Iowa quarterback C.J. Beathard enters his senior season with a lot of pre-season attention after leading the Hawkeyes to a 12-2 mark in his first season as the starter. He says for the offense to improve, he will have to improve his play in every area. “More touchdown passes, less turnovers, smarter play getting the ball down, making decisions quicker. I have been working on all that this offseason and in the camp here and back to spring ball just trying to improve my game any way I can,” Beathard says. He played much of last season hurt and says he is in the best health he has been in since first getting hurt. That should add to his efforts to improve the offense.

“I am able to do some stuff with me feet, run the ball more, and get out of the pocket better. It helps me move in the pocket, so I think it will improve our offense as a whole in every way really,” according to Beathard. Beathard’s improved mobility won’t mean anything if he doesn’t have receivers to throw to, and he says that’s another part of the equation. He says they lost to key senior receivers in Jacob Hillyer and Tevaun Smith and they will need young receivers without a lot playing time to step up and pick up some of the load.

Beathard says he needs to work a lot with those receiver to bring them along. He is on all of the major watch lists heading into the season and says he doesn’t mind being in the spotlight. “You know my dad always told me to be thankful for it right now because some day they won’t care to know who you are,” Beathard says. “So, you’ve got to embrace it when you have it.” The Hawkeyes were both praised and criticized as they went through the perfect regular season and into the conference championship game. Beathard says that will help them deal with whatever attention they get as this season moves ahead.

“I think it does, I mean we did a good job at ignoring the noise — whether it be negative noise or positive noise — there was a lot of that going on early in the season and then later on in the season. I think we did a good job of tuning out when there were a lot of outlets we could have listened to, and people talking about how good you are,” Beathard says. “When you start listening to that stuff that’s when you start going downhill you start thinking that you’ve made it, that you’ve arrived, and once you think that, that’s bad.”

The Franklin, Tennessee native will lead the Hawkeyes when they open the season on September 3rd at home against Miami of Ohio.

(Radio Iowa)

The Iowa Hawkeye football team has opened fall camp with the hope of repeating the record-setting success of last season, while putting a blowout loss in the Rose Bowl behind them. Coach Kirk Ferentz talked with the media Saturday about the work ahead. “Last year was a really historic year in a lot of ways, more importantly a memorable year and a very rewarding year, and I think probably the important thing for us as a football team is to try to learn some lessons from it and hopefully we’ve done that as we approach moving forward,” Ferentz said.

The Hawks are ranked 15th in the preseason poll, after garnering little attention at the start of last year. Ferentz said his research shows how little the early polls mean. “Of the 25 teams that were in the preseason last year, eight of them didn’t make the cut at the end, and so obviously eight teams did make it, entered in,” Ferentz said. “Probably most noteworthy I think would be Houston won 13 games, we won 12, neither us were mentioned a year ago at this point. So the thing I think our players need to understand is that door swings both ways. It opens and it closes.”

Senior quarterback C.J. Beathard is one of the reasons Iowa is expected to make another run at the Big 10 West title. Ferentz says Beathard is a lot like former Hawkeye great Brad Banks when it comes to leadership. ” I don’t know if I can articulate what it was about him, but I know this, it was really powerful, and as he went, our team really went with him. C.J. has kind of got that same characteristic. There’s just something about him,” according to Ferentz. “And the commonality there is they’re both genuine people. They’re just really genuine guys. They’ve got all the right motives and agendas. They’re just out there to help the team win, and they care about their teammates, all those things you hope a quarterback can do. And then different skill sets but yet very effective players in their own right.”

Ferentz said the practices heading up to the first game will be key in determining if this season ends up as successful as last year. “You know as mundane as this sounds, the most important thing we can do is just try to capitalize on every day in front of us. If you just look back last year…I think our team really grew in August really on lot of levels, not just as football players, our leadership base group. It was just a result of doing things right, little things right, paying attention. That’s really the challenge that’s ahead of us right now,” Ferentz explained.

Escaping all the hype and positive things said about the team in the media and online is not easy. Ferentz said his players will read and hear things, but the coaches remind them it doesn’t mean anything at this point. “Just like last year, nobody picked us to do anything, we ended up having a really good year. And so it’s about our actions, it’s not about what people are saying negatively or positively. That’s what we try to educate our players to and then show them the illustrations that back that up,” Ferentz said.

Iowa opens the season September 3rd at home against Miami of Ohio.

(Radio Iowa)