Northwestern University Athletics
Running Off With Skip Myslenski
9/8/2010 12:00:00 AM | Football
Sept. 8, 2010
By Skip Myslenski
NUsports.com Special Contributor
• The ground game is the Chef's Special, the Topic Du Jour on the 'Cat football platter and, as its centerpiece, there is the sophomore running back Arby Fields. A breakout season was expected of him this fall, but last Saturday night at Vanderbilt, he reverted to old habits, jitterbugged too much and ended with negative yardage.
"A lot of stuff I did in high school you can't do at the Big Ten level, like trying to run around everyone. Everybody's fast, everybody's athletic in a major conference," he had said in August when asked what he had learned as a freshman.
But it looked as if you were trying to do just that on Saturday, we said to him this week.
"Yeah. A little bit," he openly admitted. "It was a little bit of, I want to say trying to make a play, trying to do too much instead of just sticking it in there. I was just trying so hard to make a play, but in my opinion I went about it the wrong way. When nothing's there, I need to just stick it in there instead of going back to all this other stuff."
Did he forget what he had learned?
"Not necessarily forgot what I learned. It's just" -- and here he paused -- "I guess I want, I want us to be successful. We all, as running backs, we want to be successful running the ball. We all sat down as running backs and said, 'You know, if it's not blocked perfectly, it's on us to go out there and make plays.' That doesn't necessarily mean we have to go out there and do it all by ourselves. How we do it is up to us individually. But being just a little bit frustrated with what's been going on and trying to do too much is probably what happened Saturday."
Did the coaches talk to him about this or didn't they have to?
"I know what I did. Watching the film, when there's nothing there, you've got to go and stick it in there rather than doing all this other stuff."
What will he tell himself this week heading into Saturday's home opener against Illinois State?
"Learn from the film and go out there and try and make plays. But do it within the framework of the offense."
• Minutes later we asked Mick McCall, the 'Cat offensive coordinator, if he had been surprised that Fields had reverted to high school habits. "I don't know," he said. "Maybe a couple times we put him in situations that didn't help him and instead of just going forward, he wants to try and make the big play. I think sometimes guys, Arby is one that puts a lot of pressure on himself to go out and make that big play rather than just play that play, get north and south, get what we get and live to fight another day."
Did he talk to Fields about that?
"Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. We're constantly on those guys about it. But, again, he hadn't been back in the fray like he was at the very beginning of camp (while recovering from the shoulder injury he'd suffered in Kenosha). So we're working through that and we're getting better at that. We're going to do that. That's our main focus this week."
Running north-south?
"Yes. Yes."
• This was McCall's overall review of the 'Cat ground game against Vandy: "There was some good and there was some bad. The difference between offense and everything else is all 11 guys have got to play in sequence. If one guy breaks down, (offensive line) Coach (Adam) Cushing said it really well. 'There were times when we were a four-man operation up front.' Or we made a mistake in what we were reading at the quarterback spot, so we put some guys in bad positions. But I think there were some good things. We ran a lot of stuff at them, but we've got a lot of stuff to work on. So I was pleased in some areas, but the consistency part has to get better."
• It is relevant to note that, in his review, McCall referred to 11 guys working together, not just the five in the offensive line. That is where fingers are habitually pointed when a ground game grinds to a halt and that quintet, as its coach noted, did have breakdowns against Vandy. But problematical too was the blocking of the receivers on those sweeps and options the 'Cats ran Saturday night. "Anytime you run on the perimeter," McCall quite logically notes, you've got to block on the perimeter. . .and (wide receiver) Coach (Kevin) Johns will tell you we've got to be better at that too. We've got to be better across the board. So it's still a work in progress."
• Here, finally, is a most-important fact to remember when considering the 'Cat ground game. To their coaches, those little five-yard passes they throw are really runs by another name. "Yes. They sure are," says the head coach, Pat Fitzgerald. "Five yards on first down is five yards on first down. You'd ideally like to run the ball for four-or-more every time you do it. But we've got other ways to do it if we can't just run."
"There's no doubt. There's no doubt," says McCall.
So do we make a mistake by concentrating so much on rushing stats?
"I would never say you make a mistake. It's your opinion," says Fitzgerald. "But there are times when you get a little caught up in stats. We want to move the ball and keep drives alive. There's ways to do that beyond just run the ball for five yards."
"You guys," says McCall, "are paid a lot of money to think about a lot of different things and, yeah, cool. But it's all about moving the chains. If we move the football -- and we didn't move the chains consistently (against Vandy) -- but if we move the football and do it like we know we can, I don't care how we do it. It could be 70 runs and 10 passes. It could be 70 passes and 10 runs. It doesn't matter to me. We're going to do what it takes to move the football. We have the ability to do that with the guys we have on offense. We can run it, we can throw it. That's where we're at."
So does he really look at that five-yard pass as a run?
"I look at it as a gain," McCall concludes. "I don't get caught up in the rushing stuff like everybody else does. I get more caught up in, 'Did we get first downs, did we move the football?' If they're just going to bow it up on the run, we're idiots to just keep pounding it in there."
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