This was early Monday afternoon and Pat Fitzgerald, the Northwestern coach, was reflecting on Michigan’s stunning loss to Appalachian State. He first noted the parity in college football and then, quickly, turned to his own team’s 27-0 Saturday win over Northeastern.
He paid homage to the work of his assistants and, “more importantly, our players did a great job respecting our opponent. We came out ready to play. … We were hungry to play, and I give all the credit to our players.
“They did a great job of preparing. … What you need to focus on is each week, one at a time. That’s coach speak, but it’s true. We learned a very valuable lesson a year ago and we won’t make that same mistake.”
When you lost to New Hampshire?
“Yep,” he replied.
When you lost to Nevada?
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“Yep. Keep going …” Fitzgerald said, a rueful smile on his lips. “I think we took a lot of lessons from last season into the off-season. We’re a different football team now. We’re a hungry football team.
“We’re nowhere close to being where we need to be. But No. 1, the guys understand that. And No. 2, they have the attitude that they’re going to work every day to improve.”
“It’s all about business this year. It’s about winning games,” quarterback C.J. Bacher said. “We’re poised to do that. We all know what the expectations are. And we all know now how hard it is to win games and the preparation that you need to put in.
“The maturity level on this team, you can just feel the difference. We had a lot of great senior leaders last year. But this year, it’s just a different feeling.”
It was palpable during their training camp, when so many talked of the chip on their collective shoulder, and it was evident in their victory over the Huskies, whom they toppled with a professional’s precision.
They played conservatively on both offense and defense, yet that was hardly important here. More notable was the absence of those errors that normally infect a first game. They had no turnovers, offside penalties, motion penalties and few missed tackles, and all of that was a testament to their preparedness and newfound maturity.
A year ago, in the wake of coach Randy Walker’s death, all of those characteristics were open to question as they attempted to get their arms around their loss. Yet they were clearly annealed by that experience, which contributed heavily to their 4-8 season, and have returned from it imbued with those lessons they learned in a most difficult way.
Their own stunning loss to New Hampshire in Week 2 was one more of those painful experiences, and so too was a loss at Nevada, whom Northwestern welcomes to Ryan Field on Saturday.
“So we know firsthand how to walk into games,” running back Tyrell Sutton said. “We have to come out prepared. I don’t think we did that last year, and got beat. We need to come out with the same focus we had against Northeastern and treat every team the same.”
“We’ll be ready to play Saturday,” Fitzgerald said. “The attitude of our football team right now is, we’ve got a team coming in, a year ago we didn’t play very good football against them and we thought they played very well. This is another opportunity, and our guys are hungry to play.”
That is one more characteristic new to these Wildcats, who had too much on their plate last year to be hungry, and it also contributes to the new feeling about them. But most important are Bacher’s comments: “As a team, we have far and away more confidence than we did last year. We really feel like we can put any team to a test and we really feel like we’re going to go a long way this year.”
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