Northwestern University Athletics
The Current Evolution of 2009 Northwestern Football
9/25/2009 12:00:00 AM | Football
Sept. 25, 2009
By SKIP MYSLENSKI, NUsports.com Special Contributor
The lesson, which is often washed away in the deluge of glib analysis, was delivered in the office of Bob Knight, who was then the basketball coach at Indiana. "Every team changes, so I've got to look at everybody. I've got to see what every kid is going to do. . .," he began.
"So you've got three basic things you deal with at the beginning of any season. You've got kids who're gone, so what they did has to be replaced. Now maybe other people who had different roles, they may have been good players, but now they have different roles and are they going to be able to do what has to be done in those new roles? That's the first thing.
"The second thing is what have these kids been able to do in terms of holes in their games? These kids you have coming back, do you have any kids you can look at and say, 'Gee, he really improved'? So you have to see what these kids have done. Then you've got probably a couple players back who were really good players. How have their attitudes changed? How has their approach changed?
"So you've got to put all that stuff together and look at it before you know what you're going to be like."
• • • • • •
Pat Fitzgerald is striding through the bowels of Ryan Field, talking as he walks about his 'Cats' still-evolving personality. "You wish it was automatic. You wish you could say do this and it goes," he is saying. "That's why I never read preseason magazines. Everything that's written about in the preseason goes back to last year's team and every team is different. At the end of the day this team, like last year's team, like every team I've been part of, early in the year is under construction. At a certain point you go, 'Boom, you've got your identity.'
"I think we're closing in on it. But I don't think we're there yet."
• • • • • •
Our age is much mottled by fast food emporiums and by instant communication and by the demand always for quick answers, quick solutions, instant results, as if they can be whipped up like a package of ersatz mashed potatoes. But, as Knight and Fitzgerald and any coach worth his (of her) whistle knows, it just does not work that way with a team. It, like a loaf of homemade bread, must be kneaded and molded and baked before finally finding its form.
"Nonconference games are almost like the preseason," 'Cat safety Brendan Smith even says and that is not at all inaccurate. For, quite simply, it is in those games that the shaping is done and a coach collects answers to those questions posed by Knight. But now his 'Cats meet up with week four of their schedule, which is not only the week they open their Big Ten season against Minnesota. It is also the week when, traditionally, a team shows just what it will be all about in the games still ahead.
"Yeah, yeah. At times, that does happen," agrees Fitzgerald. "But I think we're in a little bit of a different circumstance with the amount of kids we had coming back from major injuries. Right now, they're just starting to hit their strides. So, yeah, I believe we'll know a little bit more about ourselves (after Saturday). But I think it's going to continue to be evolving, I really do."
• • • • • •
The safety Brad Phillips, as a senior, knows all about evolution and the search for an identity and the process any new team must endure. He has experienced it all before. Yet, like any feeling, much of this is ephemeral, none of this formulaic, and so when he begins to discuss it he simply says, "It kind of just clicks. You kind of feel it in practice. You kind of feel it after a big win. The defense is flying around in practice, the offense is hitting its stride in practice. You can just feel it. It clicks. You can sense it after a practice. 'This is a good one and we're ready to play.' It happens. It does continue to evolve over the season. But there is a certain point where it's like, 'OK, we've got it now. We're ready to go.'"
Does this team have it yet?
"No. I think we're still waiting for it. It could be this week, it could be next week. I don't think you can push it. You've just got to make sure guys are working hard, getting in the film room and having fun out there. Once we're working hard and having fun at the same time is when it happens. The whole team will feel it when it clicks."
Does this team even have a personality yet?
"We're still trying to find that. We're still trying to find what we want to do and how we want to play. Obviously we have something in mind on how we want to do it. But you've just got to be able to do it on the field on Saturday."
What's that vision you have in mind?
"Flying around on every play. Eleven guys in the picture frame when we watch the film on Sunday. Guys having fun, celebrating, getting on each other's hat after big plays. Offense, hit the seam with receivers, running backs breaking tackles, making big runs, the offensive line knocking people over. It's the picturesque thing that every football team looks for, I guess you could say. But I feel we have the tools to do it this year."
Are you surprised it's taken so long?
"I wouldn't say I'm not surprised or I am surprised. It is what it is. It takes time. You go through camp, you go through the grind of getting your defense in, getting your offense in, preparing your body for games. Then you go through games, OK, we've played some games now. Once everyone gets in the groove of the games, now everyone gets it. Everyone knows what we need to do and how we need to do it. It happens. But it's not so much that the team gets it right then and there and just stops. You just get the feeling that you're doing the right thing and you keep evolving and building that momentum during the season."
When did you get that feeling last year?
"About this time, between the third and fourth week, maybe. About Iowa. Was that the fourth week (fifth, actually)? You just feel it."
• • • • • •
Brendan Smith, another senior, is standing at the edge of the practice field and saying, "It's a learning curve to see the new guys who step in, they need to gain the confidence, it's all about confidence, that's what it is. You've got to trust that you know what you're doing and all the other guys around you know what they're doing and once they stop thinking and play, then your identity comes because you're just playing to your ability and not worrying about making mistakes. I don't know the word for it. But when we practice like we did today, or when we just play hard and have fun, you just make plays. That's your identity. You don't call it that. You just try to live to that standard. It's more an expectation and standard of what it should be each day."
So everyone has to get on the same page?
"Yes. That's why it takes those couple weeks. If you can come out of camp that way, you're ahead of the game, ahead of the curve. But it takes a little time for people to adapt and now injuries come, so now you have people step in and they have to step right into that identity or that standard."
Isn't week four when that traditionally happens?
"We can't think of it that way. We've just got to go out there and do what we're doing. At the end of the day, could it be a statement game? Maybe. But we've just got to worry about doing what we're doing. At the end, we can look back."
