He is discussing the carnage that was the Ohio State game, and dancing across his face are indications of surprise.
Northwestern safety Reggie McPherson is told he appears stunned over Saturday’s 58-7 debacle.
“I really am stunned,” the senior admits. “We’ve played a lot of football. It’s not like we’re young and we don’t know what we’re doing. It is stunning that something like that can happen, that the score can get out of hand like that and the game can get out of hand like that. I expect much more out of us.”
That is the crux of the situation the Wildcats now confront. They are not a callow band. They are not without talent or the necessary playmakers. They are not without ambitions or high expectations. Yet they have not, through their first four games, consistently applied their virtues or presented themselves as a team that can think of itself as on the make.
All involved with it recognize this as well as the sins they have committed. The slow starts. The missed opportunities. The inability to create turnovers. The inability to pressure the quarterback. The lack of rhythm on offense. The lack of big plays that end in touchdowns. The embarrassing, in one way, loss to Duke. The embarrassing, in a whole different way, loss to the Buckeyes.
More alarmingly, they have recognized their shortcomings and promised earnestly to correct them, and then, like recidivists, simply have gone out and committed the same crimes again.
That is why they are 2-2 and already at the crossroads as they prepare to play resurgent Michigan on Saturday at Ryan Field.
“There’s a lot of football left to play,” coach Pat Fitzgerald said hopefully after Ohio State had finished off its rout of the Wildcats.
But then, recognizing the moment suddenly at hand, he added, “Days like today can be the defining moment in a football season. You can take today the right way and get your attitude right and come back and do something about it. Or, obviously, it could be a long season.”
That starkly states the issue that will be settled with their performance against the Wolverines.
“We need to get back to playing the football we came out of two-a-days with and how we executed in the opener,” Fitzgerald says.
But when asked how they got away from playing that way, he offers an answer that is as sobering as it is alarming to their prospects.
“I don’t know that we’ve gotten away from it as much as Saturday we took a big step backward. … The signs to me were that we were ready to play the way we prepared. But we left it here. We didn’t take it to Columbus. Now we need to rekindle the flame.”
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For hope, he and his players can pull up history. They recall losing to Arizona State by 31 in the third game of the 2004 season, rebounding and going to the Sun Bowl.
They recall losing to TCU by 27 in the third game of the 2000 season, rebounding and going to the Alamo Bowl.
“When I think back to ’95, we had no evidence we were a very good defense,” Fitzgerald says, recalling his Rose Bowl team that lost to Miami of Ohio in its second game.
“There was nothing going into it. We just kept working to get better, we stuck together and, as things unfolded, as the year went along, we ended up being a pretty good team and a pretty good defense.”
Coming off consecutive humiliations to Duke and Ohio State, there is again little evidence this team can rebound.
“It’s an embarrassing game for any football player to lose. There’s no denying that,” senior linebacker Adam Kadela says of that Ohio State loss, reflecting that reality.
But then, reflecting what his Wildcats still profess to believe, he concludes:
“At the same time, when you have a bad day and things don’t go the way you want, you can’t sit there and dwell on it. You have to learn from it and be optimistic. The sun’s going to come up tomorrow. We have a great opportunity against Michigan.
“We’ve been here before. … Yeah, we got wounded Saturday. We got knocked out. But we’re not going to find a corner and lie down and die. The history, our identity in the past, is, ‘Yeah, we’ve been down, but we come back.'”
We shall see.
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*UP NEXT: Michigan
at Northwestern, 11 a.m.
Saturday, Big Ten Network
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