Everything Coach Kirk Ferentz Said About Michigan Football After B1G Championship BY TRENT KNOOP SPORTS ILLUSTRATED MICHIGAN WOLVERINES NEWS, ANALYSIS AND MORE
INDIANAPOLIS — Kirk Ferentz and Iowa lost to Michigan two times in the last three years in the Big Ten Championship game. In 2021, it was a 42-3 defeat and on Saturday night, Michigan won 26-0. The Iowa defense held up to its standards, only allowing Michigan to score two touchdowns and gain 213 yards of total offense. But the Iowa offense also held up to its standards. Deacon Hill and the Hawkeyes to just 155 yards of total offense.
Iowa also had three fumbles to its name on Saturday night and had several other occasions where the ball could’ve been intercepted by the Michigan defense. After the game, Kirk Ferentz met with reporters to talk about his team and the Wolverines. Here is everything Ferentz had to say about the Michigan Wolverines following the B1G championship. On the Iowa defense vs. the Michigan offense Guys have been playing great defense all season long, and tonight was no exception. Tremendous amount of respect for our opponent’s offensive football team, their entire football team. I said that during the week. That was sincere. Both teams played defensively tonight. I don’t think it’s a huge surprise, and credit to our guys. They gave us a chance and kept us in the game really until that turnover in the third quarter.
The lack of numbers from the Iowa offense despite having turnovers So probably the two biggest plays, in my opinion, were the punt return and the turnover in the third quarter. Then we turned one over too, which probably cost us a field goal. I would attribute Michigan’s defensive performance or our offensive performance to their defense. They have a really good defense, and it’s statistically proven. I think they give up ten points a game. That’s not our strength right now. We didn’t match up well. That’s the way it goes. We’ll go back to the drawing board. On the Deacon Hill-ruled fumble in the third quarter, I’ve made it the last two months without getting fined. I’ll try again. I’m really struggling with our replay system.
I was really struggling with it, as I was after the Minnesota game. However, many weeks after that, I’m still struggling on that one. I can’t accept it.Tonight, as I was told, the arm was going forward, but the hand wasn’t, and I’m not sure if that’s possible mechanically. I was an English major, but again, I just think we’re really taking a game that’s relatively simple—I’m old enough, okay, I was in the league when they started the replay. The whole concept, as I recall, was taking, obviously—I don’t want to say a blown call, but a wrong call. An official got screened, somehow an obvious mistake took place, and you corrected it.
We’ve taken it to a whole different level, and we’ve been on the short end of two of them. Coaches get fired. Coaches get fired. If you want to talk about the extremes of it, coaches get fired. So I just think we have a system that needs to be readdressed and rediscussed. There’s got to be a better way to do it. I feel bad for the officials on the field because they’re the ones that have to explain to us that a decision that gets made gets made somewhere else.It doesn’t make sense.
It doesn’t make sense to me. So to me, the official who reviews it on the field should have full ability to make the decision or a centralized location because I just can’t understand why it wouldn’t be better to have one consistent voice. You know, that’s what it is, but that’s an out-of-season discussion. But that was a big play in the game, obviously, once that happened. Then the other component to that was that on the field, the whistle blew, and we got penalized a year ago for a guy trying to recover a fumble after a whistle blew. It’s really tough to coach your guys when a whistle blows, but their guy recovers. Our guys didn’t.
I’m not saying that cost us the game. I’m not sitting up here saying that, but it’s a pivotal play. So it’s just a little bit challenging.
If you wanted to compare it to last year’s, those interior guys—they’ve got a big physical group of interior guys, and they’re good at every position. That’s been Michigan for a long time. I started in ’81. That was my first time being involved with them in person. So they’ve always had good players. They’re very well-coached. They’ve got a lot of girth inside. It was tough to get anything going in the running game, and they rotated guys through. They have fewer than five or six guys that are pretty good in there. Not that the other guys aren’t; don’t get me wrong. They’re very, very veteran on defense.
