The Iowa Hawkeyes don’t have a reputation for churning out NFL gunslingers. There’s no franchise quarterback factory in Des Moines.
Longtime head coach Kirk Ferentz will agree with that claim. He’ll also tell you 49ers third-round pick C.J. Beathard is different, like he did Wednesday morning on KNBR 1050’s The Audible.
“That’s probably the irony of this whole thing,” Ferentz said. “We had our most NFL talented quarterback in my 18 years, yet we didn’t have the supporting cast for those numbers to show. And I go back to my point earlier — smart football people figured that out.”
When the Hawkeyes started 12-0 in 2015, Ferentz said Beathard was one of the main reasons why. Ferentz initially named him the starting quarterback over an incumbent senior Jake Rudock (now on the Lions) for his accuracy with the football in tight windows. That season Beathard completed 60 percent of his passes in 10 games and threw just three interceptions. You rarely see Iowa in a Jan. 1 Rose Bowl, yet there they were with Beathard in command. Ferentz was thrilled.
Then 2016 happened. One wide receiver, Tevaun Smith, is now playing for the Colts, another tight end, Henry Krieger-Coble went to go play for the Broncos. 49ers fifth-round pick George Kittle battled a foot injury and another tight end was out for the season.
“All of a sudden we have a pretty good quarterback and nobody to throw it to,” Ferentz said. “We don’t have it stocked up like Ohio State. We don’t have it four-deep at receiver. That really effected his numbers. If you’re just looking at tape and looking at players and delving in there a little bit, smart people figured this one out.”
49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan saw this. Inside the draft room, Shanahan said Beathard reminded him some of Kirk Cousins. Moments after the pick in the auditorium, Shanahan commended his leadership, his ability to play through injuries, his family pedigree in the sport and his desire to win. Shanahan doesn’t look for dynamic playmakers in college who lead highlight shows. He’s not fooled by flashy big plays against patchwork defenses.
In pulling the trigger on Beathard, Shanahan looked the other way on 58 combined sacks in two seasons, issues in deep ball accuracy (under 30 percent on passes 20 yards in the air or further), 17 percent body fat. Beathard was a projected sixth or seventh rounder from most prognosticators. This is anything but a flawless prospect.
“I know it raised some eyebrows when he got drafted in the third round,” Ferentz said. “My sense around pro day here on campus, there were a couple people I could just tell were seeing things a little differently than the draft experts. And apparently San Francisco was in that group. There were a couple of people who had this thing figured out.
“The kid that came to us, C.J. was kind of a skinny kid from Nashville with a really good skill set. Just a tremendous attitude and personality. He’s a very humble kid, a hard working kid. What we found out in 2015 was he won the job. The guy that he beat out, Jake Rudock, went on to Michigan and made the Lions last year. So that guy was no slouch. In our minds, C.J. had more upside. We made a very difficult decision. What you never know about a quarterback is till they actually get in games is there composure, toughness. C.J. nailed that right off the bat. Our second game we’re over at Ames,which doesn’t mean much to people in California, but that’s a big rivalry for us when we play Iowa State and he made some unbelievable plays, some really tough plays. Our team just rallied around him.”
Listen to the whole interview for other nuggets including Kittle almost playing outside linebacker and Ferentz’s comparison of Solomon Thomas and Reuben Foster to Jonathan Ogden and Ray Lewis.