Northwestern University Athletics
Postgame Quotes vs. Akron (Sept. 15, 2018)
Northwestern vs. Akron
Ryan Field
September 15, 2018
Postgame Quotes
Northwestern
Dan and Susan Jones Family Head Football Coach Pat Fitzgerald
Opening Statement
“Obviously very disappointed in the outcome of the game. I thought when we went into the half, we talked about what we anticipated seeing and it was pretty much what we thought we would get. We thought we would see an aerial assault by them and when we played plays properly, it looked like we defended them well. When we didn’t they had ‘explosion’ plays. Lose the turnover battle the way we did, it makes it really difficult, especially when you do not have a chance to go out there and play defense off of those, which is challenging. Here’s what I told the guys: first and foremost, I want to tip my hat to the Akron coach. Bowden and his staff, they had their guys ready to play. We’ve been on that other side, in that locker room, when maybe things don’t seem like they’re going your way and you seize momentum. And then all of a sudden that thing just snowballs. To their credit that’s exactly what happened. But I thought our guys were resilient. We don’t get the onside kick; we still get one shot in the end zone and I thought Clayton [Thorson] gave us a shot there at the end. But obviously their young men made a play to knock it down. You ‘fess it, you fix it, and it starts and ends with me. We’ve got do a lot better job coaching. And I’ve got to do a lot better job with the squad, and we’ll do that. Our backs are against the wall, from a standpoint of overall record, but we got a lot of football ahead of us, a lot of season ahead of us. This bye week comes at a time when we can really work our tails off to improve and I fully expect our guys will. Incredibly disappointed in the outcome of the game, I do want to thank our fans for being here. These guys will respond, I believe in them and I believe in our staff.”
On the defensive touchdowns allowed…
“Well it looked like we got beat one-on-one, right? On a couple. In the second [half], Hank[witz] and the DBs, Matt MacPherson and the back seven, and Tim McGarigle got together and talked about adjusting some coverages, maybe to give our DBs a little bit of help, because we had given up some explosive plays. We don’t get a ride and read and then we miss a tackle, the free safety, and you get an explosion play. We ran three deep a couple of times and our third corner let the ball get behind him, which is kind of, things you can’t have happen. We’re going through a little bit of growing pains there. We’re going to learn from it, and they’re going to be better the next time they go out and play. That’s part of the deal in the back end, that’s what you sign up for. There’s some great days and Akron had one of those, right? With a bunch of picks and a couple of pick-sixes, those kids will be immortalized in their program. It’s a big deal. You tip your hat and you credit them. We didn’t make the plays that you have to do to win, so it’s disappointing.”
On going for it on fourth-on-three that resulted in a pick-six...
“You go with plays that you think are going to work. Right there, it was a go in things that I look at. But also, we had not kicked the ball very well. So my thought was, if we were going to win this football game – and it felt like we were getting into a shootout – that we needed to go score a touchdown. Obviously, it flipped over and didn’t go our way. So bad decision by me, but a catastrophically negative outcome on the play. Obviously, it was my decision so I own it, and would love to have it back. But I can’t. That’s the way it goes, it’s disappointing.”
On potential changes in the Akron defense after halftime…
“They played a little more quarters coverage. A little bit softer. Again, Clayton trying to make a play on fourth down, just a little bit of an overthrow. And then it’s just kind of the perfect storm where the young man has a great return. The tip pick is tough, it’s tough. It’s a tough situation. And then we can’t obviously turn the ball over backed up, at quarterback for a touchdown. It’s tough. Those are all, again, when you don’t give your defense a chance to go out and get a stop, those are huge momentum plays that we almost found a way to overcome. And there’s a positive there. One, singular positive from the outcome of the game is our guys kept on fighting, and we got the ball at the 30-yard-line with two seconds left and we didn’t make a play. You tip your hat to Akron. What a great performance by them. What a great job coaching and a great job by their young men. Incredibly disappointing for us, and we’ll learn from it. We’ll coach better, we’ll play better, and get ready now to go play Big Ten football.”
On if Clayton made mistakes on his interceptions…
“That one [the tip], I don’t think so. The one on fourth-and-three, I think he’s trying to make a play and it just was a little bit, it looked like it was overthrown. Is that what it was? I couldn’t see it great, maybe just a little off as he was scrambling to try to make a play. In the history books, when he’s done here in a few months, with his illustrious career, it’ll just be some amazing superlatives that will be shared by Clayton Thorson on the outcome of his career. There will be some times that he will learn from and move forward, and that’s part of playing quarterback. It’s like my role, the kicker’s role. There are different roles that you have, that when things work well, it’s just awesome. And when they don’t, it’s tough. You learn from it, you grow. It’s tough to add character that way, but you do. You just have to move forward.”
On only having one week of Akron film...
“I wish it was an easy excuse to say, but no, I don't think so. I really don't. I really just think we made a lot of self inflicted wounds. Again, over my time here, when we have played pretty clean we have been a tough team to beat. Turnover free, penalty free, or even just tying in those areas and limiting explosive plays, we're tough to beat. When we give up turnovers for touchdowns, when we get some inopportune penalties, when we make some decisions on fourth down and it backfires, when you end up turning the ball over for 21 points it makes it tough to beat anybody. And that's just the reality of our game. That's what's so great about it man. This game will humble you in a heart beat. It's easy to stand up here. It's easy to address you, and more importantly our guys. Our fans too, and our alums. In times of triumph it's easy. Its when times get tough when you band together as brothers, and that's what I expect these guys will do. We've unfortunately put our back against the wall a year ago. And the older guys in this group were the catalyst in getting it turned around by just getting to work and working their tails off to improve. I fully expect that that will be their attitude and that will be the way that they work.”
On being outscored in the second half for the third straight game...
“Last week I think it was our inability at the line of scrimmage. This week it was turnovers and explosive plays. The Purdue game was explosive games there in the second half, but we still found a way to win. I think there's some themes, yeah. A lot of things that we're talking about and trying to continually teach and coach and correct, and obviously we have to do a much better job in some of those areas. We're obviously grossly behind in the turnover ratio right now, right. And that's the number one correlation to winning. We've got to take care of the ball better, and we've got to take it a way. We had our hands on a couple of balls again today, and we ended up not making any of those plays. So credit Akron.”
On Kuhbander's performance...
“He's been dealing with an injury, but that's not an excuse. I think that he's an outstanding kicker and I think he's battled through it pretty well. We've tried to take a little off of his plate here the last couple weeks with kickoffs, and I think he just didn't have a great night. Obviously I feel for him because he is a terrific guy and he works incredibly hard. Again, it's not just him. It starts with me, and we've got to do a better job of coaching him, and hopefully he'll bounce back. I'll expect that he will.”
Quarterback Clayton Thorson
On what went wrong...
“Turned the ball over. You can never win when you give them three defensive touchdowns. I've got to be better with the ball in my hands. The ball's going to be in my hands all year. It can be three times out of however many, 80 or 90 plays we run, that's the difference in the game.”
On the three defensive touchdowns...
“The first one, fourth down. Trying to make a play, had to get the ball off somewhere. Didn't want to take a sack. Threw it past Flynn. Got to put it on him, even though I'm running away from him, throwing back across. I've got to make the throw. Got to make the throw.
Then, the fumble, got to hold on to the ball. Wet conditions, got to be extra careful with it. The last one, I've got to have a little better timing, and give Bennett a little better chance to make a play.”
On comparing this year to 2016...
“No, no it doesn't [have any comparisons]. I think those two games, we had a chance to win and we didn't finish it off. This game, I think those guys played really well. Credit to them. They came out and fought harder than we did. Give credit where credit is due. They were the better team tonight, and we've got to learn from it. As far as reminders of years past, I don't think so. I think we shot ourselves in the foot, I think me personally. I was responsible for three of their touchdowns. Can't have that to win a game.”
On the offense's reaction to giving up touchdowns...
“I think our offense did a great job of coming back and kpt playing. We very easily could have thrown in the towel after all of those, and kind of gotten down. But I think our offense was really good about, and defense as well, about staying up and realizing we're still in this game. We did it to ourselves; I did it to us. Everyone was feeling fine, thankfully. Everyone kept fighting, kept battling, which I was real proud of.”
On the last play...
“Just a hail Mary. I don't know how close it was to being caught. I was just trying to get it up there, our last chance, and do whatever we can.”
Linebacker Paddy Fisher
On the overriding emotion after the game…
“We’re hurt. We’re upset. Not what we, how we wanted the game to go. Not the outcome we wanted. But we have to fix this, as a collective unit, as a team.”
On Akron’s halftime adjustments…
“They didn’t do anything different. It was on the defense. We didn’t play disciplined enough, we didn’t play well enough. Everything they ran was what we saw on film. We didn’t stop them. They put too many points on the board. That’s on us as a defense.”
On the defensive mistakes…
“It was exactly what you said, a lot of missed tackles, myself included. Bad reads, bad eyes, missed assignments. The whole nine yards.”
On if he wants the coaches to coach them harder in the bye week…
“I’d like to see the same approach. We need to fix this as a team, and it starts with the captains. It starts with the leaders of this team. I know we’ll get this fixed. We were in this position before my redshirt freshman year, when we opened up and lost to Illinois State and [Western Michigan]. That wasn’t the way we wanted to start, we got the team together and just asked what we wanted to do. From then on, we shifted it around. [Question: what did you tell them that year] It wasn’t me, it was the captains of that defense. They just asked us how we wanted to respond, and what way we wanted to take this team. What direction did we want to go?”
Cornerback Montre Hartage
On miscommunications…
“We had some bad communication on our end. We were on the wrong side of the play. We made some mental errors. As a defense we have to remain focused.
On halftime response…
“I wouldn’t say we exhaled [after halftime]. I think we had some little breakdowns after some big plays. It affected the entire team and was just something we had to clean up.
Akron
Head Coach Terry Bowden
Opening Statement
“I just wanted to say how proud I am of our team. Not just that we won, but the way that we won. Obviously when you're coming to a Big Ten team like Northwestern, and you're three touchdown underdogs, everyone doubts. The first thing is to get your kids to believe that they can win. They were convinced they could. And then you go in there and you go down 21-3 at half, now you want to tell your team ‘and continue to believe please.’ And they did. And they continued to believe. We made enough mistakes in the first half not to win the game. But we came through and offensively we scored about every time in the second half that we got the ball. Defensively, three touchdowns by our defense. Big play after big play. I'm so proud. I appreciate the kind words that Pat Fitzgerald said to me after the game, thanking me, congratulating our kids, the way they played. He's won a lot of ball games here and he will continue to win a lot of ball games here. But tonight, for us, it’s time for us to celebrate a great victory. Somebody told me it's been 118 years since Akron has beat a Big Ten school, but I don't know if that's even accurate. That was just thrown out to my, – you're looking at my guy back there shaking his head.”
On being 0-27 until today against Big Ten…
“Haha, 0-27. Ok. Anyway, I'm awful proud. We had some new guys out there, that they got caught up in the first half. Got caught up in all of the excitement of playing in a Big Ten game. But the play settled down in the second half and we made enough mistakes not to have the chance to ever come back. We gave up two touchdowns from our kicking game early as a result of mistakes, but we came back and did that. This one was not just our defense. Our defense kept us in the game, but the offense came back in the second half and just got after it. And it was everybody at every position doing their job. Again, I'm awful proud of all of our players. I don't even know. Obviously the two guys in this room did a great job. The two number ones tonight did a great job. A couple touchdowns from defense and threw a bunch of touchdown passes. I'm awful proud.”
On what he said at halftime...
“Score next. Score next. We've made enough penalties. Little nervous maybe, a little anxious, because it's a different type of ball game than last week. We made enough turnovers, enough mistakes, to be out of the ball game. But if we don't make mistakes, and we were kind of a little bit frustrated, and we score first. Let's just score first, and lets go from there. Don't think about the final score. Think about who is going to score next. And that's what we started to do. With that, the offense came off, was on fire. The defense continued to do their thing. The defense, they had a couple times they could have shut them down. Two third and fifteens, and they got sixteen, and they had some personal fouls there too. Again, I just told them to just go score next. They knew what the score was, and they knew how poorly we played with our mistakes we made in the kicking game, behind our offensive line. “
Quarterback Kato Nelson
On his mentality at halftime…
“I just thought it was real frustrating… on offense we thought we could move the ball, but we kept having penalties on first and second down. Coming back in the second half, we just tried to get everyone to calm down, and tried to move the ball effectively and that’s what we did.”
On the offense’s aggressive approach in the second half…
“Like I said, we were moving the ball fine, we just kept having little penalties that put us behind the chains. We came back out and kept putting drives together and putting the ball in the end zone. I didn’t think it was hard in the first half, I thought we could move the ball, but it was just the penalties.”
On how they approached Northwestern’s secondary…
“[The receivers] were saying that the cornerbacks were playing really soft on first and second down, and stepping up and pressing the receivers on third downs. We knew on the early downs we could take little hitches and stop routes, and take our shots on third down.
On the offensive line…
“They did a great job today, besides the first half penalties. They did a great job keeping me protected, and I just kept thanking them. I didn’t get sacked at all, like you said, and obviously that’s great.”
Cornerback Alvin Davis
On his two interceptions returned for touchdowns…
“I just kept talking to the front seven. I said we’ll make plays… we’re going to make plays if you guys get penetration up front and that’s what they did. I was blessed to just come up with the ball on bad passes and a tipped pass, and I was just happy to do it.”
On the return for his second defensive score…
“We always talk about hitting the nearest sideline when we catch an INT, and I was already headed that way. I saw all my blockers in front of me, and I knew they would lead me to the promised land.”
On beating a Big Ten team for the first time in over 100 years…
“Everyone knows how the first half went; it was very frustrating. We went into halftime and everyone was kind of rowdy, but we calmed everyone down. (KB) spoke to the team, since he’s the captain. We knew the game was going to be tough and we’d have to put up a lot of points in a short amount of time, and that’s what we did. Emotions got a little high late in the fourth quarter, but once again KB calmed the team down and said we need to finish the game, and that’s what we did and we came out victorious.”
