By Pat Harty

IOWA CITY, Iowa – Without Kirk Ferentz, there probably wouldn’t be someone like Brady Ross on the Iowa football team, unless maybe he played linebacker.

Ross plays fullback, which is to football what a fax machine is to an office and what a landline is to house.

The third-year sophomore from Humboldt is old school all the way and plays a position that is on the verge of becoming extinct at the collegiate level.

Very few coaches still value a fullback enough to use them, but Ferentz is one of them.

The fullback is mostly just another blocker in Ferentz’s scheme, and when the running game is clicking, the fullback gets credit for helping to pave the way between the tackles.

But when the running game struggles, as is the case now, the fullback is viewed as being outdated and blamed for making the offense stale and predictable.

Iowa enters Saturday’s game against Minnesota with a 1-3 record in conference play and ranked 12^th in the Big Ten in rushing offense, averaging just 131.6 yards per game and 3.5 yards per carry as a team.

The Hawkeyes were held to just 89 rushing yards on 33 carries against Northwestern, and that has some fans in an uproar and pleading for changes, while the media tries to make sense of Iowa’s rushing woes.

“I don’t really pay attention to the outside noise anymore because that’s a good way to lose a few IQ points, frankly,” Ross said Tuesday at Iowa’s weekly press gathering. “I think some people think it’s like NCAA football on the X-box. You know, if that’s not working, let’s pitch it to the outside.

“The bottom line is there is a lot of film study that goes in every week. And we know what we want to do and we’re confident in our game plan every week. It’s just a matter of going out and executing.”

Iowa’s goal under Ferentz is always to be balanced, but it starts on the ground. Rarely does Iowa have the perimeter pieces on offense to compensate for an ineffective rushing attack.

The 2004 season was an exception when Iowa finished 10-2 despite having an anemic rushing attack. But that team also had the Big Ten Offensive Player of the Year in sophomore quarterback Drew Tate, talented receivers such as Clinton Solomon and Ed Hinkel and one of the conference’s top defenses led by defensive end Matt Roth, defensive tackle Jonathon Babineaux and linebackers Chad Greenway and Abdul Hodge.

The current struggles are nothing new under Ferentz. His teams almost always are a work in progress, sometimes a slow in work in progress, especially on offense.

But it gets magnified even more when the running game struggles because that strikes at the core of Hawkeye football under Ferentz.

Panic sets in with some fans who feel that Ferentz needs to evolve on offense, or in other words, quit being so reliant on the ground game.

“It’s easy for people on the outside to do that,” said the 6-foot-1, 245-pound Ross. “It’s natural to second-guess things when they’re not working. It’s natural to try to fix stuff and jump ship. That’s why you see so many college programs from all over run coaches through.

“What’s special about Iowa is we don’t jump the ship. We ride the ship and we fix what’s wrong.”

Some fans probably don't want to hear that, but that is always the plan and the solution under Ferentz. Stay the course and trust in what you do.

Ferentz's more flamboyant son might be calling the plays on offense now, but the grind-it-out philosophy remains the same.

The players and coaches all seem to believe that they’re close to fixing the running game.

Senior running Akrum Wadley said as much on Tuesday, and just three days after calling Iowa’s loss to Northwestern embarrassing.

“We got off to a good start yesterday and today we had a good practice today, probably one of the best practices of the year,” Wadley said. “Go watch the (Northwestern) film, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was. We got off to a good start the first few drives. We drove the ball. We accomplished a goal, which was to get off to a good start.

“We just didn’t finish it, and now we’ve got to finish it. We’ve got to finish every drive and help the defense out.”

To expect the players to say anything else publicly would be naïve because even if they were concerned about Iowa’s approach on offense, they wouldn’t share it with the media.

But it’s unlikely that they’re losing faith because the players have seen the running game under Ferentz work so many times before. And they trust their head coach and believe in his style of football.

It certainly hurts that Iowa is without two key seniors on the offensive line with right tackle Ike Boettger out for the season with an Achilles injury and with guard Boone Myers possibly out for the rest of the season with an ankle injury that he sustained in preseason camp.

But there is no choice but to move on and make do with what what you have in terms of personnel.

“We always like to stay in the moment, never get too high, never get too low type of thing,” said Ross, who came to Iowa as a walk-on. “So that’s kind of the way we try and deal with it.”

Ferentz always tell his players to block out the noise during times of success and failure. He wants them focused solely on the next game, and he sort of chuckled when told what Ross said about losing IQ points from the listening to the outside noise.

“I encourage them to not pay much attention to it because I can only imagine what it is right now,” Ferentz said. “Normally I'd read it all — well, I don't read it all. But I kind of skim it on Wednesday nights a little bit just to see what it's like. But I always have people telling me what's going on. I can pretty much tell. It's pretty predictable, you're not doing as well as you like, what it's going to be.

“So, yeah, it's really counterproductive to improvement and that's what we're focused on right now.”

The focus under Ferentz is always on improvement instead of change. Some fans are tired and frustrated with his stay-the-course approach, but that goes with losing, and with having the same head coach since 1999.

It would be nice to see Wadley in space more as a receiver and it could happen.

Say what you want about former Iowa offensive coordinator Greg Davis, but he did a good job of getting Wadley more involved in the passing game in the second half of last season. Wadley had 36 receptions last season, with 25 coming in the final six games.

So it’s not that Iowa doesn’t make changes under Kirk Ferentz. They’re usually subtle changes that often go unnoticed.

The fullback plays more in some games than in others. It mostly comes down to matchups.

Ross was asked on Tuesday about the fullback’s role heading into the Minnesota game.

“I don’t know one-hundred percent how much we’ll be in there, and if I did I probably wouldn’t tell you,” Ross said. “So we’ll kind see how it goes.”

One of the biggest criticisms about Ferentz is that his offense is too predictable and too reliant on the running game.

“I don’t claim to be a football genius by any stretch of the imagination,” Ross said. “But one thing I do know about football is it’s not so much what you do, it’s how well you do it.

“There are 101 ways to skin the cat. We’re just interested in what’s going to make us better, skinning the cat the way we want to do it. You know what I mean?

Ross means that football is played a certain way under Kirk Ferentz and a little adversity is no reason to abandon ship.

There is no magic cure for what ails the Iowa running game. It just comes down to believing in what you do, executing and blocking, both the opponents and the outside noise.