I was not really watching much of that game against Penn State because it was on at the same time as the Ohio State/ND game, but I was keeping tabs on it on my phone and flipping back during commercials. I’m glad I didn’t catch much of it, though. What a horrendous and embarrassing game for Iowa.

Brian Ferentz should be fired today. He won’t be, because daddy is the head coach, but honestly, Kirk should be fired as well. Not just for hiring his incompetent son to be offensive coordinator, but for keeping him around for this long after it was abundantly clear he’s got no idea what he’s doing. Brian Ferentz has been the Iowa offensive coordinator since 2017 and they’ve never once ranked higher than 88th in the country in total offense.

The offensive numbers Iowa put up Saturday night against Penn State, however, were simply unacceptable. They’re beyond bad—they’re criminal. I know Penn State is good, but Group of 5 and FCS teams don’t even perform that poorly on offense against Penn State.

Let’s just run through the numbers here:

• Total first downs: Penn State had 28. Iowa had 4. FOUR. Four first downs in a game. They were 1 out of 9 on third down.
• Total yards: Penn State 397, Iowa 76. Seventy-six total yards in a game. I can’t remember the last time a team had fewer than 100 yards in a game. That is absolutely nuts.
• As far as I can tell Iowa only ran 33 offensive plays in the game, which is a shockingly low number. They were 6/16 passing and had 17 rush attempts. Penn State, on the other hand, had 97 total plays.
• Iowa’s time of possession was only 14:33, while Penn State had the ball for over 45 minutes—again, another shockingly lopsided number that I’m not sure I’ve ever seen before.
• 20 rushing yards on 17 carries. Penn State had 215 yards on 57 carries—just. 3.8 yards per attempt, so Iowa was pretty decent against the run considering how much their defense was on the field.
• Actually, Iowa was pretty great on defense overall considering how much they were on the field. They only let up 182 passing yards on 40 attempts by Drew Allar. Allar was 28/40 passing, just 4.6 yards per attempt.
• Penn State only averaged 4.1 yards per play in the game. For an Iowa defense that was on the field for 45 and a half minutes and 97 plays, they held up pretty damn well. And that’s the biggest shame here: Iowa has had a phenomenal defense for a while now, and Brian Ferentz just wastes it.
• Iowa turned the ball over 4 times—all fumbles. They actually had 6 fumbles in the game but were able to keep 2 of them.
• Usually when an offense is playing like shit and the defense is continually having to go out on the field, the defense gets tired, worn out, mentally broken, etc by the second half and that’s when the dam breaks. That’s when the defense lets go of the rope. This is what happened in this game. Penn State was up 10-0 at halftime, but then had 3 straight scoring drives in the second half—plus their 4th drive of the second half resulted in a missed field goal.

I understand it was raining. Maybe that’s an excuse for Iowa fumbling the ball 6 times. But Penn State also had to play in the rain and they didn’t fumble.

This was maybe the worst offensive performance I’ve ever seen. There is no reason that Iowa should be that much worse than Penn State. No reason at all.

This is no longer funny anymore. Like, last year Iowa’s offense was so bad and we kind of just laughed about it, crowned them the Sicko’s National Champions, it was this whole running joke.

This year, it’s just not as funny. Like, get your shit together. You’re doing those players a disservice.

They set a low-ass bar for Brian Ferentz to exceed: 25 points a game. They’re at about 21 points a game now after the shutout. And it’s not going to get much easier going into Big Ten play.

85 teams last season out of 131 averaged 25 or more points per game. That’s the bar Brian Ferentz has to clear: be a top-85 offense. And he can’t even do that. With Big Ten talent. Pathetic.

It’s pretty clear that Iowa’s offensive football players have completely lost all faith in the coaching staff. I mean, come on: even fucking DELAWARE, an FCS team, managed a better offensive output against Penn State than Iowa did. Penn State beat Delaware 63-7 but Delaware still got 140 yards of offense in the game. Iowa barely even got HALF of that.

I’m looking through all of Penn State’s defensive game logs to try and find the last time they held a team to 76 yards of offense or fewer and I can’t even find a game where they held somebody to under 100 yards of offense. In 2016, they held Rutgers to 87 yards of offense. Close, but Iowa was still worse.

You have to go back to 2006, when they played Temple and held them to 74 yards of total offense.

Look, Penn State has a good team this year, maybe the best they’ve had since they had Saquon Barkley, but no team out there is so good that they’ll hold a Power Five program to 76 yards of total offense. That is self-inflicted by Iowa. That speaks way more to Iowa’s own offensive incompetence than it does to Penn State’s dominance on defense. I don’t care what anybody says. If you hold somebody to 76 total yards, that says way more about them than it does about you.

Not even Alabama has held a Power Five team to 76 or fewer yards in a game anytime under Nick Saban. They held Vanderbilt to 78 yards in 2017, which is close enough, and they famously held LSU to 92 yards in the 2011 National Championship game, but even Alabama goes years without holding a Power Five team to under 100 yards of offense.

In 2021, Georgia with that historic defense held Vandy to 77 yards of offense in a game. That’s the only time in Kirby’s tenure at Georgia they’ve held a team under 100 yards of offense.

Penn State’s defense is nowhere near as good as the 2021 Georgia defense, and Iowa is a much better football program than Vanderbilt. There is absolutely no reason for Iowa to get held to 76 yards of offense by Penn State. It cannot happen. No offense should ever be shut down that completely. It doesn’t even happen when Bama and Georgia play FCS teams.

What people who were unfortunate enough to watch that game on Saturday night witnessed was offensive incompetence on a generational, historic, and unprecedented scale. Iowa had 10 drives in that game and only 76 yards of offense–7.6 yards per drive on average. That is incomprehensible.

If I put myself in Kirk Ferentz’s shoes, I can’t blame a guy for putting his family over his job and the football program.

But you should still fire that guy for doing it. Like, if Kirk Ferentz is going to have his son’s back and put his relationship with his son over the wellbeing of the Iowa football program, that’s fine, he can make that choice—but he should be fired for it. Stand on principle and let the athletic director turn you into a martyr, then. Tell the AD, “I’m sorry but I just can’t fire my son. You’ll have to fire both of us.” And the AD should grant his request.

Ferentz is the longest tenured coach in college football. Guys like him stick around for too long and start to feel like they’re untouchable, but it’s time for that Iowa athletic department to put their foot down: enough is enough. Kirk Ferentz has worn out his welcome. By continually allowing his incompetent son to fuck up the offense year after year, Kirk Ferentz is showing that he just doesn’t care all that much about the program. He’s showing that there’s no accountability under his watch; piss poor job performance is acceptable. And most of all he’s showing–at the very least–a lack of respect, and at worst, downright disdain for the University of Iowa and its fanbase.

He’s got to go. Not just his son—him, too. It’s time for a change.

Fans will tolerate a lot if it’s clear the coach and the players care and are trying as hard as they can to win. But at this point, how can you even try to argue that that’s the case at Iowa?

It’s clear that Kirk Ferentz doesn’t care all that much about winning anymore. It’s clear that he has other priorities—like keeping his son’s job.

So the guy has got to go.

I understand putting family first, but as the head coach of a major college football program, you have an obligation to a lot more people than just your family. Plus, it’s not HIS football program. Kirk Ferentz doesn’t own the Iowa football program. It’s not like it’s a family business and he can hire anybody he wants.

When Kirk Ferentz hired his son to be offensive coordinator, that has to come with an understanding between himself and Brian that if Brian is not good at his job, he will be fired. Kirk the head football coach would have to fire Brian the offensive coordinator, superseding the relationship between Kirk the dad and Brian the son. Otherwise, you lose all credibility if you don’t treat your own son the same as all the other coaches on staff. And that’s what has happened now. Kirk Ferentz has no credibility anymore.

He can’t look any of the other coaches on his staff in the eye and tell them that he’s doing everything in his power to win. He can’t look his players in the eye and preach accountability. And he can’t look the common folk in the eye as he’s strolling through the Ped Mall in Iowa City and tell them he’s doing everything he can to win games.

Kirk Ferentz is the head coach of a public university’s football program. There are thousands of people who pay tens of thousands a year in tuition that funds both Kirk Ferentz’s salary and the athletic department as a whole. There are alumni who donate money, deep-pocketed boosters, and even public tax dollars that are being wasted on Brian Ferentz’s salary–and that football team in general, as long as the Ferentzes are involved with it.

Kirk isn’t paying Brian out of his own pocket. And Brian Ferentz’s incompetence affects more than just Kirk Ferentz himself. Again, it’s not a family business. He does not have the right to sacrifice the football program in the name of lining his son’s pockets. It’s more than just nepotism—it’s corruption.

And I’m almost positive Kirk’s original intent was to eventually retire and try to name Brian his successor. There’s no doubt in my mind that was his intent, because again: he’s been there so long he’s started to act like the football program, maybe even the whole athletic department, is his personal property. Like he owns and is entitled to do whatever he wants with it–including run it into the ground and hand it down to his incompetent son.

This ain’t the family breakfast joint in town, Kirk. It’s a Power Five college football program.

There are other stakeholders involved.

It’s time for Iowa to show Kirk Ferentz the door, and obviously his incompetent son along with him. Kirk is either incapable or unwilling to separate Brian Ferentz the terrible offensive coordinator from Brian Ferentz the son, and since Kirk is unable to do what has to be done, then he’s got to be fired as well.

Iowa should call up Bob Stoops and see if he’s willing to take the job.

My only concern is that Kirk is just too powerful there and nobody actually has the stones to get this done. After all, how has Brian Ferentz been able to hang around this long?

It’s probably a lot trickier than I’m making it out to be, but at the end of the day, there is somebody in that athletic department–the AD–who is technically Kirk Ferentz’s boss, and that person needs to just step up and do what has to be done.

You cannot allow another year of this. Iowa will become a joke of a program–even more of a joke than it already is. It will take years to wash off the stench of the Brian Ferentz era and convince good offensive players that they should actually consider going to Iowa.

Do it now before it’s too late.