Northwestern University Athletics
Skip Report: Quick Hitters as ’Cats Prepare for Stanford
8/27/2019 10:40:00 AM | Football
By Skip Myslenski
NUsports.com Special Contributor
*VERY EARLY in his first game-week presser of this new season Pat Fitzgerald said, "The guys have really worked hard, they've had a great training camp. Now, as we transition fully into a game week, I look forward to getting to know this team a little bit more."
So what does he already know, and what's he looking to learn?
"I like it in 72 degrees and as much adversity as I can create in practice. But you learn a lot about your squad in the opener. That's the first time, really, how do we handle it? How do we handle everything that happens in game? I pulled up a lot of the stats from [last Saturday's] Florida-Miami game for the team meeting today. What a great lesson learned. You see 14 penalties on one side, and 11 sacks, and the [nine] penalties on the other side, and the choices and decisions made [as well as five fumbles]. That's the challenge of college football. You've got to prepare your team, you've got to harden it, along with this other thing called keep-'em-healthy. . . . I think we've put together a really good training camp schedule, and we've come out as healthy as we ever have and in as good a shape as we've ever been. Now how do we take that and deal with the adversity? That's what I'm looking to learn."
*THIS IS the second year of a revised training camp schedule, which was drawn up after the previous one was, said Fitzgerald, "micro-analyzed." It's obvious aim is the overall health of the team. But along with that, he went on, it also wants "to really minimize the soft-tissue issues that seemed to spike at certain times in training camp."
*PADDY FISHER, the middle linebacker and one of the 'Cat captains, did not have to be told about the Florida-Miami mess. He had watched it. "It was an entertaining game, but it was bad ball all across the board," he said when asked about it, and then he chuckled softly. "One thing that popped up for me was a bunch of missed tackles. We haven't tackled since Utah [in the Holiday Bowl]. I think that's going to be the biggest emphasis. Make sure that we're running our feet through contact, not lunging and reaching at the point of attack. That's going to be the biggest emphasis. Tackling."
*HERE IS ANOTHER POINT OF EMPHASIS THIS WEEK. "You way overanalyze the opener. You look at everything," avowed Fitzgerald. "The opener and the bowl game, I've got to do a great job making sure we don't do too much overloading our guys mentally. That's a big task for me this week."
*ANOTHER UNKNOWN this week, of course, is just who will trot out as the 'Cats starting quarterback. It could be the fifth-year TJ Green, the most experience of the contestants, or the heralded Clemson transfer Hunter Johnson, who last fall guided the Scout Team's offense. "I thought the whole room had a great camp. I thought all the guys did the best job they possibly could," Fitzgerald said when inevitably asked about that position. "I feel really great about the group. They've been terrific teammates. They've done everything in their power to improve and get better. I think we have multiple guys we can win with."
"Both those guys, they're looking great," receiver Bennett Skowronek would echo minutes later. "The whole offense, the whole team actually, we're all confident in whoever is out there. We'll let Coach Fitz and Coach [Mick] McCall [the offensive coordinator] decide that. The other 10 guys on offense will be behind that person 100-percent."
*WHEN QUARTERBACKS SPLIT REPS in practice, there are always questions about their relationships with their receivers and whether they can get the needed timing down. "I don't think it's too hard," Skowronek would say when asked about this. "The quarterbacks gauge your speed a little bit, they get an idea where to put it, and I just catch the ball. That's what it comes down to for me. I don't think it's too hard to build timing. I've done a lot of routes in the off-season with both those guys. So I'm very confident in both those guys."
*AS FITZGERALD IS GIVEN to way overanalyzing the opener, maybe The Scribbler is given to way overanalyzing this issue (at least it is in his mind). In fact, Skowronek will say when asked about the quarterbacks rotating reps, "Honestly, you don't even know who's out there. My job's to catch the ball. Both those guys can get me the ball, they can get all the other receivers the ball, they can make the right checks, do all that stuff. You really don't realize who's out there. We're in a no-huddle system anyway, so you're getting the call from the sideline. So, yeah. You don't know. The ball's coming, you've just got to catch it."
*COINCIDENTALLY ENOUGH, the last time the 'Cats broke in a new quarterback, they also opened their season against Stanford. The year was 2015 and, in his first start, redshirt first-year Clayton Thorson led them to a 16-6 win over the No. 21 Cardinal.
*A FORMER CARDINAL QUARTERBACK, the Colts' Andrew Luck, has been much in the news since he announced his retirement from a pro career much mottled by injuries. Fitzgerald, who had recruited him ("I thought we were right there in the mix"), heard the news while watching last Saturday's Colts-Bears game with his sons. "That takes a lot of courage to do what he just did, dad," one of them said then.
"It sure does, bud," the father replied.
"You're at the top of your game," the coach explained days later. "We recruited Andrew. We have the utmost respect for the Luck family. I was on different committees with Oliver [his father] when he was with West Virginia [as the athletic director] and then the NCAA. So know the family very, very well. I think I was going to the rental car return when Andrew called me and told me he was going to Stanford when I was on vacation with my family. So, yeah, I think I know the family pretty well."
"You know. Our game is something that we play, it's not who we are. That's something I talk to our players about all the time. And the game is unbelievably giving. . .and it can also just take your heart from you. It's a very challenging game. . . . I had to make a decision. I remember when I got cut and went to work out for another team. At some point every athlete's got to make a decision about what's best for them and what's best for their future. I remember coming back after working out for the Saints, I had made the decision I was done playing. That was a tough pill to swallow. We all have to retire before we want to in this game. He had a great run and a great career and an amazing legacy. My hope is that the courage he demonstrated over the weekend is inspiring to all those who come after him."
AND FINALLY, at the end of spring ball, Fitzgerald talked about his 'Cats taking the wisdom garnered while winning the Big Ten West and using it to improve in the future. "The way you prepare," he said when asked what specifically was learned. "You look back at probably the first month or so, five weeks, of last year's team, I thought we really prepared well. It showed in the opener against Purdue. Then we took a step sideways for a couple weeks in our preparation. We didn't quite get to the point that we were capable of [and lost to Duke and Akron]. The team finally woke up the Michigan week. I think it showed. We didn't win, but we played much cleaner and better. From that week on, I thought the guys really prepared well. I think that's the wisdom that will carry on, especially in the older guys that saw that dip. You've just got to be relentless in that."
NUsports.com Special Contributor
*VERY EARLY in his first game-week presser of this new season Pat Fitzgerald said, "The guys have really worked hard, they've had a great training camp. Now, as we transition fully into a game week, I look forward to getting to know this team a little bit more."
So what does he already know, and what's he looking to learn?
"I like it in 72 degrees and as much adversity as I can create in practice. But you learn a lot about your squad in the opener. That's the first time, really, how do we handle it? How do we handle everything that happens in game? I pulled up a lot of the stats from [last Saturday's] Florida-Miami game for the team meeting today. What a great lesson learned. You see 14 penalties on one side, and 11 sacks, and the [nine] penalties on the other side, and the choices and decisions made [as well as five fumbles]. That's the challenge of college football. You've got to prepare your team, you've got to harden it, along with this other thing called keep-'em-healthy. . . . I think we've put together a really good training camp schedule, and we've come out as healthy as we ever have and in as good a shape as we've ever been. Now how do we take that and deal with the adversity? That's what I'm looking to learn."
*THIS IS the second year of a revised training camp schedule, which was drawn up after the previous one was, said Fitzgerald, "micro-analyzed." It's obvious aim is the overall health of the team. But along with that, he went on, it also wants "to really minimize the soft-tissue issues that seemed to spike at certain times in training camp."
*PADDY FISHER, the middle linebacker and one of the 'Cat captains, did not have to be told about the Florida-Miami mess. He had watched it. "It was an entertaining game, but it was bad ball all across the board," he said when asked about it, and then he chuckled softly. "One thing that popped up for me was a bunch of missed tackles. We haven't tackled since Utah [in the Holiday Bowl]. I think that's going to be the biggest emphasis. Make sure that we're running our feet through contact, not lunging and reaching at the point of attack. That's going to be the biggest emphasis. Tackling."
*HERE IS ANOTHER POINT OF EMPHASIS THIS WEEK. "You way overanalyze the opener. You look at everything," avowed Fitzgerald. "The opener and the bowl game, I've got to do a great job making sure we don't do too much overloading our guys mentally. That's a big task for me this week."
*ANOTHER UNKNOWN this week, of course, is just who will trot out as the 'Cats starting quarterback. It could be the fifth-year TJ Green, the most experience of the contestants, or the heralded Clemson transfer Hunter Johnson, who last fall guided the Scout Team's offense. "I thought the whole room had a great camp. I thought all the guys did the best job they possibly could," Fitzgerald said when inevitably asked about that position. "I feel really great about the group. They've been terrific teammates. They've done everything in their power to improve and get better. I think we have multiple guys we can win with."
"Both those guys, they're looking great," receiver Bennett Skowronek would echo minutes later. "The whole offense, the whole team actually, we're all confident in whoever is out there. We'll let Coach Fitz and Coach [Mick] McCall [the offensive coordinator] decide that. The other 10 guys on offense will be behind that person 100-percent."
*WHEN QUARTERBACKS SPLIT REPS in practice, there are always questions about their relationships with their receivers and whether they can get the needed timing down. "I don't think it's too hard," Skowronek would say when asked about this. "The quarterbacks gauge your speed a little bit, they get an idea where to put it, and I just catch the ball. That's what it comes down to for me. I don't think it's too hard to build timing. I've done a lot of routes in the off-season with both those guys. So I'm very confident in both those guys."
*AS FITZGERALD IS GIVEN to way overanalyzing the opener, maybe The Scribbler is given to way overanalyzing this issue (at least it is in his mind). In fact, Skowronek will say when asked about the quarterbacks rotating reps, "Honestly, you don't even know who's out there. My job's to catch the ball. Both those guys can get me the ball, they can get all the other receivers the ball, they can make the right checks, do all that stuff. You really don't realize who's out there. We're in a no-huddle system anyway, so you're getting the call from the sideline. So, yeah. You don't know. The ball's coming, you've just got to catch it."
*COINCIDENTALLY ENOUGH, the last time the 'Cats broke in a new quarterback, they also opened their season against Stanford. The year was 2015 and, in his first start, redshirt first-year Clayton Thorson led them to a 16-6 win over the No. 21 Cardinal.
*A FORMER CARDINAL QUARTERBACK, the Colts' Andrew Luck, has been much in the news since he announced his retirement from a pro career much mottled by injuries. Fitzgerald, who had recruited him ("I thought we were right there in the mix"), heard the news while watching last Saturday's Colts-Bears game with his sons. "That takes a lot of courage to do what he just did, dad," one of them said then.
"It sure does, bud," the father replied.
"You're at the top of your game," the coach explained days later. "We recruited Andrew. We have the utmost respect for the Luck family. I was on different committees with Oliver [his father] when he was with West Virginia [as the athletic director] and then the NCAA. So know the family very, very well. I think I was going to the rental car return when Andrew called me and told me he was going to Stanford when I was on vacation with my family. So, yeah, I think I know the family pretty well."
"You know. Our game is something that we play, it's not who we are. That's something I talk to our players about all the time. And the game is unbelievably giving. . .and it can also just take your heart from you. It's a very challenging game. . . . I had to make a decision. I remember when I got cut and went to work out for another team. At some point every athlete's got to make a decision about what's best for them and what's best for their future. I remember coming back after working out for the Saints, I had made the decision I was done playing. That was a tough pill to swallow. We all have to retire before we want to in this game. He had a great run and a great career and an amazing legacy. My hope is that the courage he demonstrated over the weekend is inspiring to all those who come after him."
AND FINALLY, at the end of spring ball, Fitzgerald talked about his 'Cats taking the wisdom garnered while winning the Big Ten West and using it to improve in the future. "The way you prepare," he said when asked what specifically was learned. "You look back at probably the first month or so, five weeks, of last year's team, I thought we really prepared well. It showed in the opener against Purdue. Then we took a step sideways for a couple weeks in our preparation. We didn't quite get to the point that we were capable of [and lost to Duke and Akron]. The team finally woke up the Michigan week. I think it showed. We didn't win, but we played much cleaner and better. From that week on, I thought the guys really prepared well. I think that's the wisdom that will carry on, especially in the older guys that saw that dip. You've just got to be relentless in that."
••••••
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