Northwestern head football coach Randy Walker was making his rounds on the team bus coming home from Purdue on Saturday when Sam Simmons looked up at him and said, “I’ll bet you’re mad at me.”
The query summed up the atmosphere on the trek home, Walker said. Just hours earlier, Simmons had fumbled the ball on the second play of the game, leading to an instant Purdue touchdown in the 32-27 NU loss.
But Walker responded with a surprisingly light touch. No yelling. No lecturing.
“Yeah, I wish you wouldn’t have fumbled,” he recalled telling his wide receiver. “But I can’t be mad at a guy who gives his very best.”
The Wildcats (4-3, 2-3 Big Ten) rode back to Evanston after their third loss in four weeks virtually eliminated any shot at the Big Ten title. But as Walker’s players sat thinking about unrealized preseason goals, he tried to lift the mood with some positive words.
“I chose not to sit and dwell in the negative because there’s going to be a lot of people that do that,” Walker said. “We still have a lot to play for and I’m going to be excited about what that is. It’s obviously not a national championship or a Big Ten championship. But there are still a lot of good things to play for.”
Walker paused at the back of the bus to talk with his defensive veterans. Usually speechless after a loss, he was full of encouraging words for Billy Silva, Pat Durr, Napoleon Harris and Kevin Bentley. He assured them that they weren’t witnessing the end of the world.
He then settled down with Zak Kustok for the rest of the trip. The quarterback always sits in the second row of the bus, an honorary spot right behind the coach that makes it easy for Walker to pick his brain after games.
Kustok attempted to escape mental reruns of the loss, slumping in his seat with a set of headphones. But he ended up in a half-hour conversation with Walker analyzing his preseason hopes – and how the team can salvage a season that was supposed to wind up in the BCS.
“Even though we had high expectations and expected things to be better than they were at this point, we have to just continue to move on,” Kustok said.
Before the season started, the football program plastered its goals in 100-point font on a poster in the team meeting room: graduate, be nationally recognized, go to a bowl game, be Big Ten champs, be national champs.
As they spoke on Monday, they seemed to be mentally crossing out most of the list.
And for Kustok, one of several seniors who can now count his remaining games on one hand, the act was especially painful.
“It’s very difficult for us,” he said. “But on the other hand we can’t feel sorry for ourselves, we can’t hang our heads because we have three losses. We still have four games left in the regular season and the possibility of a bowl game.”
Kustok suggested that the Cats need to stop worrying about win totals and bowl games and concentrate on this weekend’s matchup against Indiana.
The team did not meet Sunday, one of six normal practice days lost because of an NCAA infraction earlier in the year. NU penalized itself after results from summer conditioning tests – including those from the Aug. 3 drill where senior safety Rashidi Wheeler collapsed and died – were reported to the coaching staff. The remaining two practices will be nixed the day after games against Indiana and Iowa.
The night off gave players additional time to cool down from Saturday’s loss and let Walker’s message sink in.
When Kustok returned on Monday, he was trying to remain optimistic. He sounded hesitant at first about NU’s fate in the four remaining regular-season games. But he then amended his earlier statement about the “possibility” of a trip to the postseason.
“There’s no doubt in my mind we’re going to a bowl game,” he said.
