‘It’s just you now’

IOWA CITY - No one has come totally clean on why the Iowa head coach, a man who you could easily describe as the quintessential 'measure twice, cut once” guy, decided to change quarterbacks in January.

Perhaps, the closest we get to the target is C.J. Beathard's brain was ready. He had the arm, he had the speed and quickness. Sometime in the days following the TaxSlayer Bowl in January, Kirk Ferentz and a small circle of coaches decided he was ready.

The tangible evidence of this comes from the Thursday before the Pittsburgh game last fall. Beathard had a practice full of flubs. Ferentz clenched his teeth and put it in the mental notebook.

'It was a Thursday practice, when you want things to be clean, crisp, and feel pretty good about things, so everybody can feel confident coming off the field, and it was not a stellar performance on his part, and I'm not talking so much about accuracy but more so just some mental errors that were made,” Ferentz said. 'There's too much at stake when you're talking about a quarterback position to make certain errors that he shouldn't have been making at that point.”

Ferentz couldn't recall the exact practice, but remembered Thursday. Beathard remembered it exactly.

'Week of the Pitt game, it was a Thursday practice,” Beathard said. 'I made a couple of mistakes and he got on me. That's just how it is. You have to listen to what he says and put it behind you.”

Of course, the Pitt game. Beathard zoned out on the Thursday practice. Jake Rudock, the starter, suffered a hip injury in the first half. Beathard went in and drove Iowa to 17 points for a 24-20 come-from-behind victory, which included 7 of 8 passing.

Beathard started the next week against Purdue and led the Hawkeyes to a road victory. He then threw just 21 passes over the next seven games. He suffered a hip injury against Indiana, but could've played the next week against Maryland. Still, Beathard had must've had too many confused Thursdays to score the knockout he needed to unseat Rudock, who was, after all, a two-year starter and a pre-med student who's never had a confused Thursday.

'Quarterback is more mental than anything else,” Beathard said. 'It's not whether you make a bad throw, a lot of it is mentally challenging, making the right checks, making the right reads. That's a big part of it, too.”

During Iowa's TaxSlayer practices, offensive coordinator Greg Davis said the disappointing result against Nebraska (a 37-34 overtime loss) was the reason the QB competition was reopened.

Beathard showed the mental growth needed. By the time the bowl game rolled around, the move had been made without it actually being made. Rudock started, but played just 19 snaps to 49 for Beathard, who threw 23 passes to just eight for Rudock.

A few days after the game, a 45-28 loss to Tennessee, Ferentz met with what he termed a 'pretty tight circle” of assistants. The details of this meeting have and probably always will remain hush-hush, but you know the decision that was reached.

'I can't remember if I made the calls (to Beathard and Rudock) that night or the next day, a lot of times I like to sleep on things and think about it one more time,” Ferentz said. 'The important thing was to move fast and let everybody know what was going to take place and move from there.”

As far as making the calls to the interested parties, 'That's part of being a coach or a parent,” Ferentz said. 'You deliver bad news as well as good news. I think that's the only way to operate. Whenever I talk to players, and hopefully every person I talk to, I try to be as honest as I possibly can. In this case, this was a really unusual case, I thought it was important, for all of us, to get the decision made and move forward as soon as possible and give everyone a chance to get into the seat they wanted to get in. Everybody can get on with their lives or what have you.

'I'm glad we did it. I wish Jake nothing but the best, but we made a decision and we're really thrilled about C.J. and we've been enthused about the growth that we've seen.”

Beathard said the call came a few days after the TaxSlayer Bowl. His reaction wasn't to turn around and high five everyone in his family.

'It was a sense of relief,” he said. 'This will be going into my fourth year of competition, which is really good. But at some point you want to take that turn and be the guy. Every guy wants that opportunity. When I got that opportunity and when coach Ferentz called me, it was exciting.”

When news like this happens, it's like a gas. It finds the smallest crack and leaks out. Beathard, showing the good judgment that helped him get the job, told just a few people. Soon thereafter, though, the texts started flying.

'When the news came out, I made sure I texted him,” wide receiver Tevaun Smith said.

What did the text say?

'‘It's just you now.'”

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