‘Cats Season-Opening Win Breakdown
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Well. On a day when LTP launched a brand new website look, Northwestern provided comfort in knowing it is the same-old, same old Fitz program that seems stubborn to reinforce the Cardiac ‘Cats moniker. LTP Prediction? NU 23 Vandy 20. OK, so I was off by one total point, but tonight was a game that I actually envisioned with one major difference. I expected a slow start. Instead, Dan Persa was everything I dreamed of and more and threw me a curveball leading NU to a quick 10-0 lead in the first quarter. No worries, the ‘Cats disappeared for two quarters thanks in part to one major game-changing moment (Persa’s fumble). Let’s break it down with The Great, The Good and The Disappointing.
Well. On a day when LTP launched a brand new website look, Northwestern provided comfort in knowing it is the same-old, same old Fitz program that seems stubborn to reinforce the Cardiac ‘Cats moniker. LTP Prediction? NU 23 Vandy 20. OK, so I was off by one total point, but tonight was a game that I actually envisioned with one major difference. I expected a slow start. Instead, Dan Persa was everything I dreamed of and more and threw me a curveball leading NU to a quick 10-0 lead in the first quarter. No worries, the ‘Cats disappeared for two quarters thanks in part to one major game-changing moment (Persa’s fumble). Let’s break it down with The Great, The Good and The Disappointing. The Vandy fans are still booing over the final key play of the game – a personal foul helmet-to-helmet hit on Persa that seemed relatively cut and dry. I’m shaking my head after chewing off my nails saying this is EXACTLY what I expected. A road win in SEC territory? Take it and run. We’ll have highlights up in the morning. But man, do we have issues at RB. Our biggest fear just became a horror show.
Quick Hit Stats
NU Total Offense – 365 yds (222 passing, 143 rushing)
Vandy Total Offense – 432 yds (240 passing, 192 rushing)
Passing: Dan Persa – 222 yds (19/21, 3 TD, O INT, 82 rushing); Larry Smith 240 yds (19/33, 1 TD, 1 INT)
Rushing: Dan Persa – 17 car, 82 yds; Zac Stacy 9 car 69 yds 1 TD
TOP: NU – 30:54, Vandy 29:06
Turnovers: NU – 1 (Persa fumble); Vandy 1 – Smith INT (Vaughn)
Leading Tacklers – NU – Nate Williams (12); Vandy J. Fullum (12)
Sacks: NU – 1 (Ben Johnson); Vandy 4
Gamechanging Plays
Northwestern seemingly had Vandy on the ropes up 10-0 and driving in Commodore territory when Dan Persa promptly got stripped on a scramble and the crowd and Vandy turned up the heat dominating from that point through most of the third.
Momentum swung back to NU when Justan Vaughn picked off Larry Smith late in the third which NU promptly transformed in to a TD drive capped by Drake Dunsmore juggling TD.
Most underrated play – Demetrius Fields catch on Jacob Schmidt’s fumble.
THE GREAT
Dan Persa – First career start for the heir to the seemingly endless stream of firepowered NU QBs and man was he impressive. You could tell on the camera close-ups how ready he was for the moment. He was explosive running in the 1st and seemed on pace to shatter Mike Kafka’s QB rushing record considering it felt like he posted a C-note in the 1st quarter (he accounted for 112 of NU’s 118 yards in the first). Persa’s stat-line on the night is eye-popping – 19/21, 222 yds, 3 TD, 0 INT, 82 rushing yds – but that line actually doesn’t give justice to how much he carried Northwestern. Gutsy play after gutsy play where he created magic on the run and created and took punishing hits to the point where we all are wondering how the heck he’ll make it through an entire season.
Mick McCall’s 4th Quarter Playcalling
If you’re going to criticize, you have to praise when appropriate. The ‘Cats sputtered for the 2nd and 3rd quarters, but finally found their groove when they went up-tempo and put together two great drives in the 4th to pull out the win. The combination of spreading the wealth through the air and then mixing up the run while mixing the tempo was the difference and was sorely missing earlier in the game.
NU Receiving Corps
You wonder why we only threw 21 times especially with that God awful rushing attack. Our receivers were money all night long. Jeremy Ebert paced the field with 5 rec, 99 yds and a beautiful 1st quarter 33-yd TD catch, but everyone came up big regardless of their catches – Stewart and Fields in the 4th, Dunsmore’s TD, Rooks’ TD and Brendan Barber even getting in on the action. McCall missed the boat by not getting these guys more touches. Even when they weren’t receiving they were coming up big like Demetrius Fields’ unsung play of nabbing Jacob Schmidt’s near fatal fumble.
Venric Mark
Holy smokes. Was that the single fastest Wildcat you’ve ever seen? He was on the screen for all of one play – a KOR with 2-minutes to go, but his 25-30 yd return was in a gear I’ve never seen on our side of the ball. PLEASE PLAY VENRIC!!!
The Good
Jack Dinardo. Vanderbilt gashed our “D” for 192 yards and a terrible 5.1 ypc so its hard to give props to any DL member, but Dinardo came up huge when we needed him to as each of his 5 solo tackles were statements.
Composure. As fans, we were all saying the same thing. “God, why do we have to play to the EXACT level of our opponent every week? Can’t we just put a team away?” Regardless, the ‘Cats withstood huge momentum swings to hang on for a road win in SEC territory. You felt danger zone several times, but if nothing else we should resiliency to play half a game and escape with a win.
Brian Peters
The guy was everywhere. He was making big plays to stuff RBs when needed and also smothering other’s mistakes on pass plays. I thought he played a great game.
Punting/Punt Coverage
An Achillees heel in year’s past, we had good hang time and solid coverage on punts all night long. Brandon Williams had some beauties and got the rolls and Jeravin Matthews’ hit was a highlight.
The Disappointing
Demos/PATs
Granted, Vandy’s missed PAT turned out to dictate the game in many ways, but on the heels of the disappointing Outback Bowl, Stefan had a key FG blocked and Brandon Williams botched what would’ve been the game-sealing PAT late in the 4th. Simply can’t happen.
RB Play
To be nice, it was awful. Arby Fields clearly is not recovered from an injury as he posted an embarassing -7 yards on 10 carries and it looked worse. Dan Persa was brilliant on the ground netting 82 yards in impressive fashion. However, we’ve got MAJOR problems among the rest of the crew. The rest of the team – Jacob Schmidt, Stephen Simmons, Arby Fields and company mustered a paltry 61 yards on 29 carries. So much for concentrating it all off-season. Persa can’t carry us here all season and stay healthy. Oh yeah, that was one of the worst rush defenses in the entire nation last season that had few hopes for improving.
Insistence on Running Early
Persa was masterful in the air going 12/13 in the first half. As I feared, NU tried to show “we can run!” despite the fact we couldn’t. Throw in the usual draw play on 2nd and 20-something and you really get me fired up and frustrated. I’m all for balance, but I’m also a big fan of being real and playing to your strengths.
STATS TO STEW ON:
- Fitz is now 5-0 in season openers.
- NU is now 25-7 in their last 32 games decided by 7 points or less.
- The NU-Vandy game is one of only two Big Ten-SEC match-ups this year (PSU-Bama) in the regular season.
- Jeremy Ebert’s 99-yard receiving game is a career best.
What They’re Saying:
Teddy Greenstein offers up an early recap here.
WHAT WE LEARNED FROM TODAY AROUND THE BIG TEN:
- I’m glad we don’t play Michigan. Denard Robinson looked Heisman-worthy today in the dominating victory over a solid UCONN team today.
- Illinois played mighty well for a team that had no stats to show for it. Their new QB, Nathan Scheelhaase is a winner and despite his 3 INTs today, gives me fear for later in the season.
- Iowa finally learned how to put an early season team away and scared Hawkeye Nation with Ricky Stanzi’s brief injury.
- Michigan State surprised me with the amount of rushing stats they accrued and nothing has changed my mind that they’re the most underrated team in the Big Ten.
- How about that UNC game? Game of the day.
- OK, maybe that honor belongs to Jacksonville State in the 2OT win over SEC’s Ole Miss
N Flag Flying On ESPN
Thanks to William for emailing me this screen grab of the Northwestern flag flying high in the background of today’s ESPN College Gameday. Keep ‘em coming!
Persacuted!
He looked almost unstoppable in the first quarter. I thought (but didn’t believe) it was going to be a 35-10 ballgame the way it started out. Too bad about the red-zone stop and the fumble. It’s not like Vandy’s defense is terribly slow, right? Good sign.
The announcers really did milk that Big Ten/SEC thing for all it was worth, eh? I’m glad they were there to reassure me that Vanderbilt is still the faster team, regardless of the final score.
Big-picture second half results: Punt, TD, missed FG on Vandy’s 10, TD, and successful 4-minute drill (featuring traditional Cardiac Cats recovered fumble aaghghhh). Fine by me.
Definitely agree we focused too much on the run and should have gone back to the pass or dink n dunk earlier.
You forget about the Bama – Penn State in Big Ten-SEC regular season match up
They were the faster team. . . .except for when Persa was juking and outrunning their entire defense.
I have a bad feeling about PSU-’Bama, though. Mind you, I think the SEC is overrated this year; Florida had trouble putting away a MAC team, LSU had trouble with a UNC team missing half its defense, and Ole Miss lost to a DivI-AA team. However, I think the Crimson Tide is a championship contender, and PSU’s talent level is declining as fast as JoePa is.
Whew! A win is a win, but I’m not too pleased with this one. Persa did it all, but he’s going to need some help if NU is going to win the eight games we think they’re capable of. Running game was atrocious. Somebody needs to step up. I hope that Fitz eases his stance on freshmen and lets Adonis get some touches in the near future.
Defense and special teams need to improve. A lot. We can’t let an inexperienced QB pass all over our secondary like that. And we can’t be missing PATs. I have faith in Demos, but it’s waning. Those kinds of miscues are inexcusable.
I hope this isn’t a sign of things to come or we could be in for a long year.
1-0!!!! :)
As usual, NU was often in the right place, but missing plays.
I think Fitz was 100% correct when he said there were a lot of learning opportunities today. I can only assume that part of today’s film session will be:
1. Teach Persa how to run the option properly. He sees 3 defenders on top of his RB and he pitches it so we can lose more yards and potentially lose the ball. (Although the Persa seems to ride the hand-off of a triple option very well. He confused the cameraman and defenders a handful of times)
2. Teach Arby to run towards the end zone. Maybe he’s fast in flag football, but he’s rarely going to gain yards running backwards.
Go Cats!
Cool. Your blog looks great, and I’m glad i’ve found something here worth adding to my favorites.
For anyone a bit down after last night, let’s remember some recent history:
2008 (9-3 regular season)
@ Duke – 24-20 win
vs. Ohio – 16-8 win
@ Indiana – 21-19 loss
2009 (8-4 regular season)
vs. Eastern Michigan – 27-24 win
@ Syracuse – 37-34 loss
vs. Miami – 16-6 win
Great recap of a great win (in the sense that any road win in the SEC is great, I guess).
But, to me, you left off the biggest disappointment on the night: our offensive line.
Basically five returning starters and they seemed completely unable to create rushing lanes, while pass protection was spotty at times.
Yes, our RBs seemed to lack explosiveness and didn’t look real good, but I didn’t see too many big holes, either. Schmidt is a guy who will at least take what the line gets him (more than I can say for Arby’s tendency to go sideways and backwards), and they weren’t giving much last night.
That said, a win is a win, and we do seem to play to the level of our opponents, so onward and upward …
As a non Big 10 fan ( who sort of follows Northwestern because I like your coach and as near as I can tell you do things right on and off the field ) I wouldn’t turn my nose up at the win. Vandy generally plays you tough at home. The Rice game looks a lot tougher than it did 24 hours ago – Owls have added quite a bit of speed and should not be overlooked.
Rice shouldn’t be a blowout, but they may have their hands full next week at North Texas, a team that didn’t find the end zone much but put up nearly 450 yards on Clemson. And Rice couldn’t really do much of anything on offense yesterday against Texas until the game was well out of hand.
@jmull – indeed – the OL was definitely not what it was hyped to be. Also – thank for the great comments. I agree Rice just got more interesting! Also, thanks for correction on PSU-Bama! Much more to discuss. Including ISU testing our “D” after putting up 50+ points (and giving up 50+ points).
Thanks, I bookmarked your website and will come back later.
While I don’t think it’s a great idea, I’m hoping Fitz is just saving the Venric Mark experience for B10 season. The “if they know about him they won’t kick to him” theory. Either that or VM maybe had some trouble holding on to balls during practice this week?? He’s crazy fast though – can’t wait to see him once he’s finally on the field (I’ll also note – he did get a few snaps at WR, and was great along with Matthews on punt coverage).
A win is a win but I really wish they would try out some of the new blood at RB. Simmons, Schmidt and Concannon are slow guys that don’t fit our hit-the-hole-fast scheme. No amount of work in the offseason will change the fact that those guys simply aren’t good RBs – they wouldn’t play at all for any other Big Ten team. And as many people have noted, Arby doesn’t seem to understand that stuttering in the backfield and running sideways isn’t going to cut it. He’s probably the worst of the bunch right now.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Persa and he was absolutely the reason we won (switch QBs with Vandy and we get destroyed), but did anyone else notice that he tended to hold the ball a little too long at times? That concerns me a little – he needs to get it out quicker against better opponents. Some of those sacks were on him.
Overall I’m not terribly concerned about the play calling – I think if we needed to we would have thrown the ball more. This is the drill with Fitz and company – show just enough to win. As frustrating as it is, I think it helps us in a way because we’re always used to playing tight games. I just wish they didn’t play it quite so tight since it does backfire every once in awhile (see Syracuse last year).
But that running game is a big concern. We managed to win without it last year but I don’t think we can count on that 2 years in a row and I don’t see Persa holding up as well as Kafka to all the hits. And we all know what happens to the play calling with a new QB in mid-season (run, QB keeper, run, punt).
I will also argue, our failed running attack was much more about scheme and play calling than anything else. We barely threw the ball til the 4th quarter! Vandy was stacking the line and bringing pressure to the outside on every play. Those option runs in the 2nd quarter were horrible play calling – how was the Oline supposed to create a running lane against a stacked side of the defense?? Should’ve been calling something less vanilla and mixing in more passes… we were completely predictable during both the 2nd and 3rd quarters. During 1 and 4, we ran the ball well (because we went up the gut or did more disguised runs with Persa).
Are there any true freshman running backs who can help us, or are they all as mediocre as Fields/Simmons/Schmidt? And if there is anyone, is there any chance that PatFitz will burn their redshirt? Also am I the only one who thinks Schmidt plays better than Fields? Arby tries to bounce outside and ends up losing yardage — at least Schmidt lowers his shoulder, takes a hit, and moves us forward a hard or two. Finally, since we’re burning Mark’s redshirt, why didn’t they just let him field the opening kickoff and all those punts?
Any word on why Concannon got 0 carries? People are lumping him in with the failed running game, but he didnt even touch the ball. I always liked him the best last year – he seemed to be faster and more elusive than Schmidt but harder to tackle than Fields and Simmons.
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As for the RB discussion, there is a true freshman in Adonis Smith who I think should get a look. He was a 3-star recruit from Oakland who has some serious speed. Hopefully, Fitz lets him get some touches. It’s not like the running game can get any worse.
Running Game:
I agree that it was pretty bad (outside of Persa, of course), BUT remember it’s a combination of three things: (1) play calling, (2) OL run blocking, and (3) performance of the running backs. Everyone has been harping on (3) but mostly leaving out the first two. I agree with others who have said that the OL vastly underperformed given the preseason hype and that was one thing I wanted to see improve this year (and expected to). They won’t be successful this season having to rely on Persa as the sole source of offense.
Special Teams Gaffes:
It was Patrick Ward who missed the block that allowed Demos’ FG to be blocked. And, as you mentioned, B. Williams screwed up the hold on the XP try that would have made it a two score game late. BUT, the punt game was amazing, and quite possibly the best punting game I’ve seen from NU in some time. AND, kickoffs by Demos were pretty great (although the coverage wasn’t exactly stellar).
Start/Finish Strong:
As you mentioned, the biggest concern was how NU would start the game, and they started pretty darn well (NU scored on its first 2 possessions and forced Vandy to punt on their first 6). AND, NU finished the way they needed to in order to win. Things in between can sure improve, but I’ll take a strong start AND finish any day.
A couple additional thoughts:
1.) I think the main reason why Fields was running east/west last night was by design. Remember, he’s still nursing a shoulder injury and isn’t 100% percent quite yet. I think we might see some different results when you put him in between the tackles more.
2.) Demos shouldn’t have been mentioned as part of “The Disappointing.” His 2nd field goal kick wasn’t late, so that should be chalked up to the offensive line blowing coverage. He had a couple good kickoffs (including two that reached the front of the end zone) and was perfect on the night on point kicks he could actually attempt.
3.) We ran more options last night that I ever care to see again in a game. Additionally, if my memory serves correctly, we ran a designed screen play only once on the night. Not what I’m used to seeing from a Northwestern offense.
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Anyways, hopefully it won’t take long for the offensive gameplan to shift back to short passes to set up the run and long passes, rather than trying to establish the run first.
Speaking of special teams, did the PAT that nearly got botched earlier in the game happen as a result of the hold? I didn’t see it clearly enough. Markshausen really did an amazing job last year.
For those that were asking, I saw Adonis Smith at Meet the Team Night the previous Friday to the trip to Nashville. He’s nursing an injury, so will likely redshirt.
Can we have better playcalling for the RBs? Seriously, this was B-A-D at some points.
I thought 1/2 of the secondary played well (Peters was everywhere and Mabin did a great job out on an island all night), but felt Carpenter was in a perfect position to knock away the Vandy TD pass but never turned back and Vaughn played very conservatively and let some guys get addition yards because he was afraid of making a mistake. On one of the QB scrambles, he waited 5 yards for the QB to come to him instead of stepping up to make a play. I hope this improves or that we have open auditions on that side….
Didn’t know about the Smith injury at RB. Will be interesting to see how we play it this week. I fear again we’ll overplay the run-calling when based on the ISU-Central Missouri game we should be airing it out early and often…
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