There is a lot of news, notes and stories to get to today as we lead into the big Homecoming matchup against #8 Michigan State. So I will jump right into it.
First off, this is an extremely important week for the Cats and a huge game for Fitz as a coach. And the Cats are in a great position. For one thing, a loss (unless it is a blowout loss) would be the expected result in most minds, including the media and recruits. A loss alone would not set the program back any, and while it makes the next two weeks against Indiana and Penn State mission critical, would not have any major impact on the master plan.
But a win would give instant credibility to the 2010 Cats. Regardless of your personal opinion on the 2010 Michigan State Spartans, this is a team playing with a lot of pride, confidence, and emotion; and the nation has hitched its trailer to the MSU wagon. Suddenly, the team would be 6-1 with two very winnable road games ahead. It would demonstrate Fitz’s ability to flush a disappointing loss and coach a team during a bye week. The overall impact of a win would be even greater than the Iowa win last year, which most attribute to Stanzi’s injury.
Playing in NU’s favor is the Homecoming game. NU has had great success in homecoming games over recent years.
· 2009 – Largest comeback in school history against Indiana
· 2008 – Blowout win against Purdue
· 2007 – Previous largest comeback in school history against Minnesota
· 2004 – Last minute comeback victory over Kyle Orton and Purdue
· 2003 – Solid victory against ranked Wisconsin
· 2001 – Victory against ranked Minnesota
· 1999 – Comeback victory against Iowa in Zak Kustok’s debut
· 1997 – Victory against highly ranked MSU team on last minute blocked field goal
· 1996 – Last minute victory over Illinois
· 1995 – 35-0 beat-down of Wisconsin
Overall, NU is 10-5 in the Expect Victory Era on homecoming, with two of the five losses coming within a touchdown. And everyone knows about the history of the NU-MSU games going back to 1997, which I will get into more tomorrow.
As a special treat, legendary NU football coach Ara Parseghian will return to Evanston for the first time in decades on Saturday. He apparently will be an honorary captain, will address the team before the game, and will be recognized in a ceremony along with 60-70 of his former players. Ara is, of course, best known for his time at Notre Dame and for being portrayed by Exorcist actor Jason Miller in Rudy. But arguably his best coaching job was his eight years at Northwestern from 1956-1963.
In 1955, NU was 0-8-1. In 1962, NU was ranked #1 in the country for the first time since 1936. The 1962 Playboy All-America team featured two NU players (out of eleven) and Ara as Coach of the Year. Ara also played tailback alongside former NU great Otto Graham on the 1948 Cleveland Browns AAFC Championship team. Tina Akouris writes an excellent article on the Odyssey of Ara's career. Evidently, Ara is quite impressed with this year’s NU squad.
The visit from Ara has only fueled the already hot funeral pyre for the Spartans undefeated season. While the Cat players are downplaying the significance of the game, it is impossible to avoid the comparisons to last year’s Iowa game. The game may truly come down to which team has the better mental makeup – can NU live up to its upset-minded fans’ expectations; can Sparty avoid looking ahead to Iowa and its brutally easy November schedule?
Of primary importance in the Cats preparation for Saturday was the bye week. It could not have come at a better time as the Cats needed the rest to prepare for MSU and to expunge the memories from the Purdue loss. The Daily reports on the team bonding and the leadership counsel’s preparation for Sparty.
But the Cats quickly got back to work as reported by Skip Myslenski for nusports.com. I love the attitude of the players on this team. They are cognizant of their role as the underdog, and the success of NU in the past in that role. But they have the confidence and true belief that if they win, it will not be an upset, but the result of the better team winning. The team relishes the idea of controlling its own destiny in the Big Ten race – although they do not exactly hold that position as Purdue still sits as the only zero-loss team who is not remaining on NU’s schedule.
So much has been said the Wildcat running game in the last two weeks; from Lake the Posts calling to completely abandon the run (sorry could not find the specific link) to this rant I sent in an email among friends:
I really hope that ***** wasn't serious about abandoning the run completely, because I would lose a lot of respect for him from a football standpoint. Even though NU would like to run the ball better, NU needs the quantity of runs to be able to throw. Even the 0-1 yard gains require the defense to keep 6 people in the box to keep them from becoming 5-7 yard gains, which leaves much more room for the receivers to run around. It's not as if our poor run offense permits the defense to ignore it. They still have to guard against it. The alternative being going 5-wide or 4+TE each play, which allows the defense to drop as many as 8 into coverage. Having the running back just stand there and forcing the defense to commit at least one guy to preventing Trumpy from turning a 2 yard gain into a long run (as sad as that sounds) is an integral part of the offense. You also can't just use him as a decoy and only run; say 15% of the time. The defense is likely to play the odds and give up the 8-12 yard gain every now and then. It is also nearly impossible to break a long run with 8 guys in coverage because none of them are overplaying or getting blocked at the line of scrimmage.
I like the balance of the Purdue game actually, 42 runs, 41 passes. NU has a few run - pass options in the playbook, and some of these are pass plays that broke down into scrambles, but I like the 50-50 balance. I think that if NU went 50/50 in any of the first five games, the games would have been a lot more lop-sided in our favor. When NU went 66-33 in the Outback Bowl, NU threw 5 picks. I don't know that NU would ever want Persa throwing more than 45 times in a game. But NU still needs to run at least 35-40 times (including scrambles) if NU wants to have any passing lanes to throw into.
But according to the Daily, NU is going to continue to try to maintain balance. I love the quote from Fitz about his 30,000 offensive coordinators begging him to throw more. Personally, I would like to see more passing on first down and somewhere around a 55/45 pass/run ratio. This will give us more second and 3-4 yards, which puts the defense on their heels, because they know NU will both run and pass in that situation. It also keeps the balance at the point where the run can set up an effective passing game.
A few other articles worth reading that I do not have time to write full paragraphs about. Skip Myslenski writes a nice piece about how the Wildcat Safeties are the Superbacks of the defense. The Daily makes a great point about how avoiding injuries has been a key this season. Remember how many injuries NU had sustained last season at this point?
The criticism of the NU special teams has been overdone, so I am not going to dive into that again. But Demos remains upbeat despite the constant harassment over the past 12 days. Remember fans, he has won three games for NU with last second kicks in the last 19 games, and only lost two. Demos’ kicking battery make John Henry Pace talked to Tina Akouris about his recent scholarship grant.
In what may be an effort to help his team remain focused on the Cats and not their game at Iowa, Mark Dantonio hopes to coach from field Saturday. As much as I hope that this does not give Sparty a kick into high gear, it is really good to see Mark D. back in the game.
Finally, nusports.com has new website design. I love how “tickets” is the first tab, even before “sports.” It is these little touches that will make the new marketing campaign really work.
Preview tomorrow…
Go Cats!
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