In Defense Of Ken O'Keefe

In light of the horror that happened to Ricky Stanzi's ankle last Saturday a lot of people are pointing fingers, and from what I've seen, the majority of those fingers are pointed squarely at the beleaguered head of Iowa offensive coordinator, Ken O'Keefe. Needless to say, this would not be the first time that O'Keefe has found himself directly in the cross-hairs of the Iowa faithful.

If you've followed Iowa football since Kirk Ferentz has become the coach you have come to depend on two things: Norm Parker's staunch defensive corps and Ken O'Keefe's boring and some might say ineffective offensive bunch.

Norm's crew occasionally frustrates with their bend-don't-break philosophy, but their results are unquestionable. On the other hand, there is Ken O'Keefe. He has consistently had an all-Big Ten caliber defense to back him up, special teams that have been anywhere from dependable to exceptional and his results...

Consider the numbers; since 2003, the Iowa offense has been one of the Big Ten's three highest scoring offenses exactly once (2008). They have also been amongst the three worst scoring offenses in the league twice (2007 and this year, 2009). Their average ranking in seven seasons has been just about seventh.

These are hardly the numbers for a team that has posted the third most wins in the Big Ten during that time. It inevitably makes you wonder how Iowa might do if their offense could match their defensive output.

However, this view is extremely myopic. It presumes the mentality that the three phases of football—offense, defense and special teams—are unrelated entities; that when a team game-plans the coaches of the three respective phases due so without any thought to what the other is doing.

This is not to say that Ken O'Keefe asks Norm Parker's opinion as to how aggressively they will attack the opposing team's safeties, but it is to say that Kirk Ferentz acts as a nexus for all of his coaches. He has chosen coaches that generally speaking, share his conservative philosophy on football, he presumably consults them regarding how they want to go about their business, he decides how the game-plan for the entire team works and he leaves it up to his coaches to put their individual areas together.

But make no mistake, when Ferentz makes the final decision as to how Iowa is going to approach their upcoming game, he does so with all three phases concurrently in mind.

With that said, those that find themselves frustrated with the offense's conservatism, with their seeming predictability, with their inability, year after year, to put lesser teams away, consider that the success of the defense is in no small part predicated on the cost-reward considerations of the offense.

Iowa's offensive numbers, by themselves, really don't tell any sort of story. Kirk Ferentz is a conservative, defensive minded coach. He is always going to defer to the defense to win games instead of putting it on the offense to unequivocally put a team away. Consequently, where an offense might try to score with two timeouts and one minute left to go in the half, Ferentz, not O'Keefe, will usually run the clock out. When it is 3rd-and-8 with five minutes to go in the game and Iowa holding a five-point lead, Ferentz is going to run and kill clock instead of going for the pass and the first down. And where it concerns individual play calling, Ferentz is almost always going to err on the side of caution, and do what he has to do to avoid catastrophic mistakes, even if it means more punts than Iowa fans would like to see.

Yes, I question O'Keefe's situational play calling and, in my opinion, O'Keefe out-thinks himself. His two-minute drill and goal line play calling are highly suspect. Also, I would be in favor of O'Keefe keeping his offensive coordinator duties and surrendering his QB coach duties to a new hire. Of course, as there are a maximum number of coaches a team is allowed to have that would mean that Iowa would have to let a current coach go, and that's not happening.

And yes, even if execution was not perfect and a chip block was missed, I seriously question calling a bootleg to the side of the opposing team's best defensive lineman when backed up to one's own 6-yard line.

However, I don't think Ken O'Keefe can really be blamed for Stanzi's ankle. And I don't think Iowa's offensive stats are as simple and some might argue, mediocre, as one would think.

In short, Ken O'Keefe does what Kirk Ferentz wants him to do and it is hard to fault the guy for that. And in that light, it is hard to fault Kirk Ferentz for much of anything. You can't ask much more from the Iowa program than what it has delivered this year or any year since Kirk Ferentz signed on.