By Jordan Hansen
There wasn’t any visible panic in the voices of the Iowa football team.
Yes, it was simply Tuesday media availability, and no one usually says anything particularly earthshattering, but all the same, similar calm and concise answers came from the mouth of every Hawkeye football player.
Yes, they are ready for the atmosphere in State College. Yes, they realize there’s still a chance for them in the Big Ten West, despite their current 5-3 record. And yes, with four games left they do realize there’s still plenty to accomplish.
Mind you, three of those opponents are in the top 12 of the first College Football Playoff rankings, but all the same, they said the bye week gave them a chance to refocus.
They want to believe there’s still a chance to salvage a season that has gone far off course, a season beginning with such high expectations.
“Coach Ferentz always says, ‘teams are defined in November,’ ” defensive end Parker Hesse said. “We’ve had a couple bumps in the road so far, but we’re poised to improve every week and in this final stretch, win some games.”
On the surface, that might just seem like run-of-the-mill player talk. No competitor is going to say he isn’t going to win any more games. That would be ridiculous.
But on a deeper level, there’s a sincere trust in head coach Kirk Ferentz and the rest of the team. There still seems to be good leadership on the Hawkeyes, and it’s sort of confounding to think about how things have gone awry this year.
They don’t seem to have given up on each other, something that would be far easier to do than it might seem. Just look at Tennessee, for example. The team lost a couple games, and its star running back decided to call it quits halfway through the season.
Would it really have been so hard for cornerback and likely first-round draft choice Desmond King to tell Ferentz he doesn’t want to return kicks anymore? Probably, because King is a competitor to the very soul, but all the same in the grand scheme of things, he could be upset he stayed for another year.
But he isn’t. None of the seniors seem to be letting the disappointment get to them — or at least showing it publicly — which has to be a difficult thing to do. It would be really easy for starting quarterback C.J. Beathard to call out his line or wide receivers on a regular basis. It really would. He probably would even be applauded by parts of the Iowa fandom for doing so. But he’s a professional and refuses to, which is admirable.
“As the leader of the offense, you don’t want to get too frustrated when things aren’t going as planned,” Beathard said. “Guys look to you in tough times and see how you react. If I’m down about things, you have the reason to do that, but there’s no reason to do that right now.”
After the season, perhaps, there will be time to be down about things for Beathard. But right now, he’s more than aware there’s still something in front of the Hawkeyes. A lot, actually.
They currently are tied for second in the Big Ten West with Minnesota, Northwestern, and Wisconsin. It’s crowded, but one upset of the Badgers has the Hawkeyes back in the mix for a trip to Indianapolis.
The likelihood of it happening isn’t great, but all the same, there is a chance. A couple wins in the next stretch of games would go a long ways to improving Iowa’s bowl standing as well and a little bit better trip over winter break might be in order for the team.
Having an opportunity to finish a season that started with disappointment isn’t ideal, but it is a situation Iowa has been in before. When asked, Ferentz compared this team to the 2008 squad, which won a thrilling game over then-No. 3 Penn State.
There are a couple differences, starting with No. 2 Michigan taking the place of a top-ranked Penn State team in this scenario (a game, by the way that is coming up very fast). The situation is similar, however, and Ferentz didn’t hesitate.
“We’ve had situations, too, where we haven’t responded maybe as well as you need to in November. So it’s a matter of choice for our football team, and that ’08 team certainly, the one thing I’ll always remember about them is the way they responded,” Ferentz said. “The sky was falling outside. It was doom and gloom everywhere you turned, yet those guys never flinched.
“The next thing you know, they ended up 20th in the country and won in a very convincing fashion down at the bowl game.”
Shonn Greene isn’t in the Iowa backfield, but it’s a good point. Penn State will be a difficult game, especially because it’s in State College, but a win there would be huge, momentum wise.
Michigan looms after that, which will be a massive test — though the Hawkeyes do get the Wolverines in Kinnick — and a very winnable game at Illinois follows. Iowa ends the season with a home game against Nebraska in another game for a trophy.
It’s fairly easy to see the team drop three of those games, but it’s also not unreasonable to think they might win three.
“I think we have a chance in every game,” linebacker Josey Jewell said. “All we can do is look ahead now and look at it game by game and try to win every game possible.”
He’s right, of course. There really isn’t a whole lot Iowa can do besides take its ever-present “one game at a time mentality” and push it to the limit. If they don’t, things really could come off the rails.
Simply put, the Hawkeyes are at the turning point of their season and perhaps the next couple. If they can finish well, it provides momentum into what could be a very intriguing 2017 season. The incoming recruiting class is good, and Nate Stanley seems to be the quarterback of the future.
Ferentz noted the bye week was a chance to spend a little more time recruiting and some of these longer-term thoughts must have slipped in a bit.
Regardless, this is an important point in his career. Iowa locked up Ferentz this season for the foreseeable future, and there’s a massive buyout (again) enclosed in his contract. The criticism has already built up (forget last season’s unbeaten regular-season record; what have you done for me in the last three minutes?), and finishing 6-6 would notch up the frustration of a sizable portion of the Hawkeyes fan base.
Ferentz, of course, hears the negativity. It would be incredible if he didn’t. But it doesn’t seem to be getting to him. Then again, after 18 years at Iowa, he probably has heard just about everything.
He believes this season is far from lost, and it will be interesting to see just what happens over the next month.
“I want to win for our football team,” Ferentz said. “It’s just like every other coach. You want your players to experience success and feel good about themselves. It’s not that you can’t feel good about yourself if you don’t win, but I can tell you this, you feel a lot better when you do win.”