Northwestern University Athletics
The Skip Report: Walker's Recipe for Success
10/1/2014 12:00:00 AM | Football
Wildcats fans everywhere were introduced to Anthony Walker in a big way Saturday at Penn State. In Skip Myslenski's Wednesday post, NU faithful can learn even more about Anthony Walker, the Miami native who looks poised to play a big role in the 'Cats' linebacking corps well into the future.
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He had played in high school down in Miami at 210. But 15 months ago, when he arrived in Evanston, linebacker Anthony Walker was 25 pounds heavier and outsized enough to be unrecognizable even to Jay Hooten, Northwestern's Director of Football Performance. "He had put on so much muscle mass, he had gotten so big, in a good way," he recalls. "He looked good, but I didn't recognize him. I recognized his dad."
"He became the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man a little bit," adds Pat Fitzgerald. "There were some days I thought he might be a defensive end for us during his redshirt freshman year."
"Being able to run and play the way I play, I think I was a little bit overweight," even Walker himself concludes.
It is no wonder, then, that he was unimpressive as the 'Cats labored last summer at Camp Kenosha. He had been recruited for his speed, for his agility, for his ability to cover from boundary to boundary. But here, recalls Hooten, "He didn't look like the same kid we recruited from a movement standpoint. He wasn't the same kid."
He was so different, in fact, that Fitzgerald finally approached Hooten and asked, "What can we do?"
"We'll take him off weight lifting," he answered. "He won't lift weights. We'll do correctives with him."
"Basically what correctives do," explains Hooten, "is work mobility, core stability, different types of activation in the muscles that you need to be able to move better on the football field. You want the guys to be big and look like he did. But he just wasn't moving well."
So each Monday and Friday during the season, while the other redshirt freshmen lifted as part of the 'Cats' D Squad program, Walker worked only on correctives, and by mid-October there was evident improvement. "Man, that kid's moving well. He's looking better on the field, he's becoming the player we recruited," Fitzgerald now said to Hooten.
"You could see a big difference," Hooten says on this Wednesday, but then Walker went home for the holidays, ignored his correctives and reported for off-season workouts back up to a hefty 237. "He was a large kid. A big kid," he remembers.
"Coach, I don't want to play defensive end," Walker was soon saying to Hooten. "I came here to play linebacker. So anything you and your staff can do to help get me to the point where I can play middle linebacker here, I'll do anything."
"We allowed him to lift, but kind of changed his lifting program," Hooten says now, explaining what happened next. "Every player has an individual program now based off what we call their functional movement screen. It shows how they move, range of motion, core stability, things like that.
"But then we kept the correctives program going, kept it going, kept it going, kept it going, and now he's had his shining moment. You could see the difference. He's moving well. He's playing at a high level."
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The 'Cats would be facing Penn State without the injured Collin Ellis, one of their captains and their senior middle linebacker. Replacing him on this Saturday in Happy Valley would be Anthony Walker, a redshirt freshman who would be making the first start of his college career. Still, in the face of those long odds, Ellis was confident, and before the game, he walked up to Walker and said, "Everyone's going to know who you are after this game."
Later, in the wake of the 'Cats' win, Fitzgerald would be muted in his praise of Walker, noting that he had made 10 mental errors during this game. But during it too he had proven Ellis prescient and he would end this affair with a team-leading eight tackles and an interception he returned 49 yards for a touchdown. "Because of the week of preparation he had, the confidence he has and the type of player he is," Ellis will say when asked why he was so sure Walker would succeed. "He's a special kid and everyone knows that now.
"When I was a redshirt freshman, I did not understand concepts like this kid understands. That's why he's able to play fast. He understands what's going on. I've been thoroughly impressed. I told Fitz, from day one in Kenosha (this summer), I'm very proud of this kid, very proud of where he is in his game, in his mental game. It's pretty incredible to listen to a redshirt freshman talk about concepts and really understand what's going on and then just go out and play. He's a fantastic player.
"I was extremely proud of him, going out there and making a name for himself."
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He is a coach's kid and by the ripe old age of two, he was already doing pushups. "My dad had me at the football field and I was just mocking the other guys," Walker says when asked about his early start. "So if they were doing pushups, I was doing pushups. Catching the ball, running around, having a good time, just happy being out there with my dad."He started in Little League as a quarterback. But when he finally joined the varsity as a sophomore at Monsignor Pace high, where his father Anthony Sr. is the offensive coordinator, he was a linebacker and a wide receiver. The next season, with his team's defensive backfield decimated by graduation, he moved to safety, but as a senior he was back at backer. "Because," he says, "I wanted to lead the team."
He had long been a fan of nearby Miami University, whose games he began attending at age five, but here the Hurricanes ignored him even as he blossomed into an All State performer. But then, in February of his junior year, he went to a Nike camp, dusted the other 1,000 attendees with his 4.48 40, and suddenly he was on the radar of a bevy of ardent wooers.
The very next day he would get an offer from Purdue and then, before his high school's spring game, he got one from the 'Cats as well. "I never heard of Northwestern before that," he will say, thinking back to the afternoon he was first visited by defensive line coach Marty Long. His recruiting area includes South Florida and here Walker continues, "I only saw them play one time before that, that was against Auburn in the (Outback) Bowl game.
"After Coach Long came, I did my research on the school and I was excited. I was excited that they were even interested in me. Coming from a prestigious school like this, Coach Long coming all the way to Miami, Florida, to come watch me. And (linebacker) Coach (Randy) Bates coming down, showing great interest in me. And Coach Fitz even coming down and talking to me over the phone. It was a great recruiting process.
"Right away I knew I wanted to come here. I went to a very high academic high school. (He graduated with a 3.8 unweighted GPA and as a member of the National Honor Society.) So this is a great environment for me. I'm around the same type of student-athletes. We're all here for a purpose. We all want to get a great degree and we want to play Division I football. I felt this was the best fit for me."
Even after Miami finally did offer him?
"Of course, everyone wants to play for their hometown, so I did want to go there," says Anthony Walker. "I ended up getting a scholarship late, but I was not switching from Northwestern. Coach Fitz and this staff were great to me, great to my dad. Like coach Fitz says, this is a marriage. So once I'm committed to something, I'm going to stay committed to it."
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Collin Ellis is set to return and start at middle linebacker when the `Cats host Wisconsin on Saturday. "He's still the guy," even Walker himself avows. "He's one of my closest friends on the team. He actually prepared me for the (Penn State) game like he was playing. Most of my success in that game was Collin Ellis working with me before the game, watching film and just getting me ready for the game."
Still, even while pointing out his mental errors, Fitzgerald found reason to praise his young phenom. "He hits you like (his former teammate) Barry (Gardner) hit you," he says. "He's just got great hips, great hip snappage. He's got really good instincts. He's gonna get better."
Which, obviously, makes many wonder if there is a switch in store for Ellis, who can fill any of the three linebacker slots.
"I think they've talked about it. I'm not sure," he finally says. "But I think the biggest advantage we have now is we can roll. If you look back on film, there were times I was out there not giving my best effort because I was tired. That can't happen. If you're going to play big-time teams, you have to be able to roll linebackers. It's something that we've done, but we haven't done it as much at the Mike position. That also allows us to play more special teams, an area we need to improve. So just having someone we can roll with, he's going to play a lot.
"The ability to have three linebackers that are full, 100 percent, not winded in any way shape or form, that's what helps you win four-quarter games against big-time teams."
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