Baffled by two Hawkeye football questions; Why now? And why not?
By Pat Harty
IOWA CITY, Iowa – Two questions related to Hawkeye football that have me sort of baffled.
Why now?
And why not?
First, the why now question.
Why did Iowa Interim Athletic Director Beth Goetz announce with four games left in the 2023 regular season that Iowa offensive coordinator Brain Ferentz would be fired after the season.
The decision to relieve Brian Ferentz of his duties makes sense with how poorly the offense has performed since the start of the 2022 season because something had to change.
Defense and special teams can only carry the team so far.

The timing doesn’t make sense, though, because it creates yet another distraction and it’s so unusual to have a lame duck coordinator who is also the son of the head coach.
Kirk Ferentz would’ve been upset know matter when Brian Ferentz was fired, but to do it in season adds insult to an emotional injury.
To fire a coach in season goes against everything Kirk Ferentz stands for as a head coach, and with it being his son, that makes a bad situation even worse.
There will be one fewer distraction, though, since the drive to 325 points doesn’t many anything moving forward. That silly storyline, which was caused by former Iowa athletic director Gary Barta revising Brian Ferentz’s contract with performance incentives, is now old news.
Goetz declined to give any specific reason why she pulled the plug on Brian Ferentz with four games still left to play.
And she downplayed the suggestion that pressure from donors, and from fans, had anything to do with the timing.
“I think any time you’re in these situations you just got to tune out what’s around,” Goetz said. “It’s our job to evaluate all the information that we have. You make the best decision you can at the time, for both the short and long term of a program, of an institution and then that’s what you go with.”
Okay. Fine.
But something still caused Goetz to act swiftly and decisively.
Kirk Ferentz made it seem as if he only found out about the decision to fire his son this past weekend.
“I had access to the announcement that you read, that we all read over the weekend,” Kirk Ferentz said at his weekly press conference on Tuesday.
You wonder if the original plan was to sit on the news until after the season, but then word leaked, and Goetz was forced to react.
What is certain, however, is that Kirk Ferentz isn’t just disappointed with the decision, and with the timing of it, he’s angry.
That was obvious as Kirk Ferentz met with the media on Tuesday, and with Goetz listening in the back of the room.
Kirk Ferentz isn’t used to having football decisions made for him, and the fact that this decision involved his son, and was made by an interim athletic director, is hard for Kirk Ferentz to take.

Now for the why not question.
It pertains to the Iowa quarterback situation in which Kirk Ferentz seems determined to stick with sophomore Deacon Hill even though Hill is completing just 37.8 percent of his passes for 424 yards and two touchdowns.
Hill is also coming off a game in which he fumbled twice and threw an interception in a 12-10 loss to Minnesota on Oct. 21 at Kinnick Stadium.
And yet, despite his struggles, Hill appears to still have a firm hold on the starting job that became his when Cade McNamara suffered a season-ending knee against Michigan State in the fifth game.
Junior backup Joe Labas hasn’t played since making his first start against Kentucky in the 2022 Music City Bowl, a game in which Iowa won 21-0 thanks largely two pick-sixes.
Labas was slowed by an injury earlier in the season, but now he’s healthy and apparently still can’t narrow the gap with Hill.
At least, that’s how Kirk Ferentz made it seem when asked Tuesday about the quarterback competition.
“We’ve looked at every position and let everybody compete and let everybody practice,” Kirk Ferentz said. “Again, the older guys are more experienced. I think they got some work last week, but not to the extent of a normal practice week, I would say.
“The quarterback position, it’s a clear one, two, three, and we’ll keep an open mind as we move forward.”
A member of the media presented Kirk Ferentz with a statistic in which Hill is ranked 160th out of 160 in turnover worthy plays and then asked Kirk Ferentz how he still could equate Hill being the starter with such a high turnover rate, and if it were because the other quarterbacks are just that bad.

“Well, those are your words, not mine certainly,” Kirk Ferentz said. “It isn’t that bad. They’re playing major college football.
“Again, we go through. We’ve been evaluating since the start of spring practice. You look at the body of work. Believe it or not, at least I think we know a little bit more about our guys because we see a lot more. Our judgment is 100 percent correct rarely, when you talk about player evaluation, that type of thing. But all you can do is try to make the best decisions based on what the evidence is and what you see on a daily basis and then move forward.
“By you saying somebody else might be bad is suggesting the other guy is bad, too. I don’t look at it that way. I try to look at guys who haven’t been able to grow very much and see how well they can move forward and how quickly they can move forward here.
“I’ll go back to the first point, and to your point, if we’re going to beat ourselves, it’s going to be tough to win. So far we’ve lost two games this year. We’ve had experience of losing, 25 years, I’ve got plenty of experience with losing. I’m an expert at getting my butt kicked. That’s one thing that I’m an expert in. But you get back on your feet and move forward.”
Kirk Ferentz obviously didn’t like the choice of words used by the media member. But it was a fair question under the circumstances.
Labas hardly stood out in the bowl game as he only completed 14-of-24 passes for 139 yards and one touchdown.
But he also avoided making any turnovers and he didn’t lose the game.
He was a game manager, and that proved to be enough.
So, why not give Labas a chance?
It just seems weird that Kirk Ferentz isn’t even willing to give Labas a series or two with how much Hill has struggled.
Iowa’s third-team quarterback right now is true freshman Marco Lainez, who is on course to be redshirted this season.
I normally don’t question Kirk Ferentz’s decisions about who plays because for one, Kirk Ferentz knows way more about football than I ever will, and he watches practice every day and evaluates the quarterbacks.
Kirk Ferentz still apparently believes that Hill gives Iowa its best chance of defeating Northwestern on Saturday.
Kirk Ferentz is either being stubborn or Labas isn’t practicing well enough to make a change.
Because what else could it be?