Ferentz presser transcript

Minnesota comes in here 9-0, and that's hard to do, really hard to do. They deserve a lot of credit for that certainly, top-10 ranked team and certainly deserving of that, too. They've earned it, playing well in all three areas, and that's where our attention is right now. They're a big, physical football team, especially on the offensive front. They have a huge offensive line. They've got good receivers. They had good receivers a year ago. All those guys were fairly young at that point and they're still a very dangerous group, big-play guys, throw the ball down the field well and all that, and they've got three running backs that really do a good job running the football, and then the quarterback has really played well for them this year. I think his statistics speak to that.

I think probably the biggest impression defensively, they're really comfortable with their system. They've got a system that's tested and true. They believe in it, and they play it extremely well. Play very hard on defense, and they're very fundamentally sound. Certainly make you work, and they're coming off a really big win against a very good football team, and I think the overriding impression is the big thing, they're not going to beat themselves. They play smart football. They're playing really good football, and so if you're going to beat them, you're going to have to really earn it. For us it's going to require us to play well in all three areas, certainly play as well as we have all season long to have a chance to pull this off. That's kind of where our focus is right now.

KIRK FERENTZ: Yeah, and I don't want to get too -- but it seems like the talk, maybe a couple weeks ago, well, they hadn't played anybody yet and all that kind of stuff. All I know is they've improved every week, which is really important if you're going to be a good football team at the end of the year, and then they left no doubt about it Saturday. That wasn't a fluke win. They took the lead, kept the lead, and they really played like a winning football team against a team that we've tried to compete against, and we know how good Penn State is personally. We've got a lot of respect for what they've done, and they've earned it the hard way. They've gone out there and done it week after week. There are some teams maybe that don't require a lot of sweat to beat, but over the -- you play in the Big Ten and you're 9-0, it's not easy to get there. It's just a really tough thing to do. I'd say that's true of any Power Five conference with all due respect to everybody else. But if you're in a Power Five conference and you're 9-0, you're a legitimate football team, that's for sure.

Q. Does it help that you're playing a team like a Minnesota that's already a rival, you have a great trophy and everything, but also the fact that they're here and they're ranked high to motivate your team? Just every aspect that you could want --
KIRK FERENTZ: You'd have to ask our players, but I think every time you play a ranked team it gets your attention. I'm not minimizing September, but September rankings really are kind of speculative. Now you're in November. So rankings I do think are a little bit more significant now, and we have a little bit of idea of who's who, what's what. So yeah, I think certainly it gets your attention. To me their ranking matches their record, and their record matches who they are and what they've done on the field most importantly.

I missed the show last night. Or is that tonight? I can't wait to see where they're at. But that drama is really killing me. All I know is they're 9-0, and they look like a top-10 team. Yeah, I think certainly it gets your attention. If you're smart, you've got to take note of that.

Q. You guys have kind of taken control of this series. I know when you were here in the '80s it was a really back and forth series, seemed it could go any way in any year. Does it feel like it's kind of maybe sliding back? Granted, you guys have won the last four.
KIRK FERENTZ: Yeah one of our -- talk about bad losses, we were just talking about that, one of our worst losses in my opinion was '14 up there, right? Wasn't that the -- I've got my years straight on that one? But we were never in the game. We just got nailed right from the start. I can't remember an easy game with Minnesota since that time. We got throttled that day. It was a bad loss. And then everything since then has been tough. I mean, it's just been hard fought, so I expect that's probably going to be what it'll be Saturday, if we're playing right.

Q. I know that it's impossible to measure this and impossible even to think about it when you're in a game, but when you play the same program every year, bad blood may be built up, you guys tore down the goal post -- not you guys but the fans did --
KIRK FERENTZ: We had nothing to do with that, just for the record. No fingerprints, no DNA, no nothing.

Q. But those types of things kind of tend to fester -- I know it probably does with you guys --
KIRK FERENTZ: Yeah, with old people, but all the guys playing in the game weren't even born then. That's so long ago. I do have a good friend that still thinks that's the greatest thing he ever saw in sports. He saw it on TV, and he also said, your fans aren't very smart, they're not going to get that thing through a revolving door. But he still talks about that.

Q. It didn't matter at the time.
KIRK FERENTZ: I can remember in the '80s where it was not a healthy rivalry. When I got here in '81 it was not a healthy rivalry. There was a lot of real hostility and bad blood and all that. So I think it's just a good, competitive series, and there's a lot of that going on in the conference, which is good for everybody, I think.