For at least half of the Northwestern football team, Saturday’s spring game meant beans.
The first-team offense and second-team defense dropped a 20-14 contest to the second-team offense and the first-team defense — and therefore will be eating beans for dinner Thursday night as the victors feast on steak.
The tables were nearly turned on the last play, however, as starting quarterback Zak Kustok aired out a bomb to Teddy Johnson. But with the game — and dinner — at stake, the pass sailed just over the wide-open Johnson, falling harmlessly and sealing the game’s fate.
“I was dropping back and I had a lineman in my face. I didn’t really see Teddy that well and I just kind of threw it up there,” Kustok said. “It’s just something we’ll have to work out and get better at. But I’m not worried about not being able to hit that pass.”
The final play wasn’t indicative of the duo’s success in the game, as Johnson snagged 10 of Kustok’s 21 completions — including a 22-yard touchdown catch for the game’s first score.
The two juniors played pitch-and-catch all afternoon in a four- wideout, no-huddle set that both offenses featured for the entire game.
“We’re doing all kinds of patterns,” Johnson said. “If a team wants to play soft, then we’ll run underneath. If they want to play hard, we’ll run past them. Our offense now can come at you at every angle. We have a lot of weapons.”
Despite the Kustok-Johnson connection, the defenses owned much of the day. All three quarterbacks — Kustok, Bob Barz and Matt Danielson — had trouble getting good looks at wide receivers.
The first-team defense picked off a pass, and pass rushers spent much of the day in the face of NU’s quarterbacks.
“The defense has made some progress. They didn’t give up big plays today, ” coach Randy Walker said.
The first-team defense was particularly impressive, sparked by the play of the front seven. In addition to the one interception — which fell in Napoleon Harris’ arms off a deflection — the squad had a number of turnover chances. The secondary forced Kustok to throw into some tight spaces, and the defensive line batted down pass after pass.
“It’s a good evaluation time,” linebacker-turned-defensive end Conrad Emmerich said. “It’s a chance for us to come out here and just let loose — have the guys talk a little smack to each other back and forth. It’s fun, ask anybody out here.
“We’re running to the ball a lot better than when we started out in the spring, and that’ll really put a damper on the big plays. We had a few missed tackles today, a little more than usual, but we’ll just take that in stride.”
Some of those missed tackles came at the heels of freshman Gilles Lezi, who started at tailback in the absence of junior Damien Anderson. Anderson was given the day off by Walker, who said he already was convinced that Anderson was his top back.
Lezi, a member of next year’s recruiting class but eligible to play because he began classes this January, shouldered the load nicely. He carried nine times for 46 yards, although many of his runs were out of the shotgun, a formation unlikely to be used much this fall.
Saturday’s spring game marked the end of practices until August. For now, NU will be limited to the weight room, but Walker doesn’t expect that to lessen his team’s chances this fall.
“We’ll be much better when we show up in August,” he said. “I do believe we can be very good. I think we’re gaining on it.”
