Iowa trying to maximize timing of bye week

IOWA CITY — Timing might not be everything in college football, but it sure is something.

Everything from who you play when, to when you deal with injuries — because it happens to everyone — to when you get a break matters. For the Iowa football team, the timing of its bye week comes in the wake of a loss to Wisconsin and a cluster of injuries to some important players.

When a bye week comes is out of Iowa's control, as Kirk Ferentz pointed out on Tuesday during the weekly Big Ten coaches teleconference, but he acknowledged that in hindsight, the Hawkeyes could've used it a little sooner.

'I'm not sure if there's a perfect time or not. From an injury standpoint, maybe earlier would've helped us a little more, been more beneficial,' Ferentz said. 'But you can't predict those things, so we just live with it and try to maximize it. The big thing is the week we have it, and it's something we can't control, but what we do during this week and how we can make it work for us, that's the most important thing going on right now.'

The Hawkeyes and Rutgers are the only Big Ten teams to have played eight games already this season, which leaves them as the most worn to this point, even if not the most injured.

Tight end George Kittle (foot), Boone Myers (ankle) and Cole Croston (ankle) have had varying degrees of time in and out of the lineup since they suffered their injuries, and are the focus of the Hawkeyes' rehabilitation efforts.

Kittle hasn't been used as much this season in the passing game, but given that unit's struggles this season, having a healthy tight end that has a connection with his quarterback can't hurt. As for Myers and Croston, they appeared to find their groove in new roles on the offensive line at Minnesota, but both have missed at least one game since. Their injuries, plus James Daniels earlier in the season, means the offensive line has seen five different iterations in eight games. The same five lineman have started back-to-back just once.

Ferentz said Tuesday he's hoping all three guys will be back after the bye week, when the Hawkeyes travel to play Penn State, but didn't offer specifics on their progress back to full health.

Getting those guys back can only help an offense that currently ranks 113th in the country and 11th in the Big Ten in total offense, 74th and ninth in rushing offense and 106th and 10th in passing offense.

'The nice thing about a bye week is it affords you considerably more time. We're not gameplanning or game prepping right now, so it certainly gives you time to look deeper at what you're doing and reassess where your team is at,' Ferentz said. 'You have a chance to factor in things you didn't anticipate or couldn't anticipate. That's a big part of this week as a coaching staff — certainly look at everything that we're doing offensively, special teams and defense, and see what we can do to do a little better, because now we've come up short three times.'

Outside of getting guys healthy, whatever is holding the offense back is priority No. 1 during the week off.

Quarterback C.J. Beathard has taken some heat for his role in the poorly-ranked offense, but Ferentz downplayed the fault of the senior, who has completed 58.71 percent of his passes for 1,380 yards, 11 touchdowns and four interceptions. Ferentz said Beathard, and quarterbacks in general, 'get way too much blame and they get way too much credit, typically, for what's going on.'

Consistent with what Ferentz says when most key individual players are struggling, he said the offense has to do a better job supporting Beathard going forward — that it has to be a collective improvement. That goes for the coaching staff, too. Ferentz was asked about how much is on offensive coordinator Greg Davis' shoulders in it all, and again he went with, 'through good times and bad, we all try to work together to find solutions and ways to be more successful.'

Whatever work the Hawkeyes have to do — and there's plenty — they'll balance it between on-field and off, because with just four weeks remaining, Iowa can't afford to abuse itself on the practice field.

'At least in my opinion, if this (bye week) had come a couple weeks earlier, then we'd probably do it a little differently. But when you get seven, eight games into the season, I think you have to be really careful about how much you ask of your team physically,' Ferentz said. 'We try to be very, very careful with what we ask the guys to do physically, yet there's a lot of mental work to be done. Certainly as a staff, we can go full speed in terms of taking advantage of this time to evaluate where we're at and what we can do as we move forward.'

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