The Skip Report: Search for a Signal Caller Continues
8/17/2015 3:46:00 PM | Football
By Skip Myslenski
NUsports.com Special Contributor
"You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this."
---Henry David Thoreau
It would be human nature for them to look toward another land, for each of them to envision himself trotting out onto Ryan Field the morning of Sept. 5 to lead the Wildcats offense against Stanford. Each, most assuredly, wants to do that. Each, in different ways, has the skill set to do that. Each, silently and deep down in his soul, certainly believes himself the best equipped to do that. But to do that, to look ahead at all, would be pure folly, and these men are not fools. So they remain rooted on their island, the Northwestern training grounds at University of Wisconsin-Parkside in Kenosha, Wis., and ride the wave that is every rep they receive as their team prepares for its season opener with the Cardinal.
"We're competing every day, getting after it every day," says one of them, sophomore quarterback Matt Alviti. "All you can ask for is to get better one play, one day at a time. That's how I take it. One rep at a time. Just do what you can with the reps the coaches give you. I think that's really important. Then also taking the mental reps from the two other guys, whether it's on film or whether it's out here watching them, learning from them, whether it's a mistake or a good play. . . . Everything's got to be one thing at a time. Get one thing done. Get one day better, one play better, each and every single play and every day. I think that's very important."
"We've got to take it play-by-play," echoes another of them, redshirt freshman quarterback Clayton Thorson. "Once you take it play-by-play, the rest will take care of itself. You can't think of it big picture. Once you think, 'All right, I've got to win the competition, how am I going to win the competition'-- if you think about it through practice, you're going to lose sight of what's right in front of you. When we go goal line (formation), you've got to know what's in front of you. You've got to know the situation."
The question hovered over the 'Cats through winter workouts and through spring ball, and still it hovers with fall just a calendar page away. They, of course, have other issues that must also be addressed. But this question about their starting quarterback is the one that has a stranglehold on every fans' imagination, which is no surprise. For this is the glamour position, and a position of importance as well.
But the competition is a much-more mundane matter for Alviti and Thorson and senior Zack Oliver, a graduate student who missed Monday morning practice in Kenosha to attend a class in the Kellogg School of Management. For them, explained Alviti, "It's a process. We understand that. It's been going on since spring, even back in the winter. One thing we focused on in the offseason talking to the coaches was focus on one thing. Be in the moment. Play in the moment. If you make a mistake, forget about it. Next play.
"It's been a process, and it'll continue to be a process until the coaches make a decision," said Alviti. "We've just got to trust the coaches and trust our system, and stay within ourselves and play within ourselves. You've got to continue through the process, and keep working through the process. It's a grind. Some days you struggle and some days you play well. But you've just got to keep moving through it."
"Each of us wants to be the starter," Thorson would add moments later. "But like they (the coaches) keep saying, we haven't separated ourselves. So we've got to work on that. We've really got to take it over."
Not surprisingly, quarterback questions have rained down on NU head coach Pat Fitzgerald for months. "We're going to base our decision on the analytical aspect of it, that's rep-by-rep," he said after one of them. "And it's going to be the leadership. And it's going to be all the things I've talked about over-and-over. Then ultimately it's going to come down to who do we believe, at a minimum in the opener, is going to go out and move the football for us, and score touchdowns, and make our football team better because he's on the field. I'm not ready to make that decision yet. I think all three have a skill set. I think all three want the job. All three are leading. No one's separated himself at this point. But I'm happy and pleased with what they're doing."
"I think you can get caught up too much in rep-by-rep. We're not going to do that. We're going to take a look at a couple days of evaluation," said Fitzgerald. "I think if you're watching a practice as a fan and a quarterback has a bad seven-on-seven session you're like, 'Well, he's out of it. We have no chance with him. What're we going to do?' That's not the way it is in reality."
"We'll make a decision when it's right," he said. "It's not for today because all three guys are doing a great job. But at a certain point we'll make a decision, and if I can make that announcement publicly, I will. I think that's good for the quarterback, I think that's good for the team."
One final note on this competition. Months ago, back at the start of spring ball, Oliver and Alviti and Thorson all testified that they were friends. Now, under a sweltering August sun, Alviti reiterated, "We're still good friends. We have good relationships with one another. We can talk to one another, joke around, hang around with one another. That's special. It's great camaraderie, and we'll probably be good friends the rest of our lives."
"Some people outside might not understand it," Thorson soon added, "but I like to think me and Matt and Zack are special guys. We've got a good relationship. You've got to love the other guys. You've got to really love them up. You've got to help them when they're down, and you've got to encourage them when they're doing well. That's what we've been doing, and I think that's been great for us. That's why it's been a friendly competition, not a blood battle like some people might think it would be."
So, someone now kidded him, do you root for the other guys?
"We're always rooting for our offense," Thorson finally said with a smile. "We always want the other guys to do well. So we're rooting for them. At the same time, we want to do well. But you can only control it when you're in the game. And you can't root against the other guy. That's not a good teammate."
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