Northwestern University Athletics
The Skip Report: Meet Jack Mitchell
11/19/2014 12:00:00 AM | Football
Northwestern fans who did not yet know much about place-kicker Jack Mitchell learned quite a bit about the young man by watching his clutch performance in the win at Notre Dame. Skip Myslenski delves deeper into the personality of the sophomore from San Diego in his Wednesday Skip Report.
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Christian Salem, the holder on field goal and extra point attempts, does not remember exactly when he said it. But sometime late in the 'Cats game last Saturday with Notre Dame, he walked up to place kicker Jack Mitchell and said, "If you hit the game winner, just take off and I'm gonna come find you.'"
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It is late in that game now and the Irish, up three, are attempting to drain the clock. But here Ibraheim Campbell rocks their running back Cam McDaniel, and the ball comes loose, and Jimmy Hall jumps on it, and the `Cats are in business on their own 28 with 1:28 remaining. Here Mitchell, who has already made a pair of field goals, begins to prepare himself for another possible attempt, this one to forge a tie.
He kicks a couple balls into a net. He removes the sweat pants he has been wearing to stay warm. (Warmth is also a concern for holder Salem. "That was tough," he will explain. "I'm from California. I hadn't played in a game below 50 before I got here. So keeping my hands warm was the biggest thing.") Finally he moves down close to Pat Fitzgerald, who will -- if it is needed -- make the call for that attempt.
"I was expecting, or getting ready for, a field goal with the clock running if they weren't able to get out of bounds or have an incomplete pass," recalls Mitchell. "So I was expecting to kind of run out there and do it on the fly with the snapper and the holder."
Now, with the 'Cats facing a third-and-10 at the Irish 28, the call does come. "Points alert," Fitzgerald shouts here, and with that the field goal team gathers around him. The coach won't say a word to Mitchell here. That is just the way they operate. But this kicker, unlike so many others, is not enslaved by routines or rituals or superstitions. "So," he says, "I still talk to people on the sideline. I'm not always isolated, I guess."
It is here, after Trevor Siemian's third-down pass to Cam Dickerson falls incomplete, that Salem does choose to talk to him. "With Jack," he recalls with a soft chuckle, "there's like nothing you can really say to him. But before the game tie-er, I went up to him and I was like, `No matter what happens, I'm still going to love ya, man.'
"He was like, `Yeah, man. Let's do it.'
"I knew he was going to make it. I could see the look in his eyes. There was no doubt he was going to make it."
Then Salem and snapper Chris Fitzpatrick and the rest of their unit jog onto the field, Mitchell trailing behind them. "Jack usually stays separate from the kick team," says Salem. "I don't know. Maybe to get his mind right. But it's usually just me and Fitzpatrick and we run out there and then Jack meets us out there."
"I normally stay pretty calm on the sidelines," Mitchell himself will say when asked about his mind at this moment. "So just approach it like it's a practice kick, or approach it like it's any other kick. And I had already hit two before that. So I was feeling pretty confident with my swing."
Now Fitzpatrick sets himself over the ball, and Salem drops to a knee and fingers the spot where he will set it down. It is exactly seven-yards-minus-six-inches behind the snapper. "We've worked it out that we can usually get the laces every time if I move up those six inches," Salem explains.
Then Mitchell picks out a target. "I'm looking straight into the middle of the net, top of the goal posts," he says. "That's where I'm aiming."
Finally there is the kick itself, and it is true, and this game is tied with 19 seconds remaining in regulation. "I was trying to stay calm," Mitchell will say when asked his reaction to that success. "I knew we were going into overtime, which-- overtime is very reliant on the kickers in college. You're already on the 25-yard line, so you're already right there in field goal range. So just kind of stay focused knowing there's going to be another opportunity."
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The television commentary on that Saturday game portrayed Jack Mitchell as some kind of Naif In Gridiron Land, as a baseball player who wandered over to the football field and now suddenly found himself thrust into a melee being beamed across the country. That was, at best, sloppy work, even though Mitchell does play outfield for the `Cats.
But he was an accomplished athlete at San Diego's Torrey Pines High School, a notable institution whose alumni include the skateboarder Tony Hawk, the former All Pro safety John Lynch and the snowboarder Shaun (The Flying Tomato) White. He was so accomplished, in fact, that Duke offered him a preferred walk-on spot in football even before his senior year there, but then the `Cats came calling after he excelled that fall as a receiver and safety, as a place kicker and punter. "I really liked the opportunity here with Coach Fitz and the Big Ten," Mitchell will say, explaining his choice. "And Chicago. That was a huge drawing point for me."
"We saw he was just an athlete," Fitzgerald says, explaining Mitchell's attraction. "He did so many things well as a high school athlete, and he had a big leg. I thought he was going to be our kickoff specialist last year (his redshirt freshman year), but then he had a quad injury."
He tore his right quad, Mitchell recalls, in one of the first practices last fall, and this stalled his football ambitions. But after redshirting in that sport in 2012, he had played for the `Cat baseball team in the spring of '13 and he would do that again last spring. He would, in fact, take not a single kick during spring football practice, and so only won his job with his work at Camp Kenosha. "We'll do what we've always done with guys who've played two sports," Fitzgerald says of this unusual arrangement. "If you're going to play two sports, you better play. I don't mind guys going and playing baseball or whatever if that's what they want to do. But you better not be sitting on the pine. That doesn't make any sense."
"I like taking a lot of time off from both of them," Mitchell himself says of the arrangement. "So during football season I'm focusing on football and taking a lot of time off baseball-wise. It's the same thing during baseball season. I can definitely see the advantage of practicing (a sport) year round, really getting into it, getting all the off-season workouts in. I don't do any of that. I just go from season to season and I think that gives me an advantage. I can definitely see (how) it keeps me fresher mentally."
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Notre Dame gets the ball first in overtime, and gains nothing on three plays, and then misses wide left on its field goal attempt. "At that point," remembers Mitchell, "I knew it was going to come down to a field goal. I don't know how many kicks I've taken in my life, but there's been just so many. You've done it so many time, so now it's just getting ready, just trusting yourself."
At that point are you glad it's on you?
"At that point, yes. I was feeling very comfortable. I'd already made a couple. Confidence is high. So I felt very ready for the next opportunity."
There are no nerves here, none that he'll admit to, nor any that his teammates can see. "He's just a chill dude," says Salem, the holder. "I've lived with him since freshman year. He's been my best friend since I got here. We're both from California. And Jack's always like that. Nothing fazes him. He's just a chill dude living life."
"Jack's a real laid back kind of guy," echoes linebacker Jimmy Hall. "So when he gets in those big pressure situations, we're not as nervous as probably everybody else is. We've seen him do it a lot in practice."
Now, after the `Cats net a yard on their three plays, he does it again, does it for the win, and now comes the scene Salem suggested long minutes ago. "I saw it right down the middle," remembers Mitchell, "and I just started running. I didn't even think of anything."
"I see the ball go through, then I turn around and I see Jack running," recalls Salem, and then he chuckles. "I'm like, `Get back here.' I went and grabbed him. He was trying to get away from me. But I went and grabbed him and gave him a big hug. The whole team grabbed him, lifted him up. It was an awesome moment for him, and for our whole program."
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