Farley hopes UNI football kept rhythm during bye week

CEDAR FALLS - The timing of a bye week can be as important as what a football team works on and adjusts with the time off.

And when a team has the schedule Northern Iowa has, that importance goes up a few notches. Having a bye just three weeks into the season and right when the Panthers (2-1) have started to find themselves on both sides of the ball could be a detriment if they don't pick up where they left off at Illinois State on Saturday.

As much as correcting things and finding out which guys belong where, Coach Mark Farley spent his team's bye week doing everything he could to keep them rolling like they were out of Cal Poly.

'There's a huge risk. It goes back to the inequities of the schedule. You wish maybe the open date would've fell at a little better time to balance out the road games,” Farley said at Monday's media luncheon. 'So when you go into this one, did we lose a little rhythm? Maybe. We're going to find out. Hopefully what you do in practice, you secure that. But until you line up, you really don't know if you did it right or wrong.

'We had good rhythm at the end and hopefully we can put a football team out there that can start where it left off. With two weeks (of) rest, maybe it'll be a slower start. I don't know. The expectation is we can pick up where we left off and move forward.”

To be able to do that, Farley and his staff changed how they practiced last week.

The typical system is to get as many reps as possible against the scout team to prepare for what's ahead. When facing teams like Eastern Washington and Cal Poly, that's especially important given their heavy focuses on the pass and run. But with the off week, a desire to remain as in rhythm and focused as they had been, and with opponents ahead who play similar styles, it allowed for what Farley called 'quality reps.”

'That's something we did do different this year, is the entire week we went 1s vs 2s and 2s vs 1s. There was some 1s vs 1s,” Farley said. 'Not that we tackled anybody, but we did try to get quality reps against each other because Illinois State runs a similar offense and a similar defense, not exactly the same, but similar - as does North Dakota State, as does Western Illinois.

'You look at those next three games; what's in our near future is a lot of similarities in offense and defensive play, so it isn't like we had to get ready for a Cal Poly that's totally different. This was more what we play against every day in practice, so there were a lot of quality reps as opposed to scout team reps.”

The schedule has been talked about repeatedly for its difficulty, but UNI reaches the peak of that in the next two weeks.

The Panthers go to No. 4 Illinois State on Saturday at noon, then to No. 3 North Dakota State the week after. That makes a third straight road game after winning at No. 17 Cal Poly on Sept. 19. After coming home to play Western Illinois, UNI goes back on the road to No. 5 South Dakota State.

Couple playing good teams with playing on the road and it's as tough a task as any team has in the country. Fortunately for Panther fans, Farley said Monday he likes how his team reacts to going on the road.

'Right now we really don't think about it because it's the hand we've been dealt. We feel good that we're used to going on the road, have some rhythm on the road,” Farley said. 'Maybe it's good that they're all together so once you get on the road, you just go play. We're used to being on the road. I heard it's going to be a full house, and we're used to playing in front of that. I think the Iowa State game helped us, the Cal Poly game helped us and hopefully we did a good job this week getting ready for next week.”

The bye week is always a positive in terms of physical recovery, and that was certainly the case for the Panthers. Farley said in that regard, the timing of the bye worked out great.

But football is just as much mental as it is physical, and he and his staff used the extra prep time to coach up some young guys to provide depth, work in some experimental sets and plays and keep the players' minds sharp.

'With the players' mindset, I think we're in a great spot right now. It's as good as we're going to be at this point in time,” Farley said. 'Right now, with this schedule and the teams we're playing, you're going to win some downs and you're going to lose some. It's a given you're going to give up some points and you're going to score some. The quality of play you have for four quarters will make the difference in the game. That's what we're trying to secure.”

l Comments: (319) 368-8884; jeremiah.davis@thegazette.com