Northwestern University Athletics
The Skip Report: Spring Ball Recap
4/17/2019 7:59:00 AM | Football
By Skip Myslenski
NUsports.com Special Contributor
Notes, Quotes & Anecdotes as the 'Cats wrap up this spring's practice. . . .
THERE ARE five quarterbacks on their roster. But, no. They have not yet decided which of them will replace Clayton Thorson as their starter. "This is quarterback change five or six that I've been through in my role, and Mick (McCall, the offensive coordinator) and I have been through five of the six together," says Pat Fitzgerald. "So we've got a very specific plan that we work. We're not going to rush things. We're going to take our time."
"Coach and I have been through this a couple times, and you just know when it happens. You know when it happens," says McCall. "It's been different each time. Sometimes it's been in the spring, sometimes it hasn't been in the spring. We've waited to the fall. So I don't know (who the quarterback will be)."
THORSON, of course, was a four-year starter. Asked how this spring is different now that he is gone, McCall says, "The automatic leadership in the (quarterback) room the last three years has been stable. These guys (the quintet on hand) have been in the room, but there's an uncertainty. That's to be expected. That's just the way it is. I think that's the biggest thing. The leadership not just in our room, but on our side of the football, is developing. We're going back to four years ago when we had a three-way go (at the quarterback spot among Thorson, Matt Alviti and Zack Oliver). That's the way it is. It's to be expected. It's a process. That's what everyone doesn't understand. You don't just go flip, flip"—and he snaps his fingers—"it's a process you've got to go through, and you've got to develop that, and you've got to gain the rest of the players' trust in you to be the quarterback."
THE PRESUMPTION, with this uncertainty at quarterback, was that the 'Cats would be limited in what they could install offensively this spring. "Actually," McCall will correct, "we've installed more this spring than we have in a long, long time. For a number of reasons. To cover the bases. Which direction are we going? And number two. We wanted to challenge guys upstairs, mentally, as much as we can. That's going to give us a real, real big trunk to go get things that certain guys can do. So we're experimenting a little bit. But we're still who we are."
Experimenting?
"How much movement are we going to do with the quarterback? Are we going to run speed option? Are we going to run quarterback-run stuff? Or what throws are we going to make? What throws do they understand the best? We wanted to install a bunch of stuff, get a lot of concepts installed, so they have an understanding, and so we knew what they could do and what they can't do. And we've always got to keep evolving offensively to stay ahead of the really good defenses we play all the time.
"We're still going to go to who our guys are. The players out there that we've got to get the ball to. . . . But we're still trying to find out who we are a little bit."
IN THE SPRING, Fitzgerald memorably said a couple years back, "Everybody's just making reservations for starting roles." So, not surprisingly, this spring ended without any headline news.
'CAT SPRINGS, in stark contrast, are not about headlines. They are far-more prosaic than that. "As an individual, I'm always looking to get better at the fundamentals," the accomplished defensive end Joe Gaziano said five weeks ago when asked his goals in the practices just ahead, testifying to this fact.
"Number one was to develop great fundamentals," the defensive coordinator Mike Hankwitz said more recently when asked what he wanted his group to achieve this spring. "Learn the fundamentals of your position. Pad level. Base. Feet. Eyes. Using the hands. Tackling fundamentals. Then communication, which is critical to the defense. It's important for everyone to be on the same page. We like to get (switch) into good defenses for certain things. But a late call when we're not on the same page, that doesn't help us. It's more important we're all on the same page. The communication is critical."
COMMUNICATION, in this wired-up age, is far different from what it once was, and now his players are part of what Fitzgerald calls "The Thumb Generation." So, Hankwitz is asked here, does that make it harder for him to get his players to communicate verbally on the field. "A little," he says. "But we talk about it so much, we work on it so much. Part of our meetings, we try to make them communicate and make them tell us what we've just talked about. Make them get up and communicate it back to us so they're not just sitting there and it's not all one-way communication. That doesn't work. And then we have to give them some mental breaks too. You don't expect them to be there for an hour straight. You recognize the attention span is a little less than it used to be. So, hey. We've got to give them a mental break. We've been doing that for years. Fitz said, 'You've got to give them a break. They're just not able to sit there for an hour straight.' So, yeah. Fitz has tried to educate us on that. We take that into meetings and try to be cognizant of who we're dealing with."
FITZGERALD, who is always looking to learn, came across a talk on Millennials In The Workplace by the organizational consultant Simon Sinek, and shared it with his staff. "He (Sinek) talks about how they're so into their phones," says Hankwitz. "It used to be you called a staff meeting and everyone would sit around and it would be, 'Skip, how's your dad doing? You mentioned he was sick? How's he doing?' You communicated with people that way. Now everybody's on their phone. Nobody communicates with each other. Then millennials will bring their phones into a meeting, they'll put it on the table and all of a sudden it rings. Instead of leaving it turned off or just not bringing it. And it was about their attention span. And how they'll answer a text before they'll answer a phone call. You have kids who sit at the same table and text instead of talk across the table.
"So we try to recognize that and we talk to them. 'At meals, talk to each other, get to know the young guys at your position.' Our guys have done a darn good job of that overall."
SO LEARNING TO COMMUNICATE is another part of spring practice. "Communication is key and it's getting increasingly more difficult because young people don't communicate with their eyes and their lips anymore. They communicate with their thumbs," Fitzgerald attests when asked if that is so, and then he explains how the 'Cats coach it up. "Just putting everybody in as difficult a situation as we can. You heard the (recorded) crowd noise today during practice. That is louder than any place that we'll play. We'll go back and we'll watch the tape and we'll teach off it. I have a sneaky suspicion that's where some of our communication issues will arise. Every day is an opportunity to really stress that and make that difficult. That will always be an ongoing process. Then once you have that in the right spot, then you can build trust and have those non-verbal clues and cues and know everybody's on the same page."
Is this a new problem?
"It's always been a challenge in our game. Again. Eleven guys out there on the field, 90,000 people, 75,000 people (in the stands). There's a lot of distractions. But I think it's increasingly more difficult now because of the way that you guys communicate"—and here he is looking at the student reporters around him—"you communicate with your thumbs. Right? Am I wrong? Nobody calls you. You don't listen to voice mails anymore. That's how they're used to communicating. But we don't take our cell phones onto the field. So we've got to do a better job as teachers, parents, then obviously my role here coaching, of forcing guys to be able to communicate properly (face-to-face) so we can all be on the same page. It's even more difficult— it's twice as many guys as basketball and they complain all the time. 'We missed a backdoor cut because we didn't communicate.' We got six more guys out there. So it's definitely a challenge. Something new? No. But increasingly more challenging and difficult? Yes."
Now he is asked about that article he shared with his staff.
"Every seven minutes there's a commercial break. So we're all kind of conditioned to change the channel, move onto to something new," he says. "So every seven to 10 minutes we interrupt our meetings—we've done this now for five or six years—give the guys a break to recharge mentally. Some of them have that Instagram fix, 'Oh my gosh. Who followed my picture? Who gave me the heart emoji?' They look at it and they come back in. In my world, in my mind, it's absolutely pathetic. But that's where we're at as a society today because someone liked one of my pictures even though it was a fake picture of a fictitious world I live in and actually my world sucks. It's absolutely pathetic. In my next life I'm going to come back as an Influencer. I hear that's a new profession. I'm looking forward to becoming that. What a pathetic world we have. . . .
"(But) instead of fighting it, you have to embrace it. If you don't embrace it, you're going to become extinct. I call it dinosaurs. There's a reason dinosaurs aren't roaming around anymore. They didn't evolve. So you have to evolve as a teacher, you have to evolve as a coach, you have to evolve as a parent. I'm on the front line with eighth grade, sixth grade and fourth grade (sons), and then with these guys, and obviously with my staff. So I see every phase of it and I think it makes us better teachers and coaches.
"You're in the people business, it's about building relationships. Understand. Meet them where they're at. Be able to communicate on that level. Be understanding. Be more patient. But standards are standards, expectations are expectations, and I think more than ever you, as a coach, you have to do a great job of being very clear what those expectations are. Then having ongoing communication to make sure everybody stays on the same page. That's a lot more difficult than it's ever been."
ONE MORE oft-ignored goal of spring is teaching, and reaffirming, just what it means to be a pro. "That's about preparation," Hankwitz says when asked about that. "The mental approach to football. Learning in meetings, and then learning how to practice, then learning how to practice to be better, not just practice. Learning situational awareness that happens in football. We work situational awareness in the spring. Learning what the keys are and then taking them to practice. Yeah. You hope that they learn from a guy like Peyton Manning, who spoke to the team about the preparation part of it (a couple years ago). It isn't just one piece of preparation learning how to be a pro. It's taking care of your body. Getting enough rest. Studying football before the meeting. Don't just show up and expect to learn everything in that little bit of time. Then what about after practice? Recovery. Then getting the most out of the lift. Being a pro is about all of that stuff.
"You don't just suddenly show up in the fall and become a good player, become a good team. It's a year-round process. You can't waste days because you can't get them back."
THIS ECHOED what the esteemed Justin Jackson said two years ago when asked his spring goals. "To go into every single day knowing it's as important as it really is," he said then.
AND FINALLY: Fitzgerald, whose 'Cats copped a division title last fall, explaining why all of this is important even though none of it generates headlines: "The challenge to rise to the mountaintop is so motivating that it's easy to fall down the backside of the mountain once you get to the top. Every team has to have the mindset and the approach that it starts over the next year with a clean slate for a reason. You don't carry over the wins, you don't carry over the losses, you just carry the experience called wisdom if you bring it along with you and you work even harder with that wisdom.
"You don't look back and say I've arrived. That's the curse of successful teams."
