2-0?: The Recap.

First off, thanks to Patrick for playing along and commenting on the game thread yesterday, it was cool to try out, and it'll be back in future. The rest of you who didn't comment get a free pass because you were hopefully all at the stadium, so, be there next time.

I predicted NU would win this game by 38 points. Obviously, I miscalculated.

I believed that NU was a talented enough team to defeat an unheralded EMU team handily without much playcalling diversity, or effort. For two quarters, I was correct. 

I'd like to chalk up the EMU comeback in the second half to lack of focus, painfully predictable playcalling and NU's nagging habit of playing at the level of their opponent, but the truth is, this team has problems that make them seem a lot worse than we thought at the beginning of the year. 

I'm not a doom and gloom guy. I'm pleased with victories, and today, I'm happy. The following is just a list of observations, and, as you'll notice, a lot of them are negative. I have a funny feeling this team will beat Syracuse next week, but a lot of the things here have to improve, or else, quite frankly, they won't.

Coaching: Yeah, we played vanilla, just like we said. This is the last week this year we can afford to do this, clearly. We're not good enough to pull off that trick against FBS opponents, so, the days of running twice as much as we pass are over. Silly playcalling over and over again down the stretch did aid the EMU comeback, and that's fixable.

Defense: WOAH. Wasn't this unit supposed to be one of the best in years? Like last year's, but better?

First off, tackling. It's one of the most fundamental things in football, and the major role of defenders. So it's disconcerting that time and again NU's players were in position to tackle people, and just straight up didn't. That's bad. 

The line looked suspect. And when I say suspect, I mean Eastern Michigan's offensive line handled them. It's the talk of the town that Corey Wootton doesn't look ready, and I have to agree with that assessment. But this is just a weaker unit all-around than it was last year, and I'm not sure why people, including me, expected it to be better in retrospect. Last year, we had three passable defensive ends: Wootton, who was a beast, Browne, who was also, and Mims, who was pretty good. They substituted for each other, and were constantly fresh. And up the middle, we had John Gill, who people actually had to watch out for. Now, all the attention is focused on our ends, and to be honest, we're relatively weak directly up the middle. EMU ran right at our defensive tackles, and did so for about 5.4 yards per rush. EMU's o-line was being touted as extraordinarily week, giving up six sacks last week... and they looked like grown men against the NU d-line.

Nate Williams is a bright spot so far, but our linebacking corps is part of the reason for that 5.4 yards per carry. It's not a good sign that our speedy LB's are being blocked out by o-linemen on their second line of blocks on run plays. Credit where credit is due, Ben Johnson made that one great play, but he's been pretty lackluster outside of that, not to mention that it was thrown right at him through no effort of his own.

Also, it should be noted that we've given up two wide open passes for touchdowns on plays where it looked like there was a miscommunication in which a cornerback stuck with a man and then passed him off to let the safety pick him up on deep coverage... and the safety wasn't there. Vs. Towson, the play just appeared to be a miscommunication between the cornerback and the safety, and it wasn't clear with whom the fault rested. Yesterday, safety Jared Carpenter was supposed to pick up Jacory Stone, but bit on a simple lookaway from Andy Schmitt, and voila, nobody was covering Stone anymore. The miscommunication was acceptable, I guess, when we were up 40 on Towson, but by week two, these sorts of mistakes that allow people to be completely unsurrounded in the end zone are frightening. 

Credit where credit is due: Brad Phillips played great, Jordan Mabin didn't mess up, and Nate Williams seems to have a nose for the ball. Also, I guess you can't ignore the fact that Sherrick McManis didn't play today, but you wonder how much he would've helped.

So yeah. Not many positives on the defensive side of the ball. We shouldn't be giving up 24 points to EMU, we shouldn't be allowing a bottom-tier o-line body us and let their running back go for 130 on us.

Special teams: YO. Outside of punter messiah Stefan Demos' game-winning 50 yarder, about which enough cannot be said, our special teams game was in absolute shambles, throwing away field position and occasionally leaving points on the field. Let's see: 

We had a muffed punt based on miscommunication between the punt returner and the people trying to set up blocking for him, and that cost the Cats seven points.

We had extremely poor coverage on kickoffs: the Eagles had great field position on multiple returns in the first half and needed Demos, aka he who can do no wrong, to make a potential touchdown saving tackle on one return.

We had back to back failures by Brendan Smith to judge the punt and let it roll to the 1- and 2- yard line. 

Again, Demos gets a pass, but we also had some pretty poor punting.

Luckily, all this is special teams stuff is correctable: Smith getting under the ball knocks three of those poorly executed plays off the list, and there's nothing staying in your lanes won't do on kickoff returns. But this special teams play gifted EMU a touchdown, and if uncorrected, will gift another school a victory.

Offense: Our offense didn't look as bad as the other units. Just like on defense, we've got issues in the trenches: our offensive line didn't look particularly great, racking up holding calls left and right.. But they were good last year, so I won't fret.

The era of Mike Kafka the devoted pocket passer is over. Yes, he can throw, but let's be real: to have an effect against opposing defenses, he has to show off the wheels. It's obvious. Today, Kafka out of the pocket looked only good, not great, overthrowing people a bunch and throwing a pick, although the pick wasn't his fault as he got hit on the play.

It's also obvious that we were way overdependent on our running back play today. Now, don't misconstrue that statement: Stephen Simmons looked better than he ever has against FBS opponents, and Jacob Schmidt looked like someone who can actually contribute, especially on short-yardage plays. But we need to throw more often, and on deeper routes. Just to mix it up. We had a plan to not do that yesterday, and it backfired.

In terms of personnel: Scott Concannon will hopefully improve with time, but I think his audition for playing time this year is over, despite a really great opening game against Towson. Arby Fields looked like a freshman, and I guess that will happen, so you can't be mad, but he's not ready for primetime. And I think we're trying to overutilize Josh Rooks and his hands of concrete-like material. 

So, yeah. Obviously, flush it, and come back and win next week, and we can forget this ever happened. The Cats are half-way to what should be their goal every year: sweeping the out-of-conference slate. 

Obviously, there should be complaints: we just nearly blew a game against an extremely week team.

But yo: Stefan Demos hit a game-winning 50-yard field goal. Like it says in the sidebar: this site is about slowing down and enjoying the good things in NU sports. So live life a little, folks. And enjoy watching more football today.

1-0: the Recap

So I watched the game, took a long, long walk, just to make sure I wasn't sitting in my room from sunrise to sunset on pretty much the nicest day in Manhattan history, and now I feel ready to set down my thoughts on that game. 

First off, I said that there was pretty much no way this Towson game could turn out well - even if we did well, there'd be the thought in our head that "oh, it was only Towson." Well, I was wrong. That game went about as well as it possibly could've with only a few exceptions: the worst part of the game was a rather nasty looking injury to Jeravin Matthews, and our defense fell asleep on two drives. But otherwise, I thought we managed to look great even with the context that we were playing against a rather scrubby team. Our first team was clearly overwhelming, then, our second and third teams proved that they were both better than Towson's starters.

Even with a gameplan conservative enough to make Karl Rove tingly, the Wildcats ran rampant. There were large stretches of the game where it was clear that we'd be running the ball right up the middle on every play, and we were still regularly converting first downs. We ran the ball 23 times on first down, and passed it six times. We ran the ball 21 times on second down, and only passed it six times. And yet, even with that run-heavy attack, we still moved the ball down the field pretty easily. 

The fact that the first four possessions of the game resulted in four punts and four TD's makes me feel pretty confident about this team. After that opening stretch, our whole team seemed to loosen up and take the whole process a little bit easier, resulting in the output slowing a little bit, but, there's no way you could really be angry at that happening. The score could've easily been more lopsided than 47-14, but neither Fitz nor I would have actually liked to have seen that happen, because that first quarter was all the affirmation we needed that we were way, way better than the other team. There's no better way of saying "I'm not trying to score" than making Mark Woodsum run on five consecutive downs. 

Oh, and experience is clearly overrated: five guys caught, ran or threw for their first touchdowns today.

 So let's break this down by unit.

Throwing it: In my prediction, I called for Mike Kafka to just chill out and throw the ball. And sure enough, he did, and sure enough, he looked absolutely fantastic. I don't recall any poor throws, and he went 15-20 on a variety of short passes. He still could use a little bit more confidence in his ability to throw out of the pocket, but still, he looked great. In future, I'd like to see him throw a bit more, but this was a great tune-up, and allowed us to fully figure out our RB situation. He also looked good on the ground.

Dan Persa decided to go with the thunder-and-lightning approach to being quarterback, throwing two passes, one for a 72-yard TD and the other for a telegraphed pick into what looked like a crowd of three defenders and one receiver. I like his game though - he's going to be a good quarterback when it's his turn to start, although that could be my obsession with running QB's talking for me. He should get a few more reps against EMU, and then he should ride pine for the rest of the season.

Joe Mauro, it turns out, is a real human being, which is good to see, as his existence was previously questionable. 

Running: I called for a bunch of RB's to run the ball straight up the gut in my prediction, and because Fitz must've read that and tried to make me look as smart as possible, he complied. Stephen Simmons, Arby Fields, Jeravin Matthews, Jacob Schmidt, Scott Concannon, and Mark Woodsum all got time taking handoffs and going in between the tackles with them. By far the most impressive was Fields, who, a week before new student week, is already having a pretty beast freshman year. If I had to rank the crew, I'd go Fields, Simmons, Matthews, Concannon, and Schmidt. That being said, they all looked really good. It was cool to see Schmidt and Concannon, guys who, like Joe Mauro, hadn't completely convinced me of their existence as actual people, get into the end zone, and I wouldn't feel uncomfortable with them taking snaps in Big Ten games after seeing each of them break out decent gains against the Towson d. Simmons didn't have any signature plays, but he's definitely our most consistent back at this point, and should continue starting unless Fields really cranks up the heat.

Catching: We have a number one wide receiver, and his name is Andrew Brewer. Brew has proven himself as a deep ball threat since spring ball, and the culmination of that was a 72-yard streak past the Towson d. I really love his size and speed (pause) and think he'll be a true threat in Big Ten season.

Our other wide receivers proved to me that they could catch the ball when nobody was near them pretty well, which is good. The only drop I remember belonged to Josh Rooks and he was hit pretty heavily. Demetrius Fields kept confusing me when the announcer said "Fields with the catch", and for those of us looking for more superback action, Drake Dunsmore looks like he'll really be able to contribute from that position.

Also, after a long time, I finally learned how to pronounce "Markshausen." I assumed there was a "shhhh" in the middle, but apparently it's like "Mark's house in" which was news to me.

O-line: Solid. Although I still think Ward shoulda redshirted, but I guess it sends a good message to any four star recruits out there looking to come to NU but going somewhere else so they could play as freshmen.

D: Not a great game for the d. First off, the two touchdowns really shouldn't have happened, and, surprisingly, the Tigers moved the ball relatively well through the air for a team with three freshmen quarterbacks going up against an imposing secondary. However, for now, I'm going to look back the two touchdowns, and celebrate what was an absolute lockdown performance in the first quarter. This performance might have resulted in a loss if we were playing against some good team, but, luckily, it wasn't, so, we can let it go: all told, they did pretty well. The secondary wasn't great, though, and we've read too much about that unit for them not to be, so, hopefully they improve.

I'm really confident in the linebacking corps of Davie, Williams, and Johnson, by the way. Those guys are good.

Where was Corey Wootton? I barely noticed him. I was expecting to see him record somewhere near a dozen sacks after last season and after reading about how bad Towson was, but, instead, he didn't even record a tackle, and I don't really even remember seeing him that much on the field. 

Our second unit gave hope for the future: that Quentin Williams pick was fun to see, and my boy Stone Pinckney recorded two tackles. Long story short, when they were on the field, the younguns looked great.

Kickin it: Stefan Demos looked good as a kicker and punter, but I've decided that to keep the poor kid's leg ligaments from turnin to puree by week 9, I think Steve Flaherty should take over kickoff duties. And I'm not saying that just cuz he's a journalism kid: Demos had seven kickoffs, no touchbacks, Flaherty had one, and one. Ball don't lie. That way, we divvy up Demos' heaping of kicking duties, and still manage not to dirty wonderchild Jeff Budzien's redshirt. 

So, a huge offensive day, but it only makes one W. Admittedly, it was really, really, really, really depressing to watch - I almost cried when Towson snapped it out of the back of the end zone, and the crowd was really pathetic - but it's always good to see a W. We dodged the karma gods of college football with all the Mauro-Woodsum handoffs, and now, we can move on. On to Eastern Michigan.

The Two-Deep is out.

Well, for those of you who read my "One Less Day Till Football Season" posts all summer long, now's your opportunity to see how wrong my predictions were. The two-deep is out.

I'd say the main things to note are Arby Fields being our backup running back, which now seems like a foregone conclusion but would've been very surprising to hear back at the beginning of camp, and Scott Concannon, who has yet to touch the ball in a game, being our starting kick returner in a job that seeme destined for either Stephan Simmons or Jeravin Matthews. 

Other discrepancies between this two deep and my 1LDTFS posts - at the time I did the posts, I didn't know anything about Zeke Markshausen, but he's really emerged since then as a guy destined to be a part of the rotation. The backup wide receivers I didn't even attempt to predict, so, no surprises there.

I predicted Keegan Grant would be our starting left guard, but it'll be Desmond Taylor with Patrick Ward backing him up - although I'd still be sort of surprised to see us de-redshirt him just for mop-up situations as a backup guard. He's a top-notch left tackle, so we'll want him to play there for four years if possible.

Stefan Demos appears to be kicking everything, no ifs, ands, or buts. I guess Budzien will sit out the year.

I was surprised to see Ricky Weina listed as backup corner instead of Mike Bolden, but, like, not blown out of my seat, because, come on, it's backup cornerbacks. (update: according to an anonymous commenter, Bolden's apparently injured, making me nerdy enough to have written a post predicting he would play but not nerdy enough to actually check  up on his health frequently. Either way, I just outed my way of writing this post as reading all my previous posts and checking them against the two-deep for any differences whatsoever. Anyway, good for Weina, who is a walk-on.)

Personal favorite players Stone Pinckney and David Nwabuisi made the two-deep, which is awesome, but not something I had predicted, but it makes sense, because guys I did discuss - Aaron Nagel and Chris Jeske - are not in playing condition. Nagel is injured, and Jeske has called college football quits, and will be coaching this year.

But other than that, pretty run-of-the-mill stuff. It looks like all them second-stringers might get significant tick vs. Towson, so, maybe the whole two-deep isn't just for show this times.

One Less Day til Football Season, Post 2: Running Back

(Author's note: I've decided my posts are too overwhelmingly long, after my QB thing clocked in at 1700 words. They say Medill is supposed to teach you to be concise, but then again, they also said it would teach me not to mercilessly mock sub-par kickers, and it took me a preposterously short amount of time to do that, so, shows you what they know.

Unfortunately for fans of conciseness, I've already written this 1600 word piece on running backs - enjoy it, but henceforth, there will be more, shorter posts.

Also, I hope you enjoyed the irony of these hundred or so words about how long my posts are.)

Days Left Till Kickoff: 66

Who did it last year?: Tyrell Sutton won't be a Wildcat next year, and that's probably the definitive difference between this year's team and last. It probably seems weird that I open up these preview posts with a recap of last year, but, first off, crank up the cliché-o-meter, but, you have to know where you've been to know where you're going. But in some cases, it serves a much deeper purpose: I need to eulogize these people who we're losing who have been major figures in Wildcat football history.

With Tyrell, we're losing our superstar.

Tyrell has been our running back for four years, which is just about as long as you can be a college starting running back. He was dominant as a true freshman, dominant as a sophomore, dominant when healthy in his final two seasons.  Flashy, yet workmanlike, Sutton's story of how a record-setting high school running back, managed to slip under the radar of major college dynasties due to his size and ended up killing them for it for four straight years in Evanston is pretty much the embodiment of Northwestern football. (Apparently, it's such a touching story, it requires a soundtrack of Creed.) Long story short, Sutton was the guy you associated with our football program, and he had a truly amazing career.

Let us remember Tyrell with this poorly edited seven-minute highlight reel, which, despite the sub-par editing, has truly tremendous musical choices. (Gladiator and Godzilla, yo.) (Also, everybody who thought I was never going to use my "P Diddy" label again was dead wrong.)

My favorites: the cutback against SIU, the two where he just merks Northeastern linebackers, and the 2nd-and-21 run for 17 yards against Mizzou that prompted him to jump up and start celebrating.

I will always remember Tyrell, for his great running talent, the thousands of unverifiable rumors people told about him - another thing which made him a true college superstar was that he was probably the one dude on the football team able to inspire folkloric tales of his off-the-field exploits that may or may not have been true - and for his impressive ability to turn in his test in my Geography class a good 15-20 minutes before anybody else, then walk out of class remarking about how poorly he did on it. (By the time I'm a spring quarter senior, I'll probably be pretty good at this too, although, I won't be moonlighting as a Green Bay Packer while doing it. I'll just be being lazy.) And of course, for his memorable return from injury in the Alamo Bowl, where pretty much every senior played their hearts out and had ridiculously great games, yet we managed not to win, resulting in a preposterously tragic moment for Northwestern sports.

We also lose Omar Conteh. He was serviceable when called upon, busting out some 100 yard games when Tyrell was out, and, to be honest, I'm not sure why Omar never redshirted. He was never going to start with Sutton there, and it would've made more sense for the program to have him around next year. His career ended badly - after being thrust into the spotlight, he was second fiddle to Mike Kafka in the Minnesota game and suffered an injury in practice that ended his career before three games in which he truly could've helped the team. 

Stephen Simmons started the last three games, and was not Tyrell Sutton. His total yards and yards-per-carry increased in each of the games he started, so that was a good sign. People were down on him as a back, but, remember, we beat Michigan and Illinois with him as our back, so, chill out.

Who's got next: Tough to say, for sure. Stephen Simmons obviously played last year, but in spring ball, he was just part of a three-headed running back monster. Not to keep jacking things I wrote for the Daily and giving shameless plugs, but, as relevant articles go, this one is a pretty relevant one. 

The guys say it best themselves: each of them has different skills, and they sort of like going at it by committee. Steph actually endorses that approach in the article, saying he didn't really like being the lone guy last year. 

Pardon the esotericness, but all I could think about when Steph gave me the quote I used first in the article was that interview you hear at the album version of the end of Protect Your Neck, where Method Man and Ghostface describe the various things each member of the Wu-Tang Clan does, why they got their name, and how they contributed: Stephen Simmons, Jeravin Matthews, and Alex Daniel each have different running styles. Stephen brings experience, and seems like a more patient runner, Jeravin is overwhelmingly speedy and, since he played wide out last year, might be able to replace some of Tyrell Sutton's recieving skills out of the backfield, and Daniel is the more powerful of the three. If they were a boy band, Simmons would be The Shy One, Jeravin would be The Young, Brash One, and Daniel would be The Moderately Introverted Guy With Unnecessary Tribal Tattoos. (Even if none of those descriptions fit their personalities whatsoever.) 

Earlier in the spring, I had spoken with RB's coach Matt Macpherson, or, as I quickly found every single person involved with the team calls him, Mack. I thought he was feeding me coachspeak when he told me that yes, although they had made Jeravin the starter the year before, everything was new coming into training camp, and that everybody was getting equal reps, and everybody had a shot to start, and that they hadn't named a starter yet. Turned out this was less coachspeak and more of an actual representation of the way everything was going: we might be looking at a committee approach come September, and that's not necessarily the worst thing, because all three running backs looked good in spring. 

So I'm a proponent of the RB-by-committee setup, but, who knows. We could get all Simmons or all three, all we know is that at the least Simmons will be a major factor in the running attack.

Is this an improvement on last year?: No. It's much worse. But like I said earlier, we're losing a superstar, and, there's nothing you can do about it other than be glad you had him in the first place. Remember: NU won two of three games with Stephen Simmons as our premier back last year. Now, he has experience, and he has Jeravin Matthews and Alex Daniel there as either his backups or as his running mates. (In a literal term, not as in a vice presidential one.) Also, the way we used Simmons was extraordinarily conservative. Most of the time, he was running delayed draws back up the middle, and most of the time - with one touchdown against Michigan as the exception - he was getting stopped three yards or less past the line of scrimmage because the defense was expecting it. So, to elaborate on my one word answer at the beginning of this paragraph, it's worse than the Tyrell/Omar setup, but probably will be better than Simmons was in his few games last year. When Simmons played last year, it was almost like NU was trying to cut losses by giving Simmons low-risk, low-reward plays, this year, we're going to try and win with him and whoever he brings along for the ride, which could be both or neither of the other two guys at this point.

Who else we got? In addition to Simmons, Matthews, and Daniel, there are four running backs who don't look to factor in much - then again, we said that last year about Stephen Simmons, who, at the time, was a third stringer, so you never know. At least look for these guys to get some late game reps, especially if we do plan on using all three of the aforementioned backs in steady RB rotation.

Scott Concannon is either a redshirt sophomore who has been playing special teams, and of whom I know nothing. His nusports.com profile shows that he had a high school game with 320 yards rushing on 8 carries, including 3 90+ yard scores, presumably because the opposing kicker was kickoff specialist Mike Vanderjagt or because their kick returner averaged -23 yards per return.

Jacob Schmidt is a walkon, also a redshirt sophomore. He's the only one of these four to have carried the ball in a game, and managed to block a punt AND recover it against SIU, which is pretty impressive, although I seem to remember it bouncing off a few other guys before he got to it because it was so rainy. He is most famous in my mind for making special teams tackles, and promptly being confused with linebacker Stone Pinckney by announcers because they wore the same number, which is funny not because Pinkney was redshirting last year, but because the two look sort of different. He says a song that describes him is "Go Getta" by Young Jeezy, probably because of Jeezy's verse about special teams tackles. 

We feature two incoming running backs who will probably redshirt, but, then again, Sutton and Conteh came in the same year and they didn't, so you never know.

Mike Trumpy was ranked the number one running back in Illinois last year, so he was probably a good land. He was also a track star in high school, as opposed to Schmidt, who is best described by a song by a guy who also released a song called "Trap Star". Subtle difference. 

Arby "RB" Fields has a great name for a running back, and, like Evan Watkins in the last post, will have some big shoes to fill by being assigned the number 19. He will join Quentin Williams as a football player/outfielder for the baseball team, as he will play centerfield for the Cats. 

So there we go. 1500 words later, you know about our running backs. We'll do wide recievers on wednesday - different type of post tomorrow. 

And yes - I do plan on having a label for every athlete I mention. What now?