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Skip Report: In Hunter Johnson, Northwestern Coaching Staff Reverts Back to a Familiar Face
9/10/2019 1:16:00 PM | Football
Northwestern's starting quarterback looks to slow the game down heading into the tilt against UNLV.
By Skip Myslenski
NUsports.com Special Contributor
The quarterback must attend to a myriad of matters in the maelstrom of a game and it does not always come easy, especially for a young quarterback... Consider just the simple act of carrying out a ball fake.
"Sometimes that gets lost," said Northwestern offensive coordinator Mick McCall. "All those attention-to-detail things get lost in the moment because you're focused on— there's so many things going through your head. The older you get, the more slowed down it gets. Peyton (Manning) and (Aaron) Rodgers, everything slows down for them. Picture TV back in the 1950s when it was all scrambled up, then picture the HD stuff right now. That's the difference between the way those guys see it compared to the way a freshman sees stuff going on."
McCall shared this story in late September of 2015, four games into Clayton Thorson's first season as the 'Cats starting quarterback. Now, in Hunter Johnson, they have another quarterback experiencing his first rodeo as a collegiate starter and, as Dan and Susan Jones Family Head Coach Pat Fitzgerald said at a press conference last week, "I talked to Clayton at length the other day. . . It was kind of like going back through memory lane for me with what we're going through with Hunter right now."
And what were those memories?
"We were just talking about freshman year all over again. He's kind of going through it again as a rookie (with the Cowboys). That's was the gist of it," he said. "Or are you trying to go deep thoughts on me here? OK. Go ahead."
Was it like, 'Play each play.' 'Don't think too much.'
"Yeah. You'd hope you do your thinking during the week as you prepare. That's the goal as coaches, to put our guys in as difficult a situation in practice as we can, make sure we're putting together a game plan that our guys can execute, then go play freely and play fast. It's chicken and egg, right? Which comes first? Confidence or experience? I would say both. You've got to be pretty confident, and sometimes you've got to fake it to make it. At least that's what I did 14 years ago. Then all of a sudden you make some plays, you win some games and you get confident. It's just a process. I think everyone goes through it. What was your first big story?"
"Joe Namath."
"I'm sure you were just so well prepared that you made no mistakes in your prep or in your writing. You look back at that and you go, 'Oh my goodness. What was I doing?' It's the same thing as an athlete, right? You just go through growth. That's what it is. Every time you have a setback is an opportunity for you to grow. It's the truth of life. You have to go through challenges to improve. You've got to embrace that. It's never perfect."
McCall, in turn, was reminded of that TV analogy he made four years ago, and then asked if that is the situation now for his newest quarterback.
"Definitely. Definitely," he said without hesitation. "Things are moving fast. There's a lot of stuff going on. So we got to simplify things as much as we can, and he needs to simplify it too in his head to go play fast. That's the thing that older guys do, they just simplify. They see a lot of different things, but they just simplify, make a decision and just go play."
"I mean, really, when you get to a game, you practice it throughout the week, you see those looks throughout the week, when you get to the game, it's supposed to slow down for you a lit bit," Johnson said. "But every once in a while, yeah, you see some things that are moving a little fast. But for the most part, you get to the game, you're seeing stuff you've seen all week, and so it should slow down for you a little bit. That's what we do throughout the week, to plan for that. But, yeah. There's times they disguise a defense and you're kinda caught off guard. A lot of times you're looking for keys, and you're looking for this, this, then you're going here. It's all about putting your eyes in the right spots and knowing what you're looking at."
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Johnson, of course, is not a freshman. He is a 6-foot-2, 216-pound, 21-year-old redshirt sophomore who transferred to Northwestern from Clemson and spent last fall guiding the 'Cats scout team. But in his first start for NU against Stanford on Aug. 31, it was his first appearance in a meaningful game since he did mop-up duty in the Tigers' 38-3 rout of Miami in the ACC Championship Game that was played on Dec. 2, 2017. It had been just three months short of two years since he had encountered living, fire-breathing, ill-intentioned opposition and the very first time he had done that while guiding the McCall's offense.
"Just getting used to a game, really," Johnson said when asked the biggest issue he faced in the wake of his long layoff. "The quickness of your reads on the field during the game. All that is played in practice. You practice that every day. But once you get on the field, it's for real. It's go time. So just getting the game reps against an opponent you don't see every day."
"Just getting back into game speed more than anything," McCall echoed of his starter. "Getting back into game speed, that's the biggest thing. You can get prepared as much as you want, but playing the game is playing the game. You gotta go."
And when you're not up to game speed?
"It effects everything," McCall said. "His decision making. You need to anticipate things, which we're trying to do as much as we can in practice and make it as game-like as it can be. But it's still hard to do that at game speed."
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That play is a simple swing pass, where the Brownsburg, Ind. native completes it in practice 99 percent of the time. But on that Saturday in Palo Alto, Calif., with just less than six minutes gone in the third, the swing was called and the ball missed running back Drake Anderson.
"Everything gets hurried up," McCall said. "If he's seeing things late, he's trying to hurry things up and when you try to hurry a throw, you usually sail the ball over their head. So some of his throws were getting in a hurry a little bit. I think he'll tell you that."
"My feet," Johnson said. "I've got to be quicker with my feet. My feet were a little slow and so I tried to hurry everything up with my arm. I've just got to be quicker with my feet. It was a fundamental thing."
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In the high-intensity atmosphere that is a college football game, the just-initiated is often hesitant to act. He wants to think first. But as that familiar refrain notes, "if you gotta think of what to do, it's too late to do it."
"That's what we need to do," McCall said. "We need to get him to play instead of think so much. Put his eye on a spot, make a decision and play."
"I was trying to play ball out there," Johnson shared after his debut with the 'Cats. "Maybe a few plays here and there (I was thinking). But, for the most part, when you go out in a game you've got to cut it loose and just go play."
But at his Thursday press conference Fitzgerald said, "After about the third series, his eyes were real big and I told him, 'Grip it and rip it. Let's go.'"
"Yeah. Yeah," Johnson admitted. "Maybe a little bit. But it was my first start, my first game. So, yeah. Maybe a little bit."
Will that experience make it easier Saturday when he trots out onto Ryan Field to lead the 'Cats against UNLV?
"Yeah. Yeah," Johnson said. "Playing that first game, having that under my belt, now it's something I've experienced."
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Johnson was highly-acclaimed coming out of high school, regarded as the nation's top quarterback prospect. He and success, then, were on a first-name basis, and so the 'Cats quarterback was asked about dealing with the adversity he saw while at Stanford.
"With any quarterback, our job as a quarterback is to respond," he said. "Everything starts with us. The whole team looks up to the QB to respond, make a play. For me, I'm just focused on learning from those mistakes, correcting them, then responding and moving on. Working the next play, making the best play, the best play. That's all you can do."
And what must he do now to be successful?
"Just go do what he does. Have fun. Enjoy the heck out of it," Fitzgerald said. "He's going to get better just like every player does through experience. He's going to get better. We have one- hundred million percent confidence in that, if that's a word."
"For me, in my eyes, to be successful is to lead, to lead this team," Johnson said. "The biggest part of what a quarterback is is leading your guys, leading this team. Everybody's looking up to me. Now I've got to be able to respond for them and play for them. That's the biggest thing for me. I've got to lead these guys."
Of course, leadership starts with establishing chemistry on the practice field and in the locker room. However, none of that compares to leadership in-game, as the redshirt sophomore notes.
"Yeah. Yeah. That just comes with playing the position. You've got to make some plays too. It all works together. It's all part of playing the position."
Any doubts?
"No," Johnson finally and firmly said. "I've been playing football my whole life. I've faced a lot of adversity throughout my life on the football field and off the football field. I have no question that things will be just fine."
NUsports.com Special Contributor
The quarterback must attend to a myriad of matters in the maelstrom of a game and it does not always come easy, especially for a young quarterback... Consider just the simple act of carrying out a ball fake.
"Sometimes that gets lost," said Northwestern offensive coordinator Mick McCall. "All those attention-to-detail things get lost in the moment because you're focused on— there's so many things going through your head. The older you get, the more slowed down it gets. Peyton (Manning) and (Aaron) Rodgers, everything slows down for them. Picture TV back in the 1950s when it was all scrambled up, then picture the HD stuff right now. That's the difference between the way those guys see it compared to the way a freshman sees stuff going on."
McCall shared this story in late September of 2015, four games into Clayton Thorson's first season as the 'Cats starting quarterback. Now, in Hunter Johnson, they have another quarterback experiencing his first rodeo as a collegiate starter and, as Dan and Susan Jones Family Head Coach Pat Fitzgerald said at a press conference last week, "I talked to Clayton at length the other day. . . It was kind of like going back through memory lane for me with what we're going through with Hunter right now."
And what were those memories?
"We were just talking about freshman year all over again. He's kind of going through it again as a rookie (with the Cowboys). That's was the gist of it," he said. "Or are you trying to go deep thoughts on me here? OK. Go ahead."
Was it like, 'Play each play.' 'Don't think too much.'
"Yeah. You'd hope you do your thinking during the week as you prepare. That's the goal as coaches, to put our guys in as difficult a situation in practice as we can, make sure we're putting together a game plan that our guys can execute, then go play freely and play fast. It's chicken and egg, right? Which comes first? Confidence or experience? I would say both. You've got to be pretty confident, and sometimes you've got to fake it to make it. At least that's what I did 14 years ago. Then all of a sudden you make some plays, you win some games and you get confident. It's just a process. I think everyone goes through it. What was your first big story?"
"Joe Namath."
"I'm sure you were just so well prepared that you made no mistakes in your prep or in your writing. You look back at that and you go, 'Oh my goodness. What was I doing?' It's the same thing as an athlete, right? You just go through growth. That's what it is. Every time you have a setback is an opportunity for you to grow. It's the truth of life. You have to go through challenges to improve. You've got to embrace that. It's never perfect."
McCall, in turn, was reminded of that TV analogy he made four years ago, and then asked if that is the situation now for his newest quarterback.
"Definitely. Definitely," he said without hesitation. "Things are moving fast. There's a lot of stuff going on. So we got to simplify things as much as we can, and he needs to simplify it too in his head to go play fast. That's the thing that older guys do, they just simplify. They see a lot of different things, but they just simplify, make a decision and just go play."
"I mean, really, when you get to a game, you practice it throughout the week, you see those looks throughout the week, when you get to the game, it's supposed to slow down for you a lit bit," Johnson said. "But every once in a while, yeah, you see some things that are moving a little fast. But for the most part, you get to the game, you're seeing stuff you've seen all week, and so it should slow down for you a little bit. That's what we do throughout the week, to plan for that. But, yeah. There's times they disguise a defense and you're kinda caught off guard. A lot of times you're looking for keys, and you're looking for this, this, then you're going here. It's all about putting your eyes in the right spots and knowing what you're looking at."
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Johnson, of course, is not a freshman. He is a 6-foot-2, 216-pound, 21-year-old redshirt sophomore who transferred to Northwestern from Clemson and spent last fall guiding the 'Cats scout team. But in his first start for NU against Stanford on Aug. 31, it was his first appearance in a meaningful game since he did mop-up duty in the Tigers' 38-3 rout of Miami in the ACC Championship Game that was played on Dec. 2, 2017. It had been just three months short of two years since he had encountered living, fire-breathing, ill-intentioned opposition and the very first time he had done that while guiding the McCall's offense.
"Just getting used to a game, really," Johnson said when asked the biggest issue he faced in the wake of his long layoff. "The quickness of your reads on the field during the game. All that is played in practice. You practice that every day. But once you get on the field, it's for real. It's go time. So just getting the game reps against an opponent you don't see every day."
"Just getting back into game speed more than anything," McCall echoed of his starter. "Getting back into game speed, that's the biggest thing. You can get prepared as much as you want, but playing the game is playing the game. You gotta go."
And when you're not up to game speed?
"It effects everything," McCall said. "His decision making. You need to anticipate things, which we're trying to do as much as we can in practice and make it as game-like as it can be. But it's still hard to do that at game speed."
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That play is a simple swing pass, where the Brownsburg, Ind. native completes it in practice 99 percent of the time. But on that Saturday in Palo Alto, Calif., with just less than six minutes gone in the third, the swing was called and the ball missed running back Drake Anderson.
"Everything gets hurried up," McCall said. "If he's seeing things late, he's trying to hurry things up and when you try to hurry a throw, you usually sail the ball over their head. So some of his throws were getting in a hurry a little bit. I think he'll tell you that."
"My feet," Johnson said. "I've got to be quicker with my feet. My feet were a little slow and so I tried to hurry everything up with my arm. I've just got to be quicker with my feet. It was a fundamental thing."
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In the high-intensity atmosphere that is a college football game, the just-initiated is often hesitant to act. He wants to think first. But as that familiar refrain notes, "if you gotta think of what to do, it's too late to do it."
"That's what we need to do," McCall said. "We need to get him to play instead of think so much. Put his eye on a spot, make a decision and play."
"I was trying to play ball out there," Johnson shared after his debut with the 'Cats. "Maybe a few plays here and there (I was thinking). But, for the most part, when you go out in a game you've got to cut it loose and just go play."
But at his Thursday press conference Fitzgerald said, "After about the third series, his eyes were real big and I told him, 'Grip it and rip it. Let's go.'"
"Yeah. Yeah," Johnson admitted. "Maybe a little bit. But it was my first start, my first game. So, yeah. Maybe a little bit."
Will that experience make it easier Saturday when he trots out onto Ryan Field to lead the 'Cats against UNLV?
"Yeah. Yeah," Johnson said. "Playing that first game, having that under my belt, now it's something I've experienced."
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Johnson was highly-acclaimed coming out of high school, regarded as the nation's top quarterback prospect. He and success, then, were on a first-name basis, and so the 'Cats quarterback was asked about dealing with the adversity he saw while at Stanford.
"With any quarterback, our job as a quarterback is to respond," he said. "Everything starts with us. The whole team looks up to the QB to respond, make a play. For me, I'm just focused on learning from those mistakes, correcting them, then responding and moving on. Working the next play, making the best play, the best play. That's all you can do."
And what must he do now to be successful?
"Just go do what he does. Have fun. Enjoy the heck out of it," Fitzgerald said. "He's going to get better just like every player does through experience. He's going to get better. We have one- hundred million percent confidence in that, if that's a word."
"For me, in my eyes, to be successful is to lead, to lead this team," Johnson said. "The biggest part of what a quarterback is is leading your guys, leading this team. Everybody's looking up to me. Now I've got to be able to respond for them and play for them. That's the biggest thing for me. I've got to lead these guys."
Of course, leadership starts with establishing chemistry on the practice field and in the locker room. However, none of that compares to leadership in-game, as the redshirt sophomore notes.
"Yeah. Yeah. That just comes with playing the position. You've got to make some plays too. It all works together. It's all part of playing the position."
Any doubts?
"No," Johnson finally and firmly said. "I've been playing football my whole life. I've faced a lot of adversity throughout my life on the football field and off the football field. I have no question that things will be just fine."
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