matter what.
 
Huh…. That doesn’t even make sense. We live in relatively unpopulated states in the Midwest. None of us receive the media scrutiny teams on the coast or in big metropolitan areas have. Once again, you open your mouth and prove to everyone your best discourse is the laughing, crying face!!

Stick to that, it is your friend, even though everybody understands it comes from a weak mind but seriously quit talking!
It doesn’t make sense to you as you’ve never cheered for a team that’s been consistently elite for decades. Stop being so obtuse. All of the scandals you Iowa fans constantly harp on about Nebraska would never have been a big deal except for the decades of success at Nebraska. It’s America, we love to see the underdog succeed at a high level until they do then we like to tear them down. I doubt Iowa fans will ever have to deal with it.
 
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It doesn’t make sense to you as you’ve never cheered for a team that’s been consistently elite for decades. Stop being so obtuse. All of the scandals you Iowa fans constantly harp on about Nebraska would never have been a big deal except for the decades of success at Nebraska. It’s America, we love to see the underdog succeed at a high level until they do then we like to tear them down. I doubt Iowa fans will ever have to deal with it.

Here piggies piggies piggie….here piggies piggie piggie
 
It doesn’t make sense to you as you’ve never cheered for a team that’s been consistently elite for decades. Stop being so obtuse. All of the scandals you Iowa fans constantly harp on about Nebraska would never have been a big deal except for the decades of success at Nebraska. It’s America, we love to see the underdog succeed at a high level until they do then we like to tear them down. I doubt Iowa fans will ever have to deal with it.

PS Steve McWhirter from Fairfield Iowa, where I grew up played linebacker at Nebraska. In fact, I was there in 1982 when we got destroyed… Nebraska fans wanted Osbourne fired in the early 90s because all they could never win the big one!

Just imagine if the dumbasses had fired him!

You couldn’t find your ass with two hands. If you told me, the sky was blue, I’d ask for a second opinion!
 
PS Steve McWhirter from Fairfield Iowa, where I grew up played linebacker at Nebraska. In fact, I was there in 1982 when we got destroyed… Nebraska fans wanted Osbourne fired in the early 90s because all they could never win the big one!

Just imagine if the dumbasses had fired him!

You couldn’t find your ass with two hands. If you told me, the sky was blue, I’d ask for a second opinion!
“We” don’t fire anyone. And it didn’t happen. What is it with Iowa fans and hypotheticals??? I get Iowa fan’s hypocrisy, but I don’t understand the hypotheticals.
 
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The problem the last few years wasn't that Petras played. I think everyone already knew he wasn't cutting it. The problem was that there were no better options at QB. If there was a failure, it was an inability to recruit and develop an adequate replacement to Stanley.
Petras was 4* recruit out of California who broke all of a QB NFL passing records that was set by the former recruit set in his HS,

he was drafted by the Rams and now plays for the Detroit Lions KOK the former IA QB coach who was the OC/QB coach for KF till 2012.then Davis took over for KOK. GD became the IA OC/QB COACH after he retired as the Texas OC/QB coach.

Brian was hired as the OL coach for IA. who produced 1 Outland Trophy Winner and then in 2015 his OL was awarded the Joe Moore Award for the Best OL in FBS after going 8-0 BT West Championship and going 12-0 them ended up 12-2 with a final ranking of #9.

then Brian was given the job of OL/RG Coordinator and produced 2 RB's that went over 1000 yards in the same season which had never been done before in the 2016 season.

in the 2017 season Brian became IA OC/TE Coach. in his 1st season Wadley became just the 2nd RB to have back to back 1000 yard rushing seasons ever in IA's history,

then in 2018 he produced these
1st team AA TE Mackey Award winner Hockenson
3rd Team AA Fant
both were 1st Rnd NFL Draft picks which is the 1st time in the NFL history that only 1 team had 2 TE's taken from the same team in the 1st rnd as AA. with Brian as the OC/TE Coach. this was Brian's 1st year as the OC/QB Coach, gee kinda throwing Brian under the bus after just 1 season aren't you.

this season the OL was riddled with injuries and had had very few experienced backups ready to play,
in the 21 season they had 3 FR starters with one JR starter but still went 10-4 winning the BT West Championship for the 2nd time in the last 7 seasons. plus it was Brians 1st, in the 2022 season Brian was one win away from winning back to back BTWest Championship. nor bad for a lousy QB and OC/QB Coach now isn't it. just think of what he can do going forward. with better recruits and having the swarm helping in getting better recruits the results will be better in the long run
 
This is exactly the kind of "leadership" bullshit I would expect to find on LinkedIn.

Petras was our best quarterback. Every fact points to that being the absolute truth. Yet so many fans like the OP can't or won't accept it. Now who is stubborn?

The OP writes this long treatise of bullshit hoping for LinkedIn likes..... yet doesn't even mention the offensive line, which was the BIGGEST problem of the last two seasons. The line stunk. That was the problem.

I'll point this out again: in 2020, Brian Ferentz was the OC, Spencer Petras was the QB, and Iowa was second in the B1G in scoring. Playing solely B1G teams. Because the line was decent. It fell apart in 2021 and 2022, and the offense went with it.
 
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