Northwestern University Athletics
The Skip Report: Northwestern vs. Illinois Preview
11/28/2014 12:00:00 AM | Football
Skip Myslenski serves up his final Friday preview of the regular season, with the Wildcats aiming to complete a November to remember when they host rival Illinois at 11 a.m. CT Saturday at Ryan Field.
MORE: NU vs. Illinois Game Preview
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K.I.S.S.: That acronym stands for a life principle and it means, "Keep it simple, stupid." Its formulation is generally credited to a Lockheed engineer named Kelly Johnson, who worked on a project that created (among other things) the U-2 spy plane.
NO THINKING ALLOWED: The Northwestern offensive line, which struggled through their four-game losing streak, is again a force, and once more the foundation of an attack that rolled up 961 yards the last two weekends. One reason for that is its adherence to the KISS principle. "The coaches," explained center Brandon Vitabile, "have done a great job of making the plan as easy as possible for us to understand so I can get the calls out quickly and help everybody just go, which they stress a lot to us during the week."
Did they begin to simplify the plan before the Notre Dame game?
"It's been getting simpler all year, to be honest," he said. "Coach Cush (offensive line coach Adam Cushing) has been making it, `This is your call this way, this is your call that way, get it going, make it quick.' It's something that we've always tried to do. But it's something they said, `We've got to do better for you guys.` It's really helped."
"I think the main reason he simplified it is to allow us to play fast," continued guard Matt Frazier. "Not think. Not change too many calls in there. We make a call, we go with it. If it's not the right call, we don't care. We go with it. If all five of us are on the same page, we're going to block it well. Even if it's not perfect, as long as we're going fast and have it simple, we're going to get it done."
"The less thinking (they have to do), the faster and more physical they can play," concluded Cushing himself. "When you think, the muscles just can't go, you just can't cut it loose. The more times we can have five guys on the same sheet of music all doing the same thing -- it doesn't have to be perfect -- it's better to be decisive than to be right."
ANOTHER OLDIE BUT GOODIE: The concept has been posited in different ways by different people in different sports. But this memory bank remembers hearing it first from an old Cleveland Brown safety named Walter Beach, who back in the early '60s declared, "If you have to think about what to do, it's too late to do it."
SO AGAIN, NO THINKING ALLOWED: Back when the offensive line was scuffling Pat Fitzgerald himself posited, on more than one occasion, that it was suffering from paralysis of analysis. This could occur, for example, if the defense shifted when the 'Cats sent a man in motion and Vitabile felt it necessary to change the blocking call he had already made. They still do that some, said Cushing. But most of the time, he added, it's, "Just go play. Just go play.
"If there's time, they'll try and get the right call done. If there's not (time), though, if they don't get it said out loud, then at least everybody knows exactly what the guy next to him's doing. If you know exactly what the guy next to you's doing, you've got a really good chance of success. So (we're) just eliminating some of those minor adjustments to a scheme, or to this or that. Now it's, `This is how we block inside zone. This is how we block outside zone. You guys know how to do it. Go.'"
"If they're stressing, 'Get up. Set. Let's go' instead of, 'Look around, make your decision slowly,'; if we're thinking put the pedal to the gas and just go, for me personally that means get in my stance, get my hand on the ball and get going instead of waiting and trying to make the perfect call," added Vitabile. "It's, `This is the call. Let's go.' It's helped everybody go fast and I think that's when we do our best."
"Simplifying everything has helped us out tremendously in not allowing us to over-think ourselves," concluded Frazier. "When we over-think ourselves, we start to play slow. Simplify it, we'll be able to go fast."
QUICKLY NOTED:
• The members of that line, like all the `Cats, like to say they are deaf to outside chatter. Still. They did take it personally when their play was criticized during their team's losing streak.
"We know it's won up front," said Frazier. "So, yeah, we took that personally and we came together and talked about it and decided we were going to get it fixed." Added Cushing, their position coach: "I've told you this for years. We believe as an offensive line that the team goes as we go. So if we're not succeeding as a team, we look at ourselves first. Sure, there was criticism outside. But we're going to take it personal because we're not winning. If we're not winning, we're going to say, `This is on us. Here's how we're going to get it fixed. Let's go play harder. Let's go play more physical. Let's go punch guys better.'"
• No doubt it is again on that line this week when the `Cats host Illinois in a game for both bragging rights and a bowl bid. "It's BigTen football," explained Fitzgerald. "It starts up front on both sides of the ball. I think the last two weeks have been as consistent as our offensive line has played all year. We're still not where we want to be by any stretch of the imagination. But they're giving us a chance to win and hopefully they'll play well on Saturday."
• Among the 22 Wildcats seniors who will be honored before Saturday's game is leading receiver Kyle Prater, who as an acclaimed recruit out of Proviso West signed first with USC before transferring closer to home.
"I'm incredibly happy for him," Fitzgerald said of him. "It's been a long road. It's part of the deal when you have all that hype around you. It's part of this whole process. There's very few guys that it goes perfectly from the hype in high school to their career in college. His went 180 degrees the wrong way from an injury standpoint. To see the way that he's playing, I think that's what's so cool about football. You just keep persevering, you keep fighting, you keep working, and he's done that and playing the best football of his career right now."
• Another who will be honored is safety Ibraheim Campbell, who has been playing at an All Big Ten level since returning from the injury that sidelined him for four games. "It'll be emotional," he admitted. "I've had a lot of fun times on that field. There could be more, obviously, on the day of. But at the same time, you can't dwell on it too much. You've got to enjoy the moment, make the most of your opportunity. As many guys on this team have found out this year (Trevor Siemian, Collin Ellis, Greg Kuhar), you have to enjoy every opportunity you have because it could get cut short."
• The Illini enter Saturday's game off a two-point victory over Penn State. But they have yet to win on the road this season.
• Reilly O'Toole, one of their three quarterbacks, has known `Cat superback Dan Vitale since the second grade and was his teammate in both grade school and high school.
• Their leading receiver is freshman Mike Dudek, who has 62 catches for 902 yards and five touchdowns. He's a local product who played at Neuqua Valley, but was not recruited by the 'Cats. "I'm very excited to play this game," he said this week. "Any school you go against that overlooked you, you want to go out there and beat."
• One other Illini to keep an eye on is versatile corner V'Angelo Bentley, who during his career has returned a kickoff, a punt, an interception and a fumble for a touchdown. Not even Red Grange, the greatest of them all, did that.
AND FINALLY, Campbell, neatly wrapping it all up: "With any rivalry game, you can expect both teams to come out swinging regardless of their records or what happened before. That's something you can anticipate this week as well. Both of us have a lot to gain from this win."
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