Northwestern University Athletics
Postgame Quotes: Northwestern 29, Penn State 6
9/28/2014 12:00:00 AM | Football
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Northwestern Postgame Quotes
Penn State vs. Northwestern
September 27, 2014
Head Coach Pat Fitzgerald
Opening statement...
"Thanks everyone for being here, especially everyone from Chicago. I know we had flight issues getting out on Friday. We were fortunate to get here. We thank our friends at United. They helped us get out. We only had a 90-minute delay and that ended up working out pretty well. We were able to adjust our schedule. I thought the support staff and most of the guys handled that pretty well yesterday. We got in really without a hitch.
"Update on Matthew Harris, all tests came back clear, which is unbelievable news. It's my understanding he's on his way back here to Beaver Stadium and will travel back with us to Chicago. That's great news to say the least. I'm very thankful that he came out of it OK.
"From a standpoint in the game, without watching the tape, I thought the work that our guys have been putting in to improve in practice, for the most part, showed up today. There's still a lot of room for improvement and things to clean up, but for the most part, I think the improvement of the guys have been working diligently to get towards, I think we took a positive step in the right direction today. A lot of guys stepped up. Obviously we had a lot of guys go down. It was just a battle of attrition and a battle of adversity. To come in here in front of 100,000 was something that made me very proud of our guys. I think they used it as motivation to come together and put together, for the most part, 60 pretty solid minutes of football. Enough mistakes, though, that we've got to get fixed, especially some of those things in the kicking game. But, for the most part, I thought our offensive and defensive lines probably played their best games of the year. For us to come in here against that defense and run for over a hundred yards was something that we obviously set as a goal before the game. If you would have told me we would get it, I would have had a big old smile on my face. Obviously, I've got a smile on my face."
On the offense's ability to play no-huddle...
"It had a lot less to do with them. I don't know how many times you've seen us play this year. We haven't been very good, frankly, on offense. We've been talking a bunch. The issue has been for us not to go up-tempo has been our depth. We have been down a ton of receivers and a ton of skill guys. Part of going fast on offense is you've got to be able to have some guys come in and we just haven't had that kind of depth offensively. We've finally got it back here really since the bye week; we started to slowly get some guys back. Not only does that help with the depth of the skill positions, but it allows us to get up to our tempos that we want to play at. The key to that then is obviously third down conversions. That was what we talked about. We needed to convert on third down. I think we were 50 percent at halftime and I thought that gave us a chance to keep (Christian Hackenberg) on the sideline. That was our plan offensively. Our plan offensively was to keep Hackenberg on the sideline. He's a great player. He's not a good player, he's a great player. Our defense did a great job getting off the field on third down."
On the play of Anthony Walker...
"Anthony had to play a little bit last week. He has been primarily a special teams player for us. I know his dad, I don't know if his dad was here or not, but I know his pop down in Miami is incredibly proud of him, like we are. Collin Ellis did a great job helping him throughout the week. Most importantly, I think Anthony is a young man that not only had a great game today, but has a really bright future. He can really run. He's physical. He reminds me for you Chicagoans, he reminds me of Barry Gardner. He's got the same kind of pop with his hips. He's got the same kind of strike ability. He's got a bright, bright future. It will be nice to get Collin back next week and add a little bit of depth to that linebacker corps."
On Walker's usage in the future...
A: We will see. I thought he played very well. You've got a senior captain that misses the game and to have a redshirt freshman step up like that, that's big time. He did a great job. Again, we try to rotate our guys as much as we can defensively to keep them fresh. We haven't been able to do that at linebacker over the last few years, but maybe now with the way Anthony played, maybe we will. We will see.
On reacting to the injury to Matthew Harris...
"When I was over by Matthew, the athletic training staff and (our entire medical team), were just really poised and executed our plan from the standpoint of that flawlessly. First and foremost, I think Matt was in a good place, feeling comfortable that way. I reached down and said, "Hey Matthew, Coach is here." He goes, "Go win it. Go win it." I'm like, "Matthew, relax, all right?" He's a great young man, so we will see how things progress, but it's great news to know that all tests came back clear."
On the play of Trevor Siemian...
"That's what happens when you lose games, right? The quarterback is going to get the glory when you win and he's going to get the grief when you lose. You can't ride the rollercoaster. You've just got to stay consistent. He hasn't been 100 percent for a while and I think he's getting closer and closer. He has got to set his feet a little bit on a couple of those overthrows. He has been a little sloppy with his footwork and when he does he's as good as we've had in a long time. Frankly, that's why I talk to the guys all the time about not listening to that stuff. All you can control is the way that you prepare and the way that you play. You've just got to be really careful who you listen to. That is what it is. We've raised expectations and when we don't win, we deserve what we get. That just is what it is. It's a good feeling to win."
On how the win impacts the team moving forward...
"I don't know how much you've watched us play, but we've just made mistakes that have cost us games. We're about three or four catches away from being undefeated. But we're not, and that's reality. You go back to last year and we had all kinds of injuries and faced all kinds of craziness. In my humble opinion, the credit goes to our young men. They've persevered and they've stayed together. We've been hard on them because we need to be. We're an immature football team that's maturing in front of our eyes. I'm really pleased and really happy with our seniors. This is a senior-type statement win to not have started the season the way we wanted to. That group of guys, our leadership council, our captains keep everything together. To just keep working their tails off to improve, that credit goes to those seniors and those guys. Frankly, in a couple of spots, they hadn't played very well early. I thought most of our upperclassmen played well and to see the way our young defensive guys played today, that was encouraging not only for right now but also for the future. We had a bunch of redshirt freshmen out there today that were playing their tails off."
On if the team played harder than in previous games...
"I think we play hard every play. I think it was execution. The quarterback goes through the whole spring and summer with a group of wide receivers he expects to be throwing to and all of a sudden through this, that and the other, that group changes. The dynamic changes, the timing changes and the rhythm changes. He persevered and he stayed the course. To the young guys at wideout and at running back who have not played a ton of football at the collegiate level, even if they're upperclassmen, they haven't played a lot. They've been the guys riding the bus, eating the steak, cheering and waving the towel on the sideline. Now, all of a sudden, you're out there and it's real. They're getting better. They're improving. Are we there yet? Not even close. That, to me, is probably what's most encouraging is how much better we can in all three phases. We've got a lot of work to do. Number one, we've got to get healthy. We're a pretty beat up football team right now. We knew that was going to happen. I've been playing Penn State for a long time. This is always a physical outfit. Today, it was the same way. Obviously, we're playing a great team next week at home. That's the great thing about playing Big Ten football. You get to tee it up every week against really physical teams and I thought our guys rose to the occasion today."
LB Anthony Walker
On his mindset entering his first start...
"The coaches told me to prepare every week like I was going to play. I got an opportunity today, so I just went out there and tried to make plays."
On his INT return for touchdown...
"The interception, that was a great defensive call. They were ducking us on quick passes. It was an alert that they were going to do that. I got looked off by Hackenberg, who is a great quarterback by the way, but I just made a play. It was nice to hear the stadium go quiet on that play."
QB Trevor Siemian
On the win as a confidence booster for the team...
"I know the Big Ten has a bad rap, but it shows how competitive this league is. At this point in the season everyone wants to declare a Big Ten champion, but there is a lot of ball left to be played. It was good to get a win and we will see where it goes from here."
On opening the game fast...
"We got a first down and then we kind of set a tempo. We had a rhythm to us that we haven't seen all year. Our identity is a rhythm offense, so when we have a chance to do that we are pretty effective. We aren't a finished product but it was nice to see us come along."
SB Dan Vitale
On his role in the passing game today...
"It was definitely effective. Our game plan changes from week to week. Last week we tried to keep it a little more vanilla, but we opened up our passing game this week and Trevor [Siemian] threw the ball great. We had a great connection between our quarterback and receivers, so it was working for us today."
On how the win impacts the team moving forward...
"It's been awhile since we felt like this. Like I said before, the last couple weeks have had some tough, grinding practices. It really showed. It helped us prepare for this game. I think everyone wanted it [the win] as bad as I did. You could see the passion in everyone's eyes and we didn't have that the first couple weeks."
On the team's offensive gameplan...
"We still use two superback sets, but our coaches make great decisions. Everything that we practice isn't going to be perfect, but we did a great job with handling what the coaches gave us this week. We made some big plays and we needed that. We needed the momentum. We held onto it. The defense did a great job taking over the momentum too. Overall this [win] was a complete team effort."
DL Dean Lowry
On what worked for the defense today...
"I think bringing pressure. Penn State has an effective quarterback and bringing the pressure helped us to a successful day on defense. I think our young guys played great and really stepped up. The pressure they put on [Christian] Hackenberg made a difference in the game."
On regaining focus after the injury to Matthew Harris...
"That was tough. Matt had a great game leading up to his injury and I think that we decided to play this one for him. Our offense and our secondary showed up and we are very deep there. We feel great about the guys we have behind our starters. As soon as Matt went down, we knew that we had people to step up."
