Northwestern University Athletics
The Skip Report: A Busy Monday Morning
9/22/2014 12:00:00 AM | Football
There was plenty to discuss at Northwestern's Monday press conference, from NU's first Big Ten test at Penn State to the health of its quarterback to the memorable last few weeks enjoyed by punter Chris Gradone. Skip Myslenski recaps it all below:
STANCE AND REALITY: Trevor Siemian was having none of it, which was hardly a surprise. He is the 'Cats quarterback and one of their leaders and most certainly a football lifer, and that kind of biography spits into the twin faces of fact and reality.
So even though his right ankle had been injured late in their loss to Northern Illinois, and even though that injury had obviously affected him during their win over Western Illinois, he said this when asked about it on Monday. "It wasn't as bad as I thought it'd be," he said. "Once you start playing and your adrenalin gets pumping, it wasn't too bad. Worked out OK."
But was he able to push off his right foot and get good velocity on his passes?
"It was all right," he avowed. "I wouldn't say my ankle was bothering me when I was trying to do that."
This is what a quarterback and a leader and a football lifer does. He refuses to make excuses. But earlier on this afternoon, while discussing Siemian, Pat Fitzgerald had already implied that he was in fact damaged enough that he might not have played against the Leathernecks if circumstances had been different. "He's coming off an ankle injury. He didn't drive off his back foot. He was lazy with his feet and he didn't drive the ball," he said here while discussing his quarterback's performance in that game.
"I'm proud of him for being out there. The reason why he played is he needed to be out there. We don't have rhythm and timing right now as a skill group. Conventional wisdom is sit him down, you're playing an FCS team. That's why convention is convention and reality is reality. If we're clicking and scoring 500 points a game, maybe that's what we do. But we're not in rhythm and we're not doing what we need to do, and Saturday was as important a day as it was on Tuesday and Wednesday of the previous week.
"Obviously it's a game and win the game. But we're obviously not where we need to be right now and those guys are going to continue to work at it."
ROTATING CAST: The Cat passing game against Western was again inconsistent, just as it had been earlier against Northern and Cal. On Saturday, in the immediate wake of his team's win, Fitzgerald opined that one reason for that was a lack of trust between the quarterback and a group of receivers that has been battered by injuries (most prominently to Christian Jones, out for the year, and Tony Jones, who missed the Northern and Western games). On Monday, at his weekly press conference, he returned to that theme. "With the passing game, we're a major work in progress," he said here.
"We have had so many different combinations of skill guys that-- I can put all the blame on Trevor. I'm sure you guys have. I don't read your stuff. But I'm sure you have. That's part of the deal with being the quarterback. It comes with the territory. And I'm not making any excuses for him. He's got to be a lot better.
"But we've got to have better trust in those units with our quarterbacks and our skill guys, and we've got to pitch and catch. When we don't, it's pretty ugly. It's pretty ugly. So what do you do? You work on it. You work on the timing. You work on the rhythm. Then there were some great catches. I thought Kyle Prater had a great catch across the middle. But we're leaving way too many plays out there. We've got guys open, we're not throwing them the ball. We've got guys open, we overthrow the ball. We've got guys open, we drop the ball. We don't run the right progression read when things change. . . We're not in rhythm. We're obviously not clicking. The only way that's going to happen is if we keep working at it and we get a consistency of personnel out there to where they can build some trust and rapport with each other."
And what exactly does he mean by trust?
"We need guys to practice. That would be important," he said. "If guys practice, then the quarterback knows where they're going to be. When the quarterback knows where he's going to be, I've seen our quarterback throw for over 400 yards (against Illinois in last season's finale). He's pretty good there."
"I think it's coming along," Siemian himself said when asked about the trust issue. "The last two weeks we did a better job of finding that rhythm and it was good to see. We're kind of coming along, we're getting there. But no means are we a finished product now, so hopefully our best ball is coming up soon. And I think it is. I think our best ball with myself and that group is ahead of us."
TO CONCLUDE: Two other obvious takes from the Western game were the lack of a vertical passing game (the `Cats longest completion went for just 21 yards and it was caught by a superback, true freshman Garrett Dickerson) and the number of times Siemian threw to his outlet receiver. "I would say on first and second downs, I've got no problem with the check downs," Fitzgerald said of the latter subject. "If people are going to drop off, check down and we get four or five yards, that's a productive first down play. On third down, when the windows weren't open quite as clear to him on Saturday and he checked down, a guy coming off an ankle injury, I'm all right with it. I'm OK. He took a hit off himself. He got the ball out of his hands."
"I think we're close, though," Siemian himself said when asked about the paucity of explosion plays. "We've been really close on a couple. Whether it's me missing or someone else missing, I think we're knocking on the door. Like I said, we're not a finished product by any means. But I think we're closer than people think. We're getting there."
QUICKLY NOTED:
• On Tony Jones, who is not listed on the depth chart for the `Cats Big Ten opener Saturday at Penn State, Fitzgerald said, "We'll see how he progresses throughout the week. We'll see how it goes." He labeled linebacker Collin Ellis and safety Ibraheim Campbell, who exited the Western game with injuries, as "Day to day."
• The last 10 days have been very, very good ones for punter Chris Gradone. On Friday of the team's bye week, he was put on scholarship after laboring for three years as a walk-on. Then on Saturday, against Western, six of his seven punts pinned the Leathernecks inside their own 20. Finally, in the wake of that performance, he was named the Big Ten's Special Team's Player of the Week. "I was ecstatic," he said of getting on scholarship. "And it was right before the bye and I was planning on going home to surprise by mom. I'd been telling her I wasn't going to be able to come home. But I was able to, and I came home, and she was really surprised, and then I told both my parents I got a scholarship. It was a good moment. A great moment."
And was it a coincidence that he had such a good game after receiving it?
"It was definitely a confidence boost," he said. "I don't know whether it directly carried over. But it was definitely a boost."
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