The next step for Brian Ferentz at Iowa

IOWA CITY — Offensive coordinators always seem to be the coolest-looking dudes on the sideline. You'll often see them with visors, sunglasses and some sort of noteworthy haircut.

That's some offensive coordinators. Not all. With everything that goes into their jobs, it's a wonder they remember to wear pants on game days.

Hopefully, Brian Ferentz remembers pants.

Ferentz, 34, will call his first plays as Iowa's offensive coordinator Saturday when Iowa plays host to Wyoming (11 a.m., BTN). If you believe he's walked a gilded path as son of head coach Kirk Ferentz, well, you know that will change Saturday.

Iowa's offense will have a three-and-out. Maybe several. There will be mistakes. You will feel frustration. This is the Iowa offense we're talking about.

Brian Ferentz knows what's coming.

'I know the criticism will certainly pick up, the minute we throw short of the sticks or go three-and-out or when we take a sack,' he said. 'I know that's going to happen, I do.'

Yes, he's only 34, but Brian Ferentz has done a ton in football. Just three years after finishing his career as a Hawkeye offensive lineman, he landed a job as a scouting assistant for the New England Patriots during the 2008 season. Yes, Kirk Ferentz coached with Bill Belichick in Cleveland during the early 1990s.

Think about Bill Belichick for a second. Think he's in this business to do favors for his friends? On to Cincinnati, is what Belichick would likely say to that.

Brian Ferentz climbed the ladder with the Patriots, going from scouting assistant to coaching assistant to offensive assistant to tight ends coach in 2011.

You already know he spent the last five seasons as Iowa's offensive line coach.

That's all good stuff. You don't see play caller in any of those stops. That's the new wrinkle. OK, it's more than a wrinkle. That's the new assignment. We're talking brand-new for Ferentz.

Did he grow up wanting to call plays? Is that a gene a coach needs to have?

'That's a good question and the truthful answer is no, I don't think so,' he said. 'I never aspired to be a play caller. It's actually something I really didn't aspire to.'

CONCERNED EMOJI

Quick timeout. Offensive coordinators do a lot more than just call plays. They know their system better than anyone else. They have to be great communicators and teachers, because they need to translate that system to everyone else.

They organize practices. They understand the value of practice and how important that preparation is for game day. They, more than anyone else on the staff, have to understand and break their own tendencies. They have to know what the top 30 or so players on offense can and can't do.

And, in Brian Ferentz's case, he's also the running backs coach. And now he calls the plays.

'This was a natural step, the natural evolution,' Ferentz said. 'It was a new challenge, which I was excited about. It forced me to get out of my comfort zone a little bit, too, which I think is healthy. If you want to grow at all, you'd better be willing to do that.'

Points for honest answers. For the record, Kirk Ferentz called plays for one year in his coaching career.

'It's all right, but that was never on my dream list,' Kirk Ferentz said. 'Brian's been intrigued. A lot of that goes back to his time spent in New England, when he worked on both sides of the football.

'That's a pretty cerebral outfit up there, certainly, with their quarterback (Tom Brady), starts there, Bill O'Brien as coordinator and then coach Belichick. I think (Brian) is very inquisitive that way. I was more of just like a line coach, just block that guy or whatever.

'So we're cut from a little different cloth that way, and I think he's ready for it.'

Brian Ferentz worked closely with O'Brien, who's now head coach of the Houston Texans, when the two were in New England. O'Brien told Land of Ten in February that he tried to hire Brian at Penn State (O'Brien's stop before Houston) and then in Houston.

This is the job Brian Ferentz wanted and calling plays is a big part of it.

Quarterbacks coach Ken O'Keefe has been calling plays since his days as Worcester (Mass.) Academy head coach, a position he held from 1978-84. He was in his early 20s. Of course, he called plays as Kirk Ferentz's offensive coordinator from 1999 to 2011.

'I think it's all what you're exposed to when you're young,' O'Keefe said. 'I always like to recruit quarterbacks who were catchers in youth baseball. Most of us played youth baseball before we played any other sport. The catcher position is usually the first place where leadership is developed. The coach will tell the catcher to remind everyone how many outs there are. He's going to make the calls.'

O'Keefe grew up 60 miles outside of New York. He remembered playing the role of Frank Gifford in neighborhood football and calling the plays even though it was just pickup games. For O'Keefe that progressed to taking a picture of famous Dallas Cowboys coach Tom Landry's call sheet that was in a book he had.

'I took that and blew it up so I could see how he did it,' O'Keefe said. 'I used that as a model for some of the stuff that we had been doing.'

"My philosophy is simple, it's Iowa football's philosophy."

- Brian Ferentz

Iowa offensive coordinator

Brian Ferentz was a center for Iowa City High and the Hawkeyes (he also spent the 2004 season as a guard). He wrestled. Don't know if he was a catcher in youth baseball, but that skill set would go right along with center.

He didn't aspire to be a play caller. And here he is. Brian Ferentz knows these are shark-infested waters. O'Keefe can certainly clue him in to that, not to mention Greg Davis, who retired in January after five seasons as Iowa's offensive coordinator.

'When I was named, we obviously had a lot of job applications coming in,' Brian said. 'I took a lot of phone calls and recommendations from people and saw a lot of resumes. For the first time in my life it struck me how many former offensive coordinators exist. I'd never thought about it that way.'

From the department of 'it never hurts to ask,' Brian Ferentz has been asked what his version of Iowa's offense will look like approximately 1.2 million times.

Without getting into the playbook, Brian said he's drawn from his past to shape his offensive philosophy. So, you'll certainly see a lot of Kirk Ferentz, some O'Keefe and probably some O'Brien.

Mostly, you'll see Iowa football.

'At the end of the day, my philosophy is simple, it's Iowa football's philosophy,' he said. 'It's not unique to me, I'm just a cog in the machine.

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'We're trying to be tough, we're trying to be smart, we're trying to be physical. We want to be the toughest team on the field. We want to make the least amount of mistakes. And we want to beat you up.

'Most importantly I think for us offensively, defensively, special teams is we've got to play complementary football. We all have to tie together. If you look at when we have success, we're humming in all three phases. We're running the ball pretty effectively, we're stopping the run and we're covering the heck out of kicks. All those things tie together.

'I think as a play caller your philosophy has to be pretty fluid based on the needs of the team. You're responsible for a third of the operation. It's my responsibility to make sure that thing meshes hand in glove with what we're doing in the other two phases.'

FOOTBALL EMOJI

While Brian Ferentz didn't aspire to be a play caller ...

'I can tell you this much,' he said, 'I aspire to continue to do it.'

l Comments: (319) 398-8256; marc.morehouse@thegazette.com