Northwestern University Athletics
The Skip Report: You Can't Explain Magic
10/23/2017 6:09:00 AM | Football
By Skip Myslenski
NUsports.com Special Contributor
There is no analyzing why Jackson Pollock, the abstract expressionist, put a bit of red here and a bit of blue there and a bit of green in that place in his masterpiece called Convergence. There is that same mystery too with the adverbs and the adjectives and the elliptical phrases in Molly Bloom's soliloquy, which closes out James Joyce's Ulysses. This is what the young Wayne Gretzky was declaiming these many decades ago in a motel restaurant outside Minneapolis when he was asked to explain how he produced goals that left observers agape. You cannot explain magic, he pronounced here. If you do, you rob it of its magic.
Which brings us to the Wildcats' Saturday stare down with Iowa at Ryan Field, where they're in overtime and facing a third-and-nine at the 24. At the snap Justin Jackson slips out of the backfield, collects a Clayton Thorson offering at the 22, plants hard on his right foot and cuts to the inside. At the 19 the Hawk linebacker Ben Niemann tries to corral him around the knees, but Jackson slips his grasp, and at the 15 the Hawk safety Jake Gervase grabs onto his right ankle. Concurrently, from his left, another Hawk safety named Amani Hooker is closing like a heat-seeking missile, but somehow Jackson pulls free from Gervase at the 14 and eludes a flailing Hooker at the 12 and continues on while attempting to regain full balance.
He does in a matter of steps. But now another pair of Hawks are in hot pursuit, and at the five he gets hit by the defensive end Garret Jansen, and at the four the linebacker Bo Bower flies and wraps himself around his shoulders, and finally Justin Jackson goes down at the one.
"Wow. What a great play," Pat Fitzgerald will later say when asked to describe it. "He's got the ball in space and he's just being Justin. It looked like a pure attitude play. He willed his way to get what he got. I don't think Iowa did anything wrong. He just made a great play. He's a great player."
"Oh, man," marveled Thorson. "I saw two guys in the open field and I'm like, 'They've got no chance.' At that point I knew we had a first down. Then, when he kept pushing forward, I'm like, 'Holy cow, we're going to score on the third play of overtime.' Awesome effort."
"As soon as I cut," concluded Jackson, manfully trying to explain the inexplicable, "I didn't know exactly where he (Niemann) was in relation to me, and I really didn't know how far away I was from the first down, so I figured just get the ball and turn it up, get as close as I can, and if I make that guy miss, we get the first. I ended up making him miss. Then I don't know where the second guy came from. Just saw him at the last second. Was able to avoid him and keep going. Tired legs. Saw the end zone right there. So close."
Two plays later Thorson sneaks it in and the 'Cats are up 17-10 after Charlie Kuhbander's PAT.
They were familiar foes evenly matched, and so it was no surprise that their Saturday meeting evolved into a steel cage match. Early on, in the first quarter, it belonged to the Hawks, who through those 15 minutes gained 128 yards while holding the 'Cats to a mere 29. But despite all their acreage they scored not a point, and now the NU defense collected itself and flexed, limiting the Hawks to just 184 yards over the last three quarters.
"It starts up front. It starts up front," Fitzgerald would say, explaining that defensive performance. "I thought our defensive line again— from the way they're preparing, it's showing up on Saturday."
And just how is it showing up?
"I see it everywhere," said Fitzgerald. "I don't see mental mistakes. I see us controlling our gaps. I see us fundamentally executing pretty well. I see when we make little small tweaks during the game, and we had to make a handful— I credit Iowa (which was coming off a bye week). They self-scouted some things and we were having to adjust, especially defensively. They did some things, we went, 'Oh, OK. There's the bye week.' We had to make some adjustments and our front seven really handled it well."
"They came out and ran a different offense than they usually do, and we did a good job of adjusting," echoed the linebacker Nate Hall when asked what changed after the first quarter. "It seemed every quarter they were switching up their game plan a little bit. Sometimes we adjusted poorly and that's when they had their bigger plays. But overall I thought we adjusted pretty well to what they wanted to do."
The Hawks, on their last possession of the first half, did nick that defense for a touchdown to go up seven, but on the 'Cats' second possession of the second half, their offense finally stirred. It had, in the 33 minutes already passed, netted a mere 102 yards, but now Thorson found Macan Wilson on a curl for six and then Jackson made something out of nothing and gained five. That kick started a drive that would cover 66 yards in a dozen plays, and after Jeremy Larkin scampered for the last six of them, this one was tied at seven halfway through the third.
Now the 'Cats' D did its thing, holding the Hawks to nine net yards in five plays, and again their O drove, but here it stalled and failed on a fourth-and-seven at the Iowa 32. Once more their D asserted itself, forcing the Hawks into a three-and-out, and now their O unfurled a 13-play, 57-yard drive that ended with Kuhbander's 30-yard field goal at 8:07. There it stayed until the Hawks put up their own field goal with 90 seconds remaining and here Fitzgerald, with his 'Cats driving into a stiff breeze, chose to run out the clock and go into overtime.
"I did not want to punt into that wind," he would explain. "I thought our defense was playing really well. I wanted to play a 25-yard game."
"It was a prototypical Big Ten game where you're trading punches," avowed 'Cat defensive end Joe Gaziano. "It was a heavyweight fight."
"We always know it's going to be a fight with Iowa all the way to the end," concluded Jackson. "They're a great team. They fought all the way to the end. It was about getting the last punch. That's what it usually comes down to with these guys."
Jackson has delivered his own magical punch to open overtime, and now it is the Hawks who have the ball. On first from the 25 they hand it to the dangerous Akrum Wadley, but safety Kyle Queiro closes quickly and stops him after three. Then their quarterback Nate Stanley throws it away under pressure, and Wadley picks up four, and that makes it fourth-and-three and both sides huddle during a time out.
A lifetime ago, at the end of the first half, the Hawks had scored their only touchdown of the day on a seven-yard curl to the tight end Noah Fant. Now, as he had then, he lines up as a wing back, and next he bursts toward the left hash with linebacker Brett Walsh as a shadow. But then, at the 13, he plants hard and gets separation from Walsh, and here comes a perfect offering from Stanley.
Noah Fant drops it, simply drops it. The magic, on this day, belongs to the 'Cats alone.
