Kirk Ferentz talks Iowa football signing day

It was another signing day in the books for Kirk Ferentz and this one was drama free for the Iowa head coach. He met with the media to discuss the class that Iowa inked earlier on Wednesday, the tight scholarship situation with Covid year players potentially returning, and more.

KIRK FERENTZ: Thanks, appreciate that. Appreciate everybody joining us today to talk a little bit about this recruiting class.

Obviously very excited. Signing day is always a special day. It’s a little anti-climatic in this day and age with the way things have changed in recruiting. I’ll address that in a second, but I just want to back track one second and go back to Monday’s comments.

I’m always interested. I do look at — there’s a site, Football Scoop. I’m always interested how things get filtered as you go to I guess that’s a national publication. For the record, I said I made three phone calls. I never said I talked to three candidates. Three phone calls regarding this whole process.

Then the other thing, just for clarification, it sounds like there’s some speculation. I was not referencing anybody that has been a head coach in the Big Ten. I was actually referencing a coordinator that’s come into our conference sometime in the last decade.

My point was this: At least there was reported to be a quote on Einstein’s office. He had an office at Princeton that said, “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.” That was kind of my point.

The person I’m thinking about specifically had a lot of passing yards on his résumé, pretty well-known nationally, but you dig a little deeper and look at what the win total was where he has been, and I think that is an important statistic. The most important one there is.

That’s the reference. I was trying to make. It was not in reference to anybody that’s been a sitting head coach in the Big Ten. Just wanted to clarify that.

Let’s get on to business. Just wanted to talk briefly about the recruits. Turn it over to Tyler who knows all the details on each and every one of the guys that we have signed. Right now we have 20 that are signed. One will sign this afternoon when his mom is able to free up from work and get that done.

I am pleased about the class. As I suggested, the process has changed immensely in the last several years. Most namely, when they started the official visits in the springtime through June.

That’s really caused a shift. At least for us historically the majority of our class has been pretty well settled by July I would say. Tyler can give the exact details, but typically there’s not a lot of drama. The guys that do decide on us, typically stay with us, and we stay with them. Hopefully it’s a good mutual fit.

As much as the process has changed, I think what we consider to be important really hasn’t changed. Obviously every prospect we’re looking for a degree of athleticism at their position. We may not be as picky on heights or body weights as some places, but we’re looking for a certain level of athleticism.

Obviously the competitive nature of that player is really important to us, how aggressive do they play, how much do they look like they enjoy it, and really enjoy being out there. How much do they enjoy competing? Those things are important to us.

I’ve never been around a good player that didn’t have a high level of pride, and with that a high level of just a really strong work ethic because it’s hard to do anything and be good at anything. It’s difficult to do if you don’t have those traits.

I think those are things that we also try to uncover, look for, that type of deal.

Then the other thing that’s really tough and important for a prospect, any player, certainly the guys in our program and most of the guys that honored, but a couple of weeks ago the guys that were with you on Monday are examples of this.

You have to have a level of patience, too, and realize if you have a growth mindset, you’re going to keep getting better. Your best football is always ahead of you, and sometimes you may be behind another player that’s pretty good, too. You just keep working at it. Jay Higgins is a great example. Played behind Jack Campbell last year. When he did have a chance to play, he played extraordinarily well.

I think we were all confident he would play with well this year. None of us probably could have expected the kind of numbers that he’s put out, so he certainly exceeded everybody’s expectations there, but it’s really not a surprise because if you are around Jay day-to-day, you just understand how he operates.

The good things that have come his way are things that he has earned on his own. Hopefully we give him good structure, but the players are the ones that put the work into it.

Those are the things we’re trying to look for. We still prefer to build our team and things have changed in the world also this way. Prefer to build on our team through our high school recruiting. Certainly we’re going to try to bolster our roster through the transfer portal. I think it only makes sense.

It was really good to us last year and years forward hopefully it will be as well. We may be active a little bit in the new year in that department, but as most of you know, we really haven’t had a lot of roster turnover. It’s not like we have a lot of room right now, but we’ll keep an eye out and be mindful there and do whatever we can moving forward.

So just in rough terms, I know Tyler will go through this, but basically one-third of our signees are from our state. Another one-third from the surrounding states, and then two guys, one from Ohio and one from Indiana. A couple of states over. Then in the outlying areas you have Texas, Arizona, Florida represented, and even Australia. LeVar made the trip over there last week, and we feel really good about that as well.

That hasn’t changed a great deal. Every guy is a captain. Every guy is a multi-sport athlete. Some guys more than multi. A couple of guys are three- and two- or four- sport athletes.

Those things remain important to us as well. Just overall feel really good about the class. Appreciate everybody’s hard work. Everybody on campus. Not just in the department, but faculty members, everybody that helps make the cause well.

Our fans add a lot to it. Players come to games here. They’re extremely impressed being in Kinnick and seeing the fan support that we receive. So that’s important for us. It’s really just a team effort, quite frankly , so we’re really appreciative of that. Most appreciative of the recruits and their families just demonstrating their confidence in us and our program.

So excited to get them here, whenever that time may be. In the meantime we’ll just keep pushing forward here. I’ll throw it out for questions and see what we can do.

Q. We didn’t get all the questions in probably the other day we wanted to, so how is the health of the offensive line look like? Depth chart, which I know you love to talk about. Logan Jones is not there. Is he out for the game? Gennings Dunker, other guys like that?

KIRK FERENTZ: I think I did that depth chart eight weeks ago. Probably two or three. We’re back practicing right now, and knock on wood right now everybody is healthy. Everybody is good to go.

Logan is doing well. Dunk is doing good. Reason so far so good.

Q. I know neither of us are math majors, but looking at your scholarship numbers it’s pretty tight, and you’ve got guys that could potentially come back for the COVID year. How are you guys kind of managing and massaging this whole situation right now?

KIRK FERENTZ: Probably like everybody else in the country. That’s always an issue. I think we have a fairly healthy projection on what’s going to happen both ways, so we feel pretty comfortable about where we’re at.

Yeah, that’s an issue for everybody. It’s much talked about in Division I right now. Roster management has gotten very tricky with the portal, transfers, transfers in, transfers out, all those kinds of things.

Then typically every year you have some attrition from January to August. I can’t remember a year where that wasn’t true. We probably have a medical or two — medical case or two that are being reviewed right now on top of that.

It’s kind of like tickets during the week. I always tell Rita, it will work out. Don’t worry about it. It usually does, but we’re still pretty cautious about how we operate that way.

Q. One guy that I know has gotten a lot of positive feedback on social media and stuff like that based on his film is Gavin Hoffman. I know you were there for his in-home visit. Can you just tell me, what exactly stuck out to you during his recruitment about him and what — or why you wanted to make him a Hawkeye, I guess?

KIRK FERENTZ: First and foremost is probably his attitude. He is just a very eager, anxious guy. He is a good football player, good athlete, football, basketball.

His attitude. He loves the game. He’s got a personality, and not that that’s everything certainly because every player is different. Josey Jewell would just look at you and then look through you ^ Check. There weren’t a lot of smiles with Josey, that’s for sure. Not one size fits all, but I think Gavin has a real enthusiasm for the game. He has a good skill set. We think great growth potential.

He has a lot of the characteristics of guys that have come here pretty much unheralded. I’m not saying he is unheralded. That’s not the case, but the guys that have really grown and developed in our system. We think he checks a lot of those boxes. He’s a little bit more heavily recruited than some of the guys maybe that I’m referencing that way, but we just liked everything about him.

Q. Two questions: First one with the offensive guys. What was kind of your message these last few months to them with not having an OC yet in place? Then totally unrelated, what kind of stood out to you about these three linebackers, three in-state guys that didn’t seem to have the highest ratings but looked pretty talented?

KIRK FERENTZ: The football question, I’ll handle that first. Brian has been here throughout this entire period. Shows up every day totally committed to the program. He’s a former player. He’s got a lot of years associated with the program.

So there’s no question I don’t ask him daily what’s his motivation, but I don’t want to speak for other people, but I’m pretty sure he’s doing it because he is part of this program and cares deeply about the people involved and particularly our players.

It’s a nonissue. We’re just proceeding on a daily basis. The encouragement we give him right now is the same as it was in August. Let’s just focus on getting better every day, getting a little healthier where that’s possible, and seeing a lot of improvement from a lot of players, and that’s encouraging. That’s one of the great things about December.

Then the three linebackers, it feels like we’ve been recruiting them for four years. Basically I don’t think anybody is further than 60 miles from here. Can’t tell you how many times they’ve been on campus for practices, spring practice. This past weekend they were all here. I felt like a year ago they could have just slid right into our room and fit in beautifully with the guys that we have.

I just like their attitudes. They all have different skill sets, and they all have different permits. I think they’re all committed to being good football players.

I think them being here on the field a couple of years ago and watching guys like Campbell, watching guys like Benson work, now they get to see Higgins and Nick Jackson. I just think they felt like the mesh was perfect. We certainly felt that way.

Just very high on all three of them. Liked their attitude. Like their seriousness. I think they’re all tough, competitive guys.

Then the irony is, and good luck this happening again, but like I said, you have three guys in a 60-mile radius. That certainly helps. I wish we had about 50 prospects within a 60-mile radius. That would be really good.

Q. You mentioned that this is a changing recruiting landscape, but you look at this class and with the exception of the punter that you got a couple of days ago, it was essentially complete by the middle of summer. Is that something you expected to have happen once you’ve started to get the recruits and then once they were pretty much on board? Did you think it was going to be as drama-free getting to here as it has been?

KIRK FERENTZ: Good question. That’s kind of funny because my exposure to the outside world when I come to work or leave. It’s either the college station or the NFL station.

This morning I had the college station on. I heard about all the drama and stuff going on and guys waffling. I guess we just don’t really live in that world. We haven’t had much of that for quite some time.

Typically, it doesn’t make it right or wrong, but it seems like the way we recruit, we end up uncovering guys that we feel good about and then typically if they commit and we ask them don’t commit if you really don’t mean it. And again, there’s exceptions to every rule, but for the most part when guys do commit and the parents are involved and everybody is on board, you don’t have to ride that roller coaster. We really haven’t done much of that.

I’m not saying that’s foreshadowing of a bad college career, but I don’t mind telling you, it would be a concern for me. Not a deal breaker, but a concern if any of our coaches come in and start talking about a guy that’s been in three high schools in three years. Those kinds of things are just things you really need to get answers for I think because the best way to predict the future still is to understand the past a little bit.

Sometimes there are very valid reasons why things happen. I can think of an example a couple of years back, but if there’s not a good reason and you are seeing some things that maybe alert you, chances are they’re not going to work well here because our goal is to get our guys here. Our No. 1 program goal is for our guys to graduate. Had a bunch of guys do it last Saturday. A bunch of guys did it last May. We’ll have a bunch more here in the May term.

The guys that end up in the program, they typically graduate, and that’s our No. 1 program goal. I’m not the smartest guy in the world, but I know this. If you don’t stay at Iowa, you can’t graduate from Iowa. So it is important to us that we try to be very transparent, make sure they have a good picture of what it’s going to be like when they get here, so there are no surprises. Then hopefully they get the work ethic that it takes to stay in the program and become a really good football player.

Q. I wanted to ask you a little bit about Cody Fox, and also kind of alongside those three other linebackers, they’ve all committed a year and a half ago. How did you do it, and then also with Cody Fox, are you surprised? Three years it seems like he’s been committed to you and not one waiver.

KIRK FERENTZ: That’s scary when you offer guys that young, and they commit to you, it’s like, oh, boy, hope we’re right. Everything that we’ve learned about Cody and seen him do since that time is what we had hoped we were going to see.

The rest of that story too is we’ve known his family for quite some time. His older brother was here. Just graduated. A year ago graduated. Did a great job in our program.

So we knew the family. We think we knew what we were getting there. Cody has been to camp a couple of times and impressed the heck out of us. Really a tough guy, competitive guy. We have also had some luck in that high school. It has been really good to us too historically.

We were, again, confident that we had a pretty good idea what we were getting. A little bit like Aaron Graves prior to that, who committed at a really young age. Aaron is such an exceptional young guy.

Same for the linebackers. I don’t want to speak for any of them. I don’t think they ever gave it a thought about a different school or any of that kind of stuff. It was pretty good mesh right from the start.

Again, we don’t encourage guys to commit unless they really mean it and they’re sure, and the parents have to be sure, too. All four of those young guys have been steady, as have their families. I appreciate that.

That’s how you try to build a program. You have to have some really good cornerstones and build a foundation with guys, and it was that way in the ’80s too. You build a foundation I think with in-state players that really understand the program. They have a great appreciation for the history of the program, and then they help educate guys that maybe aren’t quite as familiar as they come in. It’s worked out pretty well for us over time.