Brian Ferentz needed to be Iowa’s QBs coach, now we’ll see how it goes

Iowa’s football team has given a lot more joy than frustration to its fans over the years, and that’s a fact.

What’s also true is that when you get used to a certain level of success, you want more. When you win 10 games in each of your last two full seasons, 2019 and 2021, it feels like you’re ready to break through a ceiling.

Reaching the Big Ten title game last year? How about winning it once, blasting through to the national playoffs? Never mind that those are really big asks at places like Michigan and Penn State, let alone Iowa.

Last season brought great joy and fun, but with some heavy frustration. The Hawkeyes were so good in so many areas on their way to the Big Ten West title. The nation-leading 25 interceptions, the defense as a whole, everything about special teams from field goal and punting excellence to kick coverage that ranked among the Big Ten’s best.

Then there was the offense. The Hawkeyes scored just once against Purdue, Wisconsin and Michigan. Had they as much as a top-50 offense, they might have been Georgia. They were 121st.

Brian Ferentz as the Iowa football team’s offensive coordinator is as hot-button a Hawkeye sports topic as you’ll find. Would he be entering his sixth season as Iowa’s OC with the results his offenses have produced were he not the son of head coach Kirk Ferentz?

With almost any other head coach, the answer is no. With Kirk Ferentz, whose offensive philosophy sometimes seems more “Do no harm” than “Tear defenses asunder,” one can’t be certain.

When the head coach stays in a job for 23 years and has won a lot of games, his way is the way. Those who can’t accept that can’t accept reality.

After Ken O’Keefe stepped down as Iowa’s quarterbacks coach in February, Brian Ferentz’s switch from tight ends coach to quarterbacks coach was questioned by some given he never played or coached the position. But as the OC, it’s an essential, possibly overdue move for him.

The OC needs to spend more time with the quarterbacks than any other players, and the quarterbacks need to spend more time with their coordinator than any other coach.

“The last five years is the first time that I've ever been around it as a coach on staff where the play-caller was not with the quarterbacks,” Brian Ferentz said Wednesday. “It goes on other places, it’s not highly unusual. But for me in my experience, it was.”

It’s going on now at just one Big Ten program, Ohio State. There, 29-year-old Corey Dennis is in his third season as quarterbacks coach. Kevin Wilson coordinates that juggernaut, and head coach Ryan Day formerly was the Buckeyes OC/QBs coach.

Everywhere else in the conference, the OC is the quarterbacks coach. Some, like Purdue’s Brian Brohm, were quarterbacks themselves. Others never played the position.

Wisconsin OC Bobby Engram played wide receiver for 14 years in the NFL, then was a wide receivers and tight ends coach in that league for 10 years. Paul Chryst hired him in January. He’ll coach Badger quarterbacks.

"I've worked with quarterbacks my entire life,“ Engram said.

When Brian Ferentz became offensive coordinator in 2017, former Iowa OC Ken O’Keefe returned to coach the quarterbacks. It made total sense, but also may have been a bit unwieldy.

“I think this is the best way to do it from a communication standpoint,” Brian Ferentz said. “But I can also tell you that in 2017 I was very comfortable as I was in '18, '19, '20, and '21 with Ken doing that because of the trust level. And then also over the last five years I can't overstate how much I learned from that.”

As for how the rest of the world lives: Five Big Ten OCs are entering their first season in their current jobs. Four more are entering their second year. Wilson and Brohm (the brother of Purdue head coach Jeff Brohm) are tied with Brian Ferentz for the league’s longest current tenure in that role as they start their sixth seasons.

Coordinators typically either excel and move upward, or are shuffled out by head coaches who can’t afford patience.

Iowa isn’t everyone else. It can think bigger picture and not put all its eggs in one season’s basket. That has paid off in many ways.

The program has invested a lot of time in Brian Ferentz as the leader of its offense, and now he’s finally and completely hands-on with the quarterbacks. Wherever this goes, it will be the Hawkeyes’ story of 2022.

Comments: (319) 398-8440; mike.hlas@thegazette.com