Northwestern University Athletics
The Skip Report: The Man in the Mirror
9/27/2017 4:26:00 PM | Football
By Skip Myslenski
NUsports.com Special Contributor
Spring ball has just wrapped up and defensive backs coach Jerry Brown, the sagacious Yoda of the Northwestern staff, is meeting with the senior safety Kyle Queiro. This is a traditional exercise, a time when the player's recent performances are analyzed, but here the coach's message is far from routine.
"He was," Queiro remembers, "just very real with me. I guess he thought that I could handle that. With that he said there's still room for improvement in me, for sure."
"I just felt he was holding back," explains Brown, who has been plying his craft since 1977. "I said, 'Well, as long as you hold back, what it tells me is you're not going to improve.' I think part of any athlete is improvement and I said to myself, and I said to him, 'OK, here's why I don't think you're improving. I think you're afraid to give it all you've got for fear, if it doesn't work out, that you will have done it for no reason.' I said, 'I've been coaching a long time, almost forever, and I've never had anybody come back to me and say I gave it everything I got and I regret it. Nobody's ever said that. But I've heard many say I wish I could do it again. I'd give it everything I have.'"
And just what wasn't he doing?
"He just wasn't giving me all that I thought he could give. I said, 'I'm going to leave it like that. You have to handle that. Based on what you hear from me, you have to make a decision between now and camp. We do have other players and I like players who are going to ascend, not level off.' He had improved, but not to the point where I think he could be. And I had no second thoughts about whether I was right or wrong. I knew I was right. I just think he was happy with what he was doing, at the level he was playing. I was all right with it too. But I knew there was more."
The last practice of Camp Kenosha has just wrapped up and Pat Fitzgerald is discussing his defensive backs, his team's most-talented position group.
"I think they really like playing football," he says. "And I've been really impressed by Kyle Queiro. His commitment this offseason and this camp has been phenomenal."
"You'd like to say, as an athlete, that you've given your full commitment every time you're on the field and every year you've played. But that's not necessarily the reality," Queiro himself will reflect this week when asked about his renaissance. "So after conversations that I had, and being mindful, and looking at myself in the mirror, I just thought that there was more that I had to give. Right after that self-diagnosis I had the conversation with Coach Brown and he was basically, 'Why not? Why not give it all you've got? Why not see where it can take you?' I guess it was devote all your energy into football right now, into training and getting stronger and preparing for the season. That was the mindset that I had."
What changed?
"On a surface level, it was just really trying to buy in. But there were also routines I got into, like waking up every morning to a specific song. It's called Scared Money. It's actually an R&B song. It talks about, essentially, if you're scared of failure then you'll never have success. Which is also something that Coach Brown was relaying to me. He said he thought I may be timid committing myself fully because if I failed, then I'd be that much more (a failure). Which is a common subconscious concept. I thought he might be correct on that, so I just went all out. Workouts, I was just more locked in. I ended up putting on, I believe, 11 pounds of muscle and transitively like six pounds of fat. So 17 pounds total. It was a big jump from where I used to be."
"I don't know what he did. But I kept hearing about it, more than anything else," says Brown. "After spring ball we go into a conditioning phase and during that conditioning phase I'm not here. I'm out on the road recruiting. But the strength-and-conditioning coaches kept telling me, 'Wow. You should see Kyle Queiro. Wow. You should see Kyle Queiro.' I guarantee you there's a significant difference."
The preseason portion of the 'Cats' schedule has just wrapped up and Saturday, at No. 10 Wisconsin, they begin their trek through the Big Ten. The new-and-improved Kyle Queiro enters this fray with a pick and a forced fumble and as his team's third-leading tackler with 20, but now, once again, he has metamorphosed himself.
"The level of urgency has definitely been raised another notch," he explains. "We were saying it the other day. Since we had a bye week, we were able to prepare a little bit more. And last week we were just like, 'Man, this is it. Every game from here on out is the Big Ten championship.'
"That's especially so with Wisconsin opening up, but then there's the other teams we have moving forward. Penn State. Iowa. Even Purdue looks really good. Every team in the Big Ten West looks pretty strong right now. So it should be fun."
He, obviously, is in the moment then. But still. Has there been time to stop, and to think back, and to realize his last rodeo's about the begin?
"You look back at your first year, and you're disappointed in yourself. But that is what that is," Kyle Queiro says. "But everything's for real now. It's always been for real. But like I said earlier. It's another level of urgency. These could be your last snaps of football, and you don't want to look back and be disappointed in yourself."
"I'm just excited he heard me," Jerry Brown will finally say a day later. "I knew he was going into his senior year and I didn't want him to have to feel regret. Now, he may not have been aware. I don't know if he was aware that he wasn't giving me everything he had. But part of my job as a coach is to generate awareness. So I tossed the ball in his court and he could handle it one way or the other. That way he could never look back and say, 'If only somebody had mentioned this to me.'
"Like I said, I'm just excited he heard me."
