What made Bob Sanders the greatest player in Kirk Ferentzs Iowa tenure

Publish date: 2024-06-30

IOWA CITY, Iowa — Three years ago in a series of day-long, off-the-record conversations with Iowa’s coaching staff, defensive coordinator Phil Parker began his talk with one statement to which most Iowa fans nod in agreement.

“Bob Sanders is the best player I’ve ever coached,” Parker said.

Kirk Ferentz ranks fourth in Big Ten victories during his 23-plus seasons at Iowa. He has coached 13 consensus All-Americans, 10 national players of the year at their positions and 10 other non-consensus All-Americans. Sanders never fit into any of those categories, but for Ferentz, Sanders stands as No. 1.

“He set the standard for everybody,” Ferentz said. “It’s hard to think of somebody more impactful.”

Ten names adorn the Brechler Press Box at Kinnick Stadium facing east. They’re considered the most elite players in Iowa history with consensus All-America honors coupled with a College Football Hall of Fame induction. Sanders, a three-time first-team All-Big Ten safety, inexplicably never earned first-team All-America honors and is ineligible for the College Football Hall of Fame. His name cannot go on the wall.

Yet if the history of Iowa football is written, especially in the Ferentz era, one name stands above them all: Bob Sanders.

“He’s the best,” said tight end Dallas Clark, a 2002 first-team All-American, the Mackey Award winner and Sanders’ teammate with the Indianapolis Colts. “He just raised the bar.”

“If you want to pick one guy who changed the culture in this place, I think the coaches would probably agree, it’s Bob Sanders,” said Chad Greenway, a second-team All-America linebacker and a two-time Pro Bowl NFL player. “It really changed when you were on the field with him because you knew if you didn’t play to that same level, then you would let down the standard.”

For several years, The Athletic has gathered anecdotes and stories of Sanders’ exploits at Iowa from his former teammates and coaches. Multiple times Sanders has rebuffed interview opportunities, as he did for a story on his NFL career that ran earlier this year in The Athletic.

“He didn’t have the want or the desire or anything to kind of like, relish his awesomeness,” Clark said. “I mean, he just disappeared and moved to Arizona. It’s like, ‘Come on, Bob. We love you.'”

Sanders’ quiet and private post-football life belies the noise and havoc he wrought on opponents during his time at Iowa and in the NFL. But nobody’s career had more impact on the Iowa program than the hard-hitting safety from Erie, Pa., with nicknames like “Bullet” and “The Hitman.”

The beginning

Sanders was a first-team all-state running back at renowned Erie Cathedral Prep with 1,100 yards and 15 touchdowns. But at 5-foot-8 and 200 pounds, Sanders didn’t fit the profile of major football programs and largely went unnoticed as a two-star prospect in the early recruiting rankings. That was until Ferentz’s former high school coach and mentor Joe Moore retired from football and helped out the Cathedral program in 1999.

“Two things (Moore) told me — I’ll never forget this— well, three things I guess,” Ferentz said. “He said, ‘He’s going to make your team tougher. He’ll play extremely well on special teams and the third thing is I don’t know if you can ever teach him to backpedal. So, he may not play defense, but you’ll make your team tougher, and he’ll be dynamic on special teams.’ And two out of two right there, and then the third part was he did learn how to backpedal and actually could play defense.”

Sanders signed with the Hawkeyes and made an impact in his first game as a true freshman in 2000. The Hawkeyes faced Kansas State in a Week 0 matchup at scorching Arrowhead Stadium, and Sanders was a gunner on the punt team. Back deep for the Wildcats was David Allen, who was tied for the NCAA record with six punt returns for touchdowns. Early in the game, Allen had a touchdown called back because of a penalty.

This time, Sanders drilled Allen as he caught the ball and injured the K-State player’s ankle in the process, costing him a month of playing time.

“His first game down in Arrowhead, he ran down and hit that guy that was getting ready to set the record, kind of screwed his season up,” Ferentz said. “I swear to God Bob didn’t know if he’s in Arrowhead or back in Erie. All he knew was the ball was up in the air, this guy is going to catch it, and he’s going to nail the guy. That’s how he thought. It really didn’t matter what the circumstance was.”

A month later, Sanders unleashed an even more vicious hit, this time in Kinnick Stadium. This is when and where the legend of Bob Sanders was born for Iowa fans. It was Oct. 7, 2000, against Michigan State. After trailing by nine points in the third quarter, the Hawkeyes had just taken a 21-16 lead with 2:47 left in the game. Iowa’s Jason Baker kicked off short, and Michigan State’s Monquiz Wedlow picked up the ball at his 19 and ran up the field. Sanders came from Wedlow’s left and lowered his head. Wedlow was too late to absorb the collision and flew backward.

The hit instantly turned Kinnick Stadium into a half-second shock, then a full-minute frenzy.

“What he brought to the game everybody saw it,” safety Derek Pagel said. “I think everybody recognized it on that kickoff against Michigan State when he hit that guy; I don’t think they can even do that anymore.”

“He’s special,” linebacker Grant Steen said. “To be that fast, to be that physical, he was the guy that they show the highlights the next day of a big hit, starting from when he made the big hit on kickoff against Michigan State in 2000. Like, ‘Whoa, who’s this guy?’ It never stopped from there.”

Sanders’ hit became a crossroads moment in Iowa football history. The hit led to an interception by linebacker LeVar Woods — now the team’s special teams coordinator — and helped end a 14-game Big Ten losing streak, the longest in program history. Physicality became the Hawkeyes’ trademark, and Sanders led the way.

Three weeks later, after sizable losses to Illinois and Ohio State, Ferentz decided the defense needed a lift. The Hawkeyes were set to face Wisconsin, which had butchered Iowa the previous year, and the team needed to make a statement. It needed Sanders.

“I think it’s probably about the only time in 20-plus years where I made a mandate or suggestion that, ‘Hey, let’s get him in the lineup just to see what happens,'” Ferentz said. “I mean, it couldn’t get worse, right? So, let’s get him in there. Keep him down low in coverage, so he doesn’t blow something deep for us and let’s just see what happens.

“We still gave up 400-plus yards, but we gave up whatever amount of points it was (13), we had a chance to tie it there or go ahead in the fourth quarter, which was a far cry from the year before they just totally slaughtered us. He made our team better.”

Culture changer

If there was one underrated aspect of Sanders’ game, it’s how he impacted his teammates. Sanders never backed off in practice or in workouts, and that forced the players around him to compete at the same level.

“If I’m on the field and you line up with Bob Sanders and you see him play with a level of intensity he played with, I had never seen that before,” Greenway said. “Then when you line up on the field with a guy like that, who to me, if you pick one guy who changed the culture of this place, I think the coaches would probably agree, it was probably Bob Sanders.”

“His relentlessness on the field was just unmatched and he just had a different gear and had a different drive in everything,” said Clark, who was Sanders’ teammate in the Colts’ Super Bowl XLI triumph. “He showed up and he brought it every day and to have that on the opposite side, he made everyone else better. No one’s going to be faster and tougher on Saturday than what we’re facing.”

“That guy just had a different gear, a different motor, and just had a look in his eye,” said safety Sean Considine, who played eight NFL seasons. “It was like a contagious disease. It wasn’t a coach asking us to do that. We saw it daily by one guy, and we all knew we had to step it up. Because that’s how we wanted to play, too.

“(The coaches) could flip that practice on and show us the difference between Bob Sanders running after a run that went to the left side of the field and he was all the way on the right side and going all the way over there and tagging off and the rest of the group jogging. He just elevated everybody’s game because everybody was trying to keep up with this pace.”

Considine was a walk-on safety from Byron, Ill., who caught excellence when chasing Sanders’ borderline perfection. Considine’s goal was to beat Sanders in everything. Although he never could, Considine improved in every facet.

Pagel became a fifth-round pick in 2003 with the N.Y. Jets. Like Considine, Pagel was a walk-on who earned a scholarship and a starting role. Although he played alongside Sanders for just parts of two seasons, the tenacity stuck with Pagel.

“People ask me like, ‘Hey, who’s the best football player you ever played with?’ I’m like, ‘Well, whether you’re talking about college, the NFL, it doesn’t matter. It was Bob Sanders,'” Pagel said. “I’m not even sure Bob really knew the playbook inside and out. He was so young and so new and raw and fresh; I think they just put him on the field.

“He’d make hits where me and like other safeties would joke — not around Bob — but we’d be like, ‘Oh, if I did that, I would break my neck,’ and we meant that. Like, I would be scared even TO try that. So there is no comparison. It wasn’t just that he could hit hard. He was smart and put himself in the right positions. And he was super athletic.”

The staff saw how the defense changed once Sanders entered the lineup. Ferentz said having Sanders was “like being in a street fight and having your big brother show up.” The defense became more intense, and the offense adopted the same mentality, especially along the offensive line.

“It’s his energy,” said quarterback Brad Banks, the 2002 Heisman Trophy runner-up and Big Ten Silver Football winner. “You feel it when he’s around. He plays freaking fast. I think that woke guys up to try to be fast as well because they have no choice. Either you’re going to be fast or not. Bob made everybody better.

“There’s a particular play in a scrimmage in Kinnick. I see Bob in the back of the end zone. We’re like on the 2; we’re about to score. We’re going in. So, I boot out to the right, and Bob just shoots and he meets me at a goal line, and I scale it back. I’m not fully running and because I know no guy’s going to hit me or whatever. But he meets me at the goal line and kind of thuds me up and was like, ‘You are not scoring.’ I’m like, ‘Bob, that was touchdown.'”

The following day while watching the video, offensive coordinator Ken O’Keefe asked Banks if he thought he would have scored on that play.

“(O’Keefe) just kind of did one of those things like, ‘I don’t know,'” Banks said. “I said, ‘No, that would have been touchdown.’ But if we’re in a real live deal, maybe Bob would have turned it up another 10 notches.”

“He definitely was a guy that changed the tempo of our practices and changed probably our defense’s mentality,” Parker said. “I think it grew on everybody else. Bob wasn’t very big; he was 5-8, he’s still 5-8, and he was very explosive. What I always thought it was like, was a six-inch punch of Mike Tyson. He’s probably the strongest, most explosive kid that I’ve ever coached.”

Sanders’ practice habits ultimately led him off the practice field. By his senior year, he had to wear a red jersey and was told not to go live. It often had the same effect as asking a cat to stop jumping on a countertop.

“Typically, the quarterbacks would be in the red jersey because you’re not supposed to hit them,” Considine said. “They ended up putting Bob in a red jersey because they wanted everybody to be aware of where he was so he didn’t hurt anybody.”

“He’s the only guy we just had to toss out routinely,” Ferentz said. “Then he would try to sneak back in because he couldn’t tempo down. He could not. He wasn’t trying to be a bad person or irritate anybody. He just can’t do it. The next thing he’s in there, boom, knocking a back, and it’s just like, it’s stupid. You can’t do that in practice. Maybe sometimes, but not all the time. It’s just, it’s stupid. We wouldn’t have a team.

“We had to be very careful about the work we let him have once he got going. We’d have a certain tempo we liked in practice, and he didn’t always follow instructions. He wasn’t trying to be belligerent; it’s just who he is. He’s a 100 percent player.”

Legacy

Iowa gained traction after ending that 14-game Big Ten losing streak in 2000. A year later, the Hawkeyes finally got past Indiana and quarterback Antwaan Randle El by using Sanders as a spy. Sanders finished with 25 tackles — fourth-most by a defender in Iowa history and the most by a defensive back. The Hawkeyes qualified for their first bowl since 1997 and lost four games by six points or less.

In 2002, the turnaround was complete. After losing every Big Ten game in Ferentz’s 1999 debut, the Hawkeyes finished 8-0 in Big Ten play and earned an Orange Bowl nod in 2002. The offense featured three All-America linemen, the nation’s best tight end in Clark and the Davey O’Brien Award winner in Banks. The defense had fewer stars that season, except for Sanders. But Iowa’s physical nature led Michigan linebacker Carl Diggs to call Iowa “the bullies of the Big Ten” after a 34-9 bludgeoning of the No. 8 Wolverines in Ann Arbor.

None of Iowa’s final six Big Ten opponents came within 16 points of the Hawkeyes.

“You hate to single out one guy because there are so many players that gave us a chance to get traction, but Bob was such a catalyst for us,” Ferentz said. “Not defensively, but I’d say broader picture-wise. He was such an impact on special teams initially, but then when we inserted him in November of 2000, the tempo of our defense picked up. We still weren’t any good, but we started operating with some tempo and a little bit more urgency. Then we became good. Bob was a big part of that.”

“He set the standard for us here at the University of Iowa,” Parker said.

“I don’t know if we can even have the right words, that guy was intensity,” Steen said. “He’s everything I think that Iowa football stands for. He was underrecruited. He had a big chip on his shoulder. He’s probably hands down the most physical player in the history of Iowa football.”

Sanders’ 348 tackles are the most by an Iowa defensive back. Perhaps no defender had a better senior day than Sanders in 2003. Against Minnesota, Sanders recorded 16 tackles and forced three fumbles, including one at the goal line by running back Laurence Maroney. The Hawkeyes finished 11-2 in Sanders’ junior year and 10-3 in 2003. Both years, Iowa was ranked No. 8 in the final polls.

NFL scouts began to notice Sanders right away.

“The year Dallas came out, (the Colts) set an appointment, a Tuesday, 11 o’clock conference call. It would be me, Tony Dungy and Bill Polian,” Ferentz said. “We talked about Dallas for 20 minutes or whatever it was, A through Z. And Bill goes, ‘Kirk, I got one more question for you. Tell me about that No. 33.’ I said, ‘Bill, he’s a junior for crying out loud.’ Then he just started laughing. He goes, ‘Yeah, I know.’ Then he says, ‘We’ll be back.'”

GO DEEPER

Hitman: Bob Sanders changed Colts' defense, lifted them to a Super Bowl, then vanished

Polian was smitten by Sanders, and the Colts president grew nervous about the safety’s availability in the 2004 draft. Ultimately, Polian landed Sanders in the second round, No. 44 overall.

“He was a dominant player at Iowa in every respect: run, pass, setting the tone, ferocious hits which got the fans and the players all fired up,” Polian said. “The fire with which he played. The love of the game. Just a guy that was incandescent almost in every way.

“Of course, when he got to us, it was no different really. He became a fan favorite immediately. His nickname was ‘The Eraser,” not because he erased people on the opposition, but because he erased mistakes that other guys on our team made.”

Sanders’ physical style elevated the Colts’ defense and his impact was profound. In 2006, Sanders played in only four regular-season games because of a knee injury and the Colts allowed an NFL-worst 5.3 yards per carry. When Sanders returned in the playoffs, none of the Colts’ three AFC opponents exceeded 100 rushing yards.

In Super Bowl XLI against Chicago, Sanders had three tackles and forced a fumble that was recovered by the Colts at midfield. Sanders later returned an interception off a deep pass 38 yards with 10 minutes left in the game. That helped preserve the Colts’ victory. A year later, Sanders was named the NFL Defensive Player of the Year.

But injuries constantly knocked him out of the NFL. Early on it was his knee, then his biceps. Even among great safeties like Ed Reed, Troy Polamalu and Brian Dawkins, Sanders was special. Unlike the other three, all of whom are Pro Football Hall of Fame enshrines, Sanders’ immortality was stolen by injuries.

“I remember telling him,’ Bob, just get a tackle. Don’t kill the guy and learn how to stay healthy,'” Clark said. “But it’s like telling the sun not to shine.”

“I think he was almost too explosive for his own body,” Polian said. “There’s no question in my mind that he could have been a heavyweight championship boxer, and that’s the kind of punch he packed like nobody I’ve seen. He’s in the Lawrence Taylor and (Dick) Butkus and that category in terms of punch in an average-sized body. He ended up with the bicep injuries, which unfortunately shortened and then ultimately ended his career.

“Being Defensive Player of the Year in the National Football League for safety is an incredible, incredible honor. I think had he played longer, he would have added to those honors and certainly been a candidate for Canton because he was such a dominant player.”

Sanders’ football candle burned out faster than his peers. It also has an eternal flame that shines brighter, especially in Iowa City. Nobody receives a louder ovation than Sanders when he returns as an honorary captain. Nobody walks taller in the football complex.

“Bob was really dynamic,” Ferentz said. “A player who was short in stature but huge in heart and just impacted everybody on the field. Not just the unit on the field, but our whole football team was better because of Bob.

“The most dynamic player in our program’s history was Bob Sanders, and he still isn’t tall enough to get on the biggest roller coaster at Cedar Point. But he sure could play football.”

(Photo: Matthew Holst / Getty Images)

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JadeSync

What made Bob Sanders the greatest player in Kirk Ferentzs Iowa tenure

The beginning

Culture changer

Legacy