Iowa HC Kirk Ferentz Reacts to Michigan Loss
Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz reacted to his team’s 10-3 defeat at the hands of Michigan. Ferentz’s Hawkeyes came to Michigan Stadium on Saturday ready for a dog fight type of game, and that’s exactly what they got.
Both defenses were stout and didn’t allow anything to come easy for either offense. At the end of the afternoon, it was U-M’s defense that came up big, time after time, and put pressure on Iowa senior quarterback Nate Stanley that he hadn’t seen yet this year. The Wolverines sacked Stanley eight times and recorded 13 tackles for loss.
Combine the pressure U-M put on the quarterback and the fact that U-M held the Hawkeyes to just one rushing yard on the day, with some self-inflicted wounds (four turnovers and eight penalties for 60 yards), and you have an Iowa team that was only able to manufacture three points.
“We didn’t help ourselves with some costly errors, especially in the first half that made the hole a little bit higher to climb,” Ferentz said. “But you got to give our opponent credit on that. They played extremely well.”
Ferentz knew the margin for error was slim and his team couldn’t afford to make big mistakes against U-M on the road. The turnovers were uncharacteristic of his team. Stanley hadn’t thrown an interception all season in his 136 attempts coming into the game.
“We knew coming into the game we were going to have to execute basically on every play to give ourselves the best opportunity,” Ferentz said. “We came up short in that regard.”
Ferentz and his team weren’t ‘surprised’, either, when it came to the amount of blitzes U-M dialed up. He harped on the fact that his team just wasn’t executing enough to stave off the aggressive defense.
“They’re a high blitz team,” Ferentz said. “Once you get momentum doing anything, you’re probably going to stick with it. That’s not a big surprise. Our protection was not good enough and that made it really tough.”
U-M’s early 10-0 lead was tough to recover from, Ferentz pointed out, and it allowed the Wolverines to be more aggressive as the game wore on.
“I don’t think there was anything that we hadn’t seen before. It was a matter of us not being able to match their tempo. I’m a career line coach, I’ve been in those games. It’s not fun once it starts rolling the other way … They started to get momentum and it seems like they come harder when that happens. It’s hard to put the brakes on that sometimes,” Ferentz explained.
Despite the loss, Iowa was in the game the entire afternoon. Ferentz said he and his staff were disappointed in the outcome, but not in his players who fought hard.
“I think we’ve got high quality guys on our football team that played hard today, played tough, and our opponent did the same thing,” Ferentz said.
Notes
· Ferentz complimented U-M defensive coordinator Don Brown and the U-M players.
“They’ve had a pretty good blitz package since the defensive coordinator has gotten there, Ferentz said. “They’re an aggressive group. It’s more about the guys doing it. They’ve got some guys that at least in my mind played as well as they have. I don’t want to grade their team but my guess is that’s probably the best defensive game they’ve played.”
· He also commented on the U-M offense, one that his defense was able to contain today after the Wolverines put up 52 points on Rutgers a week ago. This week, Iowa held U-M to just 10 points and 267 total yards.
“That’s the interesting thing about football. It’s week-to-week and if you’re around it long enough and do it long enough, you’ll go through things like that where maybe it wasn’t smooth for them today,” Ferentz said.
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