Kirk Ferentz Quotes on Football (4 Quotes)

I think you're right on target, ... It depends on the teams you're looking at. Nobody in the country runs the ball as well as Minnesota. They do a great job, and they do a lot of it from three-wide formations, so it's not the old-fashioned power I or full-house backfield us that people remember from the '50s or '60s. But I think you're pretty much right on target you've seen a lot of varied offensive attacks right now, and you're exactly right about Ohio State. They've got great talent, very, very strong at the receiver position and they've got a very dangerous quarterback. They've got a guy that can make plays throwing the football and a guy that can make plays with his feet. But it changes week-to-week, game to game. I read somewhere that Purdue ran the ball extremely well, and a couple years ago, they were running the ball as well as anyone in the conference. Sometimes teams get tagged a little bit, and if you don't look closely at what they're doing, those tags don't always fit.

They're probably emphasizing the return game a little bit more now, for obvious reasons -- the guys they have. A blocked punt -- I don't know what the percentages are, but I know it's bad. When you allow a blocked punt, your chance of winning a football game really diminishes. But right now, they're thinking more about returns. They may pull out that block for us, and try and test us again. It wouldn't surprise me.

It starts with protection, route running, I mean, you name it, throwing the football. But we have certainly not looked like a cohesive, smooth running group when we're throwing the football. We have at times, but not consistently.

I think turnovers a lot of time are, first of all, you give credit to your opponent they also have a hand in it. Then also, a lot of times it's concentration, so we need to do better there. As far as the rhythm, I think we're still developing as a football team. We've got some very experienced players playing for us who are for the most part doing a very good job, but we have a lot of new guys trying to fit their way in too. When you're doing that, you're always trying to establish your identity as a football team. I don't know how it is at other places, but I know if you look back at our teams the past three or four years, it's really been a process for us. We haven't just come out of the gate and been clicking right off the bat it's been more of a process than anything else. Hopefully we'll bring resolution to some of our problems here in the next week or two or a couple weeks.