Kirk Ferentz will never forget one job interview from 1993. He was trying to get the Cleveland Browns’ offensive line job. At that time, Bill Belichick, then a young NFL head coach, was on the other side of the table. There was no friendly back-and-forth or easy conversation to loosen things up. Three decades later, the Iowa head coach still remembers how that interview made him sweat.
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Speaking with Rich Eisen, Kirk Ferentz was asked what his job interview with Bill Belichick was like.
“Taxing,” he replied. “That just was exhausting.”
The explanation is that his only previous interview had been with Hayden Fry, the Iowa coaching legend who could make a stranger feel like an old friend in five minutes. Bill Belichick operated at the opposite end of the spectrum.
“It was all business, and it was pretty intense,” he said. “And a lot of awkward pauses, awkward sides. It was tough. I died a million deaths during that whole thing. But how fortunate I was to work with him and be on his staff for three years. It was a great experience.”
That awkward meeting turned out pretty well for Kirk Ferentz. He was on a recruiting trip in January 1993 when word came from Cleveland that the Browns wanted him to interview for their open offensive line position. He had never worked for Bill Belichick and apparently walked away from the first meeting convinced he had blown his opportunity. He was sent back to Maine. Then came the phone call.
Bill Belichick had liked him. Kirk Ferentz’s reaction years later summed up the absurdity of the situation.
“I was like, ‘Oh my god. That’s a funny way to show it,’” he said.
The Browns hired him, and Kirk Ferentz spent three seasons working for Bill Belichick from 1993 through 1995. The Browns reached the playoffs in 1994, and he helped develop offensive linemen, including Orlando Brown, who arrived as an undrafted free agent and became a starter at tackle.
For Kirk Ferentz, Cleveland became much more than a three-year stop. It helped push his career toward Baltimore, where he coached the offensive line in 1996 before taking over as associate head coach and OC for the 1997 and 1998 seasons. Then Iowa came calling.
Kirk Ferentz replaced Hayden Fry in December 1998 and has remained in Iowa City ever since. He is now the longest-tenured head coach in college football and is under contract through the 2029 season, with a reported $7 million annual baseline. But even after all these years, he still talks about Bill Belichick with genuine appreciation.
“His organizational skills are unbelievable,” he said. “And his mind is usually about ten days ahead of mine, that’s for sure. Maybe more. But the biggest thing I think about him was his consistency.”
That relationship eventually reached the next generation of the Ferentz family. His oldest son, Brian, worked for Bill Belichick in New England, beginning as an offensive quality-control coach in 2008 before becoming the Patriots’ TEs coach.
Now Kirk Ferentz is back to dealing with the familiar grind at Iowa. The Hawkeyes opened the 2026 season by hammering Northern Illinois 40-0 and are heading into the Iowa State rivalry game at Kinnick Stadium. He has been part of the Cy-Hawk rivalry since 1981, but he has never been big on circling games in red.
Still, Kirk Ferentz has spent a career preaching consistency. Funny enough, that may be the biggest thing he carried away from the man who once left him sitting across a desk, staring at a blank face and wondering whether he had just ruined his career. He got the job. The rest, as they say, worked out.