Head Hawk: 10 tidbits from Kirk Ferentz’s Utah State postgame press conference

I thought well. You have to remember with him, too, he hasn’t played in a year. It’s been a year for him.

So those are things you just kind of keep in consideration. He did a good job, he seemed comfortable with things. You can tell he is a guy who has played because the conversations going back and forth are pretty good.

Seth has been a great young guy since he has been here. He is really likable and a tremendous young guy. He is a young guy, emphasis on that. Same with Kaleb (Brown).

So, yeah, we went for him in recruiting. Unfortunately, he couldn’t practice in the spring because he had a soft tissue injury. You’re hoping, you’re wishing, and that’s recruiting in general. You hope you identify the right things, and then you really don’t know until they start getting into things. Transitioning into the program is a big part of it, too. He did that without any issues.

To see him play football and we finally got to see him in August, actually running routes and doing things. I think he has tremendous upside. I feel the same way about Kaleb. They are young guys that have talent and great attitudes and good ability.

I think the most disappointing thing was we had some leakage on that fourth and one, so the back didn’t really have a chance to hit it the way you need to. We’ll have to take a look at that and see what happened. I can’t tell you exactly what happened on that play.

To me equally as disappointing, they took it and drove it and got a field goal. We held them out of the end zone, but that’s part of what we have to learn.

You have to have responses. You’re not always going to make it if you go for it on fourth, so come back, let’s get the ball back immediately and go back to work.

So that’s the team football component. We did a good job of that earlier getting the stop, taking the ball, driving it, those types of things. Part of that’s just an emotional thing. We have some young guys, first time they’ve played, so they’re going to learn how all of that fits together.

Then specifically we had some plays that seemed like we missed on a couple of plays that were potentially going to be pretty good for us. If you can hit those, that’s how you create momentum. That’s how you get things flowing a little bit.

When you don’t, it’s kind of a here we go, we’re punting the ball. We also blew a protection. I’ll throw that one in there. It was the only sack we gave up, but it was a missed assignment where they came right up our guard center gap, which is a cardinal sin in pass protection. I think it was on a third down, too.

So that’s a correctible error. It was by somebody who probably was capable of doing a little bit better on that. Little things like that are the things that keep you from sustaining drives.

It seemed like from where I was standing they were blocking pretty good, especially in the pass protection. That was not their pickup on that one, and it is what it is.

But the run game, it wasn’t clean. We need to get cleaner on that. It was a tough preparation. I’m not making excuses. It was a little bit of a tough preparation.

The coordinator has been at a couple of other schools — watching last year’s Utah State’s film was in a nutshell not going to be beneficial to us. It was one of those ones where you are trying to piece things together. They did some things today maybe we didn’t expect, but I think our guys adjusted to it.

But the run game stuff, and sometimes it’s just simple cleanup, too. One guy missing a block, and then all of a sudden we’re using two guys on one. That’s not a good thing. If you want to have a smooth run game, you can’t do it.

There’s really no way to predict this stuff. I was saying during the week back in ’15 CJ progressively got worse, and he really couldn’t practice that last week before our bye week when we were at Northwestern. Somehow, someway he played a good game there.

Then the next week we gave him a chance to recover. He came back and played. So the one thing I know about Cade, I haven’t been around him that long, but he is an extremely mentally tough guy and extremely competitive.

So if he can’t go, he can’t go, and if he can’t be effective, that was the biggest thing for us as coaches. We have to make that decision, and the medical staff dictates whether he can have that opportunity or not.

Good opportunity for Deacon, too. It’s the first time I think he has played in college. There’s no automatics on all this stuff, so it was good to see him get in there and get in the game as well.

It was impressive, his tackling and being where he should be to contain some of those things.

Really maybe as good a story as there was today because you have a guy like Cade who has played. Deshaun hasn’t really. So for him to step in there and do that, I thought he did a great job. We’ve had good competition throughout August with those guys. For him to step up, this has to be good for his confidence.

It’s what you would expect. Not 16 maybe, but he is a guy that even though, quote, unquote, wasn’t a starter last year, we’ve always considered Jay to be a starter. He is a strong leader. Just a tremendous young guy. Totally committed.

So, yeah, we’re counting on him. And the same thing with Nick. For us to be good on defense, our linebackers, our safeties have to be good tacklers and just really happy about Jay’s play. Also his leadership is invaluable.

Every time we play in this series, and it’s a great series for the state, we expect them to be tough, whether we’re home or there, here or there.

It’s going to be a tough game, tough, competitive game. The idea is to win. We came up short, so we moved on right afterwards.

Just do want to say, too, that our fans were fantastic. It was great to come out in Kinnick. The place was sold out, and it was lively and a great environment down there. We appreciate their enthusiasm.