Northwestern University Athletics
Photo by: Stephen J. Carrera
The Skip Report: Offensive Line Has Something to Prove
8/31/2016 5:58:00 PM | Football
By Skip Myslenski
NUsports.com Special Contributor
Three times the Wildcats fell last season, and each time the root of their failure was starkly clear. They lost, as Pat Fitzgerald calls them, those six-inch wars that are waged in "The Pit" after each snap of the ball.
"Yeah. That motivates us," left guard Connor Mahoney says when that reality is noted. "The games we lost, and even in some of the games we won, we didn't do a good enough job up front to get it done. Whether that was we didn't give (quarterback) Clayton (Thorson) enough time, or whether we didn't open up big enough holes, whatever. We just didn't get it done. That did drive us through the off-season. We have a chip on our shoulder. We feel we have something to prove this season."
"Absolutely. I think the offense as a whole as a chip on their shoulder this year," tackle Eric Olson will later echo. "Nobody was really happy with the way we played (last year), we're all really excited to go out there and bring it this year. To kind of prove everybody wrong. And, you know, the offensive line specifically, I felt last year we took a step in the right direction, but we're not even close to where we want to be. We took a lot of pride in the off-season being the leaders of the offense, bringing everyone along, saying, 'Come with us.' We thought we had some pretty strong leadership up top with me and Connor. We feel we can be leaders of the offense, that we can say, 'Hey. This is our team, this is our offense and we're going to change what we did last year.' There's absolutely a chip on our shoulder."
The mentality on the offensive line is different from that on the defensive line, which is where Mahoney primarily labored until the spring of 2015. That is when he moved to the other side of the ball and, by early last season, he was a starter.
"We just felt we had a need there athletically, and that Connor could fill that, his toughness could fill that," Fitzgerald said recently when asked about that change. Then he was asked if, just maybe, part of the reason for that change was to introduce the D line's mentality into the O line?
"That's a bonus. It's a bonus," he said. "But absolutely. He's a guy we thought could bring the mentality."
Has he brought it?
"No question. That was the reason he was elected captain."
"I would like to think so," Mahoney himself says to the same question. "I think as a D line we definitely had the mentality that we were going to come to work in practice, and that we were going to be nasty on the field. I feel like I brought some of that over to the O line. I'd like to think that."
So does the O line have that edge about it now?
"I think we do. I really do," says Adam Cushing, the O line coach. "I think that Connor is one of the best leaders that I've had, and I've had some good ones. I think the group is always going to reflect the leadership. Then you talk about a guy like Eric Olson, who has a ton of confidence in himself. Eric and Connor lead the group together, and everything pretty much reflects what they are. Those two guys doing it together, the group is exactly those two guys' personality. A little bit of confidence. A little bit of, 'We're the best. Let's go.'"
The 'Cats D line, as we've written, wants to be a dog, a gritty unit that grinds. The 'Cats O line has a Navy SEAL motto hanging in its meeting room, the one that encourages, "Embrace the suck."
"Last year, we made that our thing," Mahoney says when asked how he defines that admonition. "We didn't care who we had on the field. We were going to have a bunch of guys ready, and we were going to make practices really hard so the game was easy. I think this year we're a lot more solidified with who's playing up front. . .but we've carried over that mentality that we're going to embrace the suck in practice."
"It's pretty self-explanatory," Olson says when asked the same question. "The attitude you take is going to effect everything you do, especially when things suck. If you have a bad attitude and things suck, it's going to be really, really bad. If you have a good attitude and things suck, you might be able to turn things around. You might be able to turn it into something really freaking cool. If you're out on the field and it's a really long drive and it sucks for the offense and the defense, people are getting tired (on both sides), if you're the ones that have the good attitude about it, you're the ones who are going to come out on top. If it's a really hard practice, and the offense and defense are going back and forth, us and the D line are going back and forth, if you embrace the suck and put a smile on your face and say I'm going to do this with a good attitude, you're the one who's usually going to come out on top. If you start feeling sorry for yourself, that's when everything's going to crumble and fall apart for you."
During the off-season, with its failures in its team's losses still fresh, the O line did not feel sorry for itself. It instead went to work in the weight room and, by August, all of its members had put up personal bests in the squat, in the dead lift, in the max bench press and the bench 225 reps.
"We all invested in the weight program and every guy has put on good weight, good muscle, and lost bad weight," says Mahoney. "So across the board everybody looks bigger. We're competing. You can feel it out there."
They competed too in the many events that are staged during an off-season, and here too achieved promising results. Players get points for their efforts in these contests; and a belt is awarded to the highest scorer each week; and through the previous winter, the one of 2015, that belt almost always went to Deonte Gibson or Dean Lowry or another D lineman. But this year, says Olson, "Not a single D lineman had it once. We had it the whole time. Every year since I've been here, we do an O line versus D line tug-of-war, the D line would always take it to us. We didn't lose a single time this off-season. We really took pride— like I said, we wanted to lead the offense and bring it along. Me and Connor felt we had the ability to do that with the guys we had coming back, and this of-season was a huge step in that direction. Obviously, it doesn't mean anything until we put it on the field. But I think anyone on the team will tell you it was a huge step not only for the O line, but the offense."
Did winning those competitions give it more confidence?
"Absolutely. A-hundred-percent. No doubt about it," Olson fairly roars. "It kind of gave us a little bit of a swagger. We took a lot of pride in that."
"I think," the running back Justin Jackson will conclude, "that really gave them the confidence (to say), 'Listen, we're strong enough, we're good enough as a unit to go out and dominate.' That has translated onto the field, and I've been really excited to run behind these guys because they've got a hunger.
"They're really looking to go out there and make a statement this year, and I think we're going to make that statement as a whole offense."
NUsports.com Special Contributor
Three times the Wildcats fell last season, and each time the root of their failure was starkly clear. They lost, as Pat Fitzgerald calls them, those six-inch wars that are waged in "The Pit" after each snap of the ball.
"Yeah. That motivates us," left guard Connor Mahoney says when that reality is noted. "The games we lost, and even in some of the games we won, we didn't do a good enough job up front to get it done. Whether that was we didn't give (quarterback) Clayton (Thorson) enough time, or whether we didn't open up big enough holes, whatever. We just didn't get it done. That did drive us through the off-season. We have a chip on our shoulder. We feel we have something to prove this season."
"Absolutely. I think the offense as a whole as a chip on their shoulder this year," tackle Eric Olson will later echo. "Nobody was really happy with the way we played (last year), we're all really excited to go out there and bring it this year. To kind of prove everybody wrong. And, you know, the offensive line specifically, I felt last year we took a step in the right direction, but we're not even close to where we want to be. We took a lot of pride in the off-season being the leaders of the offense, bringing everyone along, saying, 'Come with us.' We thought we had some pretty strong leadership up top with me and Connor. We feel we can be leaders of the offense, that we can say, 'Hey. This is our team, this is our offense and we're going to change what we did last year.' There's absolutely a chip on our shoulder."
The mentality on the offensive line is different from that on the defensive line, which is where Mahoney primarily labored until the spring of 2015. That is when he moved to the other side of the ball and, by early last season, he was a starter.
"We just felt we had a need there athletically, and that Connor could fill that, his toughness could fill that," Fitzgerald said recently when asked about that change. Then he was asked if, just maybe, part of the reason for that change was to introduce the D line's mentality into the O line?
"That's a bonus. It's a bonus," he said. "But absolutely. He's a guy we thought could bring the mentality."
Has he brought it?
"No question. That was the reason he was elected captain."
"I would like to think so," Mahoney himself says to the same question. "I think as a D line we definitely had the mentality that we were going to come to work in practice, and that we were going to be nasty on the field. I feel like I brought some of that over to the O line. I'd like to think that."
So does the O line have that edge about it now?
"I think we do. I really do," says Adam Cushing, the O line coach. "I think that Connor is one of the best leaders that I've had, and I've had some good ones. I think the group is always going to reflect the leadership. Then you talk about a guy like Eric Olson, who has a ton of confidence in himself. Eric and Connor lead the group together, and everything pretty much reflects what they are. Those two guys doing it together, the group is exactly those two guys' personality. A little bit of confidence. A little bit of, 'We're the best. Let's go.'"
The 'Cats D line, as we've written, wants to be a dog, a gritty unit that grinds. The 'Cats O line has a Navy SEAL motto hanging in its meeting room, the one that encourages, "Embrace the suck."
"Last year, we made that our thing," Mahoney says when asked how he defines that admonition. "We didn't care who we had on the field. We were going to have a bunch of guys ready, and we were going to make practices really hard so the game was easy. I think this year we're a lot more solidified with who's playing up front. . .but we've carried over that mentality that we're going to embrace the suck in practice."
"It's pretty self-explanatory," Olson says when asked the same question. "The attitude you take is going to effect everything you do, especially when things suck. If you have a bad attitude and things suck, it's going to be really, really bad. If you have a good attitude and things suck, you might be able to turn things around. You might be able to turn it into something really freaking cool. If you're out on the field and it's a really long drive and it sucks for the offense and the defense, people are getting tired (on both sides), if you're the ones that have the good attitude about it, you're the ones who are going to come out on top. If it's a really hard practice, and the offense and defense are going back and forth, us and the D line are going back and forth, if you embrace the suck and put a smile on your face and say I'm going to do this with a good attitude, you're the one who's usually going to come out on top. If you start feeling sorry for yourself, that's when everything's going to crumble and fall apart for you."
During the off-season, with its failures in its team's losses still fresh, the O line did not feel sorry for itself. It instead went to work in the weight room and, by August, all of its members had put up personal bests in the squat, in the dead lift, in the max bench press and the bench 225 reps.
"We all invested in the weight program and every guy has put on good weight, good muscle, and lost bad weight," says Mahoney. "So across the board everybody looks bigger. We're competing. You can feel it out there."
They competed too in the many events that are staged during an off-season, and here too achieved promising results. Players get points for their efforts in these contests; and a belt is awarded to the highest scorer each week; and through the previous winter, the one of 2015, that belt almost always went to Deonte Gibson or Dean Lowry or another D lineman. But this year, says Olson, "Not a single D lineman had it once. We had it the whole time. Every year since I've been here, we do an O line versus D line tug-of-war, the D line would always take it to us. We didn't lose a single time this off-season. We really took pride— like I said, we wanted to lead the offense and bring it along. Me and Connor felt we had the ability to do that with the guys we had coming back, and this of-season was a huge step in that direction. Obviously, it doesn't mean anything until we put it on the field. But I think anyone on the team will tell you it was a huge step not only for the O line, but the offense."
Did winning those competitions give it more confidence?
"Absolutely. A-hundred-percent. No doubt about it," Olson fairly roars. "It kind of gave us a little bit of a swagger. We took a lot of pride in that."
"I think," the running back Justin Jackson will conclude, "that really gave them the confidence (to say), 'Listen, we're strong enough, we're good enough as a unit to go out and dominate.' That has translated onto the field, and I've been really excited to run behind these guys because they've got a hunger.
"They're really looking to go out there and make a statement this year, and I think we're going to make that statement as a whole offense."
••••••
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