Iowa Football: Extreme Program Makeover. Wednesday afternoon, February 8th. Time, to be announced.
That's the day Kirk Ferentz is expected to announce a new Defensive Coordinator and Defensive Line coach. If Phil Parker is named as the DC, then Iowa will likely also announce a new defensive backs coach. There could be other position coach changes, too.
Then came Friday's bombshell; Ken O'Keefe is leaving the Iowa program to pursue another coaching opportunity.
One quick tour of our message boards as well as a spin around twitter tells me more than a few Iowa fans were not saddened by that news. Heck, I didn't need to look at such things to know this, as the most consistent theme on Soundoff during my eight-year stint as co-host has been 'KOK has to go.'
Those people got their wish on Friday. Perhaps it worked out well for Ferentz, too; he didn't have to one day be faced with firing a friend.
My opinion of the Iowa offense under Ken O'Keefe is, in a word, 'meh'. OK, that's not a real word, but it hit's close to the mark.
In my 'Hawk Stock' series from December, I wrote about
Iowa's offensive production since 2002...or lack thereof.
Here was a graphic I used in that item:
Here is something I wrote in that item:
Some of those stats are just ho-hum and some are shockingly poor. Some of them are also ancient history when it comes to today’s college football environment.
Here are two such numbers. Iowa ranked 33rd in the nation in scoring offense in 2008, just three years ago, with 30.31 points per game. In 2011, 30.31 points per game would rank 45th. In 2002, Iowa averaged 37.23 points per game, which was and is the most prolific offense in school history. In 2011, that point total which was the best in Iowa history, would have been 16th best in the nation.
The game is changing and it’s changing rapidly. Scoring 30.0 points in a season doesn’t make you special or dynamic anymore; it just makes you 46th in the nation in scoring offense in the 2011 world of college football.
Another stat to toss out was last season’s 22nd ranking in third down conversions. Over the final four regular season games, Iowa was under 35 percent in converting third downs and they lost three of those four games and probably should have lost the fourth at Indiana.
The 11 year window of those stats is nothing to write home about, considering that a ranking of 58 puts you around the middle of the FBS during that time span.
However, the five-year trend is downright scary, and I don’t mean in an Oregon offense sort of way.
Over the past few years, I had reached this conclusion...there has been more than enough evidence to warrant a change at Offensive Coordinator, yet it never happened. Lacking a change, I viewed that as an endorsement of O'Keefe by Ferentz. Or rather, Ferentz was comfortable with the job that O'Keefe was doing.
O'Keefe ran the kind of offense that Kirk Ferentz wanted to run, yet I am not sold and never have been that it was the kind of offense that O'Keefe would have chosen to run.
That's not to say that O'Keefe would have favored an Oregon Ducks style spread, but I know that in the first ever spring practice season of the Ferentz era, Iowa attempted to install an offense that was not set in Power-I principles. Let me amend that a little bit; I was not at those practices, but I have spoken to numerous people who were at those practices and things were more open. After the spring drills came to an end, Ferentz chose to go the route we have seen for the past 13 years.
There were rumors in December of 2010 that O'Keefe and Ferentz had butted heads during the 2010 season, as well as rumors of O'Keefe having interest in the Indiana head coaching job that was available. I don't know either were true, but it was certainly a hot topic amongst the Iowa media 14 months ago. If there was a disagreement (and those things happen in life), I doubt it was because O'Keefe wanted to run more Power-I sets or that Ferentz wanted to open things up more often.
When Iowa's brand of offense is working, it's a thing of beauty. When the Hawkeyes get little to nothing on first down, they appear to be in far more trouble than most teams. I think their margin for error on third and long is smaller that their contemporaries based upon the bread and butter aspects of their offense, which does not go through a lot of four and five wide receiver reps in practice.
I don't want to get bogged down in this debate again, because we have all been there and done that. My hunch is whomever Ferentz hires to be the new offensive coordinator is going to run an offense similar to the one we have seen the past 13 seasons.
One of the big changes will be in the play calling, as Ferentz did not micromanage O'Keefe on that front. Ken still called the game for the most part, with Ferentz occasionally calling a timeout to get out of a play call he didn't like or chiming in during timeout situations. But the majority of the play calls were left up to Ken O'Keefe. It only makes sense that a coach would fall into some tendencies during 13 years in the same system, so a new play caller will have a new rhythm.
I also believe Iowa's offensive system is such that it will be 'easier' for a new coordinator to pick up and become familiar with. I don't think Iowa's offense is as 'simple' as many people like to believe, as certain plays have two or three (or more) counters where the formation is the same, the flow is the same but the ball goes to different areas. These are aspects that really affect with a defense, and former Iowa defensive players have explained this to me.
On the whole, the amount of change Iowa's program will have this off season is pretty amazing, considering how little change they have had the previous 13 years.
Norm Parker, Ken O'Keefe and Phil Parker had been full time assistants for the entire 13-year Ferentz era.
Lester Erb was hired to replace Chuck Long after one year and
Reese Morgan was hired to replace Pat Flaherty after one year.
Darrell Wilson joined the Iowa staff in 2001, replacing Bret Bielema.
Eric Johnson was promoted from a GA position to replace Joe Philbin in 2002. All of the coaches in bold were on Iowa's staff to start this season. Erik Campbell was the 'newbie' on staff and this was his 5th year at Iowa.
Now, Ferentz will have to replace both coordinators and a defensive line coach, at the least; I think there will be more change than just these positions. This program has had just two head coaches since 1979 and only a handful of offensive and defensive coordinators during that time.
This coming Wednesday will be a remarkable and noteworthy day in the annals of Iowa football history, as the winds of change are blowing.
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