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CEDAR FALLS | Jake Farley wants to make two words go far away.

"I'm tired of ... so close," said the senior linebacker for Northern Iowa. "So close to this, so close to that. We know what we should have been. We know what we are. We have to go out and prove it now."

The Panthers made it clear during Wednesday's media day discussions -- they would love to put some distance between themselves and the 2013 season. UNI, seemingly on the way to a big year, lost three straight overtime games and five in a row overall. Thus, Mark Farley's team missed the Football Championship Subdivision playoffs for the second consecutive time.

Now, it's 2014. As Mark Farley pointed out during his press conference, it's a different season that will take a course of its own. The players want to make sure, though, that they draw closer to the UNI program that annually fought for the championship of the Missouri Valley Football Conference and stride farther away from the disappointments of the past two seasons.

"As a team, this group of guys -- we haven't done anything yet," said quarterback Sawyer Kollmorgen, one of many Panthers who dealt with injuries a year ago. "So we have a lot to prove."