Northwestern University Athletics
The Skip Report: The Quarterback's Playbook
8/31/2015 3:41:00 PM | Football
Coach Fitzgerald's Monday Press Conference | Players' Monday Press Conference
By Skip Myslenski
NUsports.com Special Contributor
The quarterback's playbook. . . .
CLAYTON THORSON and Matt Alviti and Zack Oliver were together in the room last Wednesday night when Pat Fitzgerald told them that the first would start for the 'Cats on Saturday in their season opener against Stanford. "It was exciting," the redshirt freshman recalled on Monday. "Obviously, I feel for the other guys. They're my friends. But at the same time I was determined (during their competition in training camp). I knew it was my time to be the quarterback."
THROUGHOUT CAMP Fitzgerald hinted that his choice could well be a game-time decision, and suggested that this could be an advantage in their game against the Cardinal. But on Monday, when asked why he pulled the trigger when he did, he said, "At that point, when it's that close, I don't think you can make a wrong decision. I just think the right decision is to let the young man know you're going to be our starter, we can start to define some roles, and they can kind of go through those first couple of days of, 'Wow, I'm the starter.' Or, 'Wow, I'm a play away.' We can get through that, we can move on and then we can get into game week and get ready to play.
"At the end of the day, I didn't think there was a huge advantage-- with all the social media stuff right now, I'm sure somebody would have been looking over the fence and taking pictures of who was quarterbacking first if I didn't announce it. So I figured I'd control the message."
THORSON'S FATHER CHAD had played linebacker for the New York Giants and Kent Graham, his next door neighbor, had played quarterback at Notre Dame and Ohio State before having at 10-year career in the NFL. So when he decided, in the third grade, that quarterback was the position for him, he had accomplished tutors readily available. He and Graham, in fact, started throwing together when he was in just the seventh grade, and when he reached high school, they together would break down film of accomplished performers like Peyton Manning, Drew Brees and Tom Brady.
The affinity he then felt for Manning is the reason he wears No. 18, the same as the Broncos star.
FITZGERALD, when asked Monday what went into the decision to make Thorson the starter, referenced the empirical data that had been collected while charting every quarterback rep through spring ball and fall camp. But then, when asked which of his characteristics jumped out at him, his coach said, "I would say in practice what I've seen is he's been pretty unflappable. He just goes out and plays. I don't think he puts too much stock in any specific play. He just goes out and tries to play his best on every rep. That shows a little bit more maturity than a typical redshirt freshman usually shows. Usually their body language and their attitude is either too high or too low based on the success of the play. That would be it. He's pretty calm. He's got a pretty calm demeanor. He's a very talented guy. But he's got a pretty calm demeanor."
"Kent was a big part of that, and my parents were as well," Thorson himself later explained. "It's just about not getting too high or getting too low. I was talking about that to Coach (Mick) McCall (the offensive coordinator) this morning. You've got to go on to the next play. Bad plays are going to happen on Saturday. I'm going to mess up. But you've got to go to the next play. If you're too high or too low, that doesn't matter. You've got another play. You just keep playing. We're going to run a lot of plays on Saturday, and you've got to have a level head."
THORSON DISPLAYED that level head as a junior at Wheaton North, where he played some wide receiver while splitting time at quarterback with a senior named John Peltz. ("I think that talks to Clayton's humility and his willingness to do whatever's best for the team," Fitzgerald reflected on Monday.) Late in that season, while diving for a ball, he broke his collarbone, and in the surgery that followed a plate and seven screws were put in to stabilize it. (The screws are still there, he said Monday.) But the next fall, as a senior, he threw for 2,809 yards and 29 touchdowns and ran for 567 yards and a dozen touchdowns.
He also impressed senior superback Dan Vitale, whom he stayed with on his official recruiting visit. "Right when he came in, you could see he was a guy of high integrity and high character. That makes him easy to trust, which is really important in a quarterback," he remembered on Monday. "You've got to trust his decision making. You've got to trust he's going to be your leader and step up. You can see it right now as he's sitting here (on stage next to Vitale). He's a guy of high character and high integrity. That's just who he is. That right away jumped out at me. And you can't deny the high talent he has too. So I knew right away he was going to be something special."
LAST FALL, of course, Thorson redshirted and choreographed the scout team in practices, but he did not go unnoticed. "We could all see just the raw talent he had on the field," Vitale also recalled on Monday. "This year, what was awesome about this camp and this off-season, was watching him grow into a leader and taking control of the offense. People respect him more than anyone on the team. It's been really cool to watch him grow into the quarterback he's becoming right now."
"I agree with that, and just his calm demeanor out there," said running back Justin Jackson, who has known and competed with Thorson since both were veritable babes. "I trust him when I'm out there next to him. I'm calm too. I feel he knows what he's doing and he knows what everyone else is doing as well. That makes it a lot easier for us. And, yeah, he can make some big plays. He's got a cannon for an arm and he can move"--and here Jackson chuckled--"I still think I'm faster than him, but I don't know. It would be interesting to race."
STILL. Come Saturday morning against No. 21 Stanford, Thorson will face a challenge greater than any he has encountered in his career. "He's just got to stay within himself, not try to do to much," Fitzgerald would say when asked what could be expected of him. "A lot of that, hopefully, we'll be able to help him with as a coaching staff. But just go do what he does, be him, nothing more. That's what I've seen him do since we named him the starter. He's just gone out and been himself. That's what I fully expect him to be. Obviously the challenge is a little different. But that's what I expect he'll do."
Will he have butterflies?
"Every player has butterflies going into a game," said Thorson himself. "But I'm just approaching it as any other game. I've got things I've got to think about, reads I've got to think about, and I'll just be envisioning play-by-play, what Stanford's going to do and what we're going to do to combat that."
AND FINALLY, Thorson, calm as ever, when asked how he'll manage to get to sleep on Friday night: "Lay my head on the pillow like everyone else."
By Skip Myslenski
NUsports.com Special Contributor
The quarterback's playbook. . . .
CLAYTON THORSON and Matt Alviti and Zack Oliver were together in the room last Wednesday night when Pat Fitzgerald told them that the first would start for the 'Cats on Saturday in their season opener against Stanford. "It was exciting," the redshirt freshman recalled on Monday. "Obviously, I feel for the other guys. They're my friends. But at the same time I was determined (during their competition in training camp). I knew it was my time to be the quarterback."
THROUGHOUT CAMP Fitzgerald hinted that his choice could well be a game-time decision, and suggested that this could be an advantage in their game against the Cardinal. But on Monday, when asked why he pulled the trigger when he did, he said, "At that point, when it's that close, I don't think you can make a wrong decision. I just think the right decision is to let the young man know you're going to be our starter, we can start to define some roles, and they can kind of go through those first couple of days of, 'Wow, I'm the starter.' Or, 'Wow, I'm a play away.' We can get through that, we can move on and then we can get into game week and get ready to play.
"At the end of the day, I didn't think there was a huge advantage-- with all the social media stuff right now, I'm sure somebody would have been looking over the fence and taking pictures of who was quarterbacking first if I didn't announce it. So I figured I'd control the message."
THORSON'S FATHER CHAD had played linebacker for the New York Giants and Kent Graham, his next door neighbor, had played quarterback at Notre Dame and Ohio State before having at 10-year career in the NFL. So when he decided, in the third grade, that quarterback was the position for him, he had accomplished tutors readily available. He and Graham, in fact, started throwing together when he was in just the seventh grade, and when he reached high school, they together would break down film of accomplished performers like Peyton Manning, Drew Brees and Tom Brady.
The affinity he then felt for Manning is the reason he wears No. 18, the same as the Broncos star.
FITZGERALD, when asked Monday what went into the decision to make Thorson the starter, referenced the empirical data that had been collected while charting every quarterback rep through spring ball and fall camp. But then, when asked which of his characteristics jumped out at him, his coach said, "I would say in practice what I've seen is he's been pretty unflappable. He just goes out and plays. I don't think he puts too much stock in any specific play. He just goes out and tries to play his best on every rep. That shows a little bit more maturity than a typical redshirt freshman usually shows. Usually their body language and their attitude is either too high or too low based on the success of the play. That would be it. He's pretty calm. He's got a pretty calm demeanor. He's a very talented guy. But he's got a pretty calm demeanor."
"Kent was a big part of that, and my parents were as well," Thorson himself later explained. "It's just about not getting too high or getting too low. I was talking about that to Coach (Mick) McCall (the offensive coordinator) this morning. You've got to go on to the next play. Bad plays are going to happen on Saturday. I'm going to mess up. But you've got to go to the next play. If you're too high or too low, that doesn't matter. You've got another play. You just keep playing. We're going to run a lot of plays on Saturday, and you've got to have a level head."
THORSON DISPLAYED that level head as a junior at Wheaton North, where he played some wide receiver while splitting time at quarterback with a senior named John Peltz. ("I think that talks to Clayton's humility and his willingness to do whatever's best for the team," Fitzgerald reflected on Monday.) Late in that season, while diving for a ball, he broke his collarbone, and in the surgery that followed a plate and seven screws were put in to stabilize it. (The screws are still there, he said Monday.) But the next fall, as a senior, he threw for 2,809 yards and 29 touchdowns and ran for 567 yards and a dozen touchdowns.
He also impressed senior superback Dan Vitale, whom he stayed with on his official recruiting visit. "Right when he came in, you could see he was a guy of high integrity and high character. That makes him easy to trust, which is really important in a quarterback," he remembered on Monday. "You've got to trust his decision making. You've got to trust he's going to be your leader and step up. You can see it right now as he's sitting here (on stage next to Vitale). He's a guy of high character and high integrity. That's just who he is. That right away jumped out at me. And you can't deny the high talent he has too. So I knew right away he was going to be something special."
LAST FALL, of course, Thorson redshirted and choreographed the scout team in practices, but he did not go unnoticed. "We could all see just the raw talent he had on the field," Vitale also recalled on Monday. "This year, what was awesome about this camp and this off-season, was watching him grow into a leader and taking control of the offense. People respect him more than anyone on the team. It's been really cool to watch him grow into the quarterback he's becoming right now."
"I agree with that, and just his calm demeanor out there," said running back Justin Jackson, who has known and competed with Thorson since both were veritable babes. "I trust him when I'm out there next to him. I'm calm too. I feel he knows what he's doing and he knows what everyone else is doing as well. That makes it a lot easier for us. And, yeah, he can make some big plays. He's got a cannon for an arm and he can move"--and here Jackson chuckled--"I still think I'm faster than him, but I don't know. It would be interesting to race."
STILL. Come Saturday morning against No. 21 Stanford, Thorson will face a challenge greater than any he has encountered in his career. "He's just got to stay within himself, not try to do to much," Fitzgerald would say when asked what could be expected of him. "A lot of that, hopefully, we'll be able to help him with as a coaching staff. But just go do what he does, be him, nothing more. That's what I've seen him do since we named him the starter. He's just gone out and been himself. That's what I fully expect him to be. Obviously the challenge is a little different. But that's what I expect he'll do."
Will he have butterflies?
"Every player has butterflies going into a game," said Thorson himself. "But I'm just approaching it as any other game. I've got things I've got to think about, reads I've got to think about, and I'll just be envisioning play-by-play, what Stanford's going to do and what we're going to do to combat that."
AND FINALLY, Thorson, calm as ever, when asked how he'll manage to get to sleep on Friday night: "Lay my head on the pillow like everyone else."
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