Some will miss the ill-timed audibles, the telegraphed draw plays, the stomach-wrenching overthrows, the creative genius, the relentless resolve, even the laughable two-handed pump fakes. No. 10 will no longer dance around Northwestern’s backfield; he’s taking his act to an NFL camp or a Fortune 500 office near you.
But any remaining Zak Kustok memories will likely be swept away in the wake of a Tony Stauss projectile. When Stauss takes the field for the Northwestern football team in five months, he’ll do things Kustok could only dream of, save for the last 30 seconds of a nailbiter.
Stauss will complete the 50-yard pass and find the open man on a rollout or a bootleg. He’ll sit in the pocket and fire passes through defenders just because he can. Coming out of high school, this blue chipper had more suitors than Britney on breakup day, and come September, he’ll show us why.
It will be only natural to latch onto this textbook signal-caller, drool over the new downfield passing attack and croon about the future of NU football. But before you tumble into Tony-mania, remember what makes a talented quarterback into a great one.
Football games are not won with fly patterns (that’s NFL Blitz, to which I welcome all comers). They are won with steel nerves, the ability to see through the odds in late-game situations and drag the squad – sometimes kicking and screaming – to the winner’s circle. Great quarterbacks motivate drained linemen to block and convince knock-kneed tailbacks to churn out the extra yards. They are called upon to generate just enough push on 4th-and-1 and turn a sure sack into a scintillating scramble.
Does this description sound familiar? It’s Kustok’s bio.
His throwing ability makes Tim Wakefield feel like Pedro, but no one ever questioned his head. White flags were not in his repertoire. Not once did he quit before the final whistle, and he carried his teammates through four unforgettable and exhausting games. And the dead arm? His downfield touch could be likened to Shaq’s free-throw shooting, but he saved his most impressive heave for when it mattered most – with two seconds left in a tie game at the Metrodome.
Napoleon Harris will be a first-round pick in Saturday’s NFL Draft, but if the scouts were judging players purely based on heart, Kustok would top the charts.
Stauss may have the optimum physique, the ideal preparation and the necessary self-confidence, but he can’t do what Kustok did. Not yet, at least. While he might wow crowds with arm strength and pocket poise, his true test will come late in the fourth quarter against some Big Ten team in some hostile environment. That is when we’ll see what Tony Stauss is all about.
An advantage he holds over most first-year starting quarterbacks is that he’s seen what he has to do. He was watching when Kustok brought his team back from a 21-point fourth-quarter grave at Minnesota. He was charting plays when Kustok moved the ball into field-goal range against Michigan State, moments after Charles Rogers had pulled the plug on the Cardiac Cats. The trail has been mapped out for Stauss, but the hard part is taking that first shaky step.
“I studied him religiously last year,” Stauss said Saturday after a spring scrimmage. “Just the way he carried himself and the way he conducted the team in between plays, fans don’t really see that kind of stuff. He did that to perfection, and you can really take a lot from a guy like that.”
It’s the right answer, but Stauss will have to build his own legacy. You can’t merely learn to play like Kustok. He had an inherent ability to dominate the endgame, a trait with which few are blessed. Randy Walker, the man who wooed Stauss to Evanston, recognizes this fact.
“I don’t ever want him to be like Zak, I want him to be Tony Stauss,” Walker said. “But he had the benefit of watching one of the best in terms of preparation and gameday management. I’ve been coaching college football 26 years – I think he’s the best I’ve ever seen.”
Walker hinted that the Cats will stretch the field better with a more able-armed signal-caller. Stauss will get plenty of opportunities to strut his stuff on the gridiron. But when he faces that 4th-and-a-mile with a handful of ticks left in Happy Valley or East Lansing, Mich., his arm and legs won’t carry the Cats to victory.
Those answers are stored away in the memory bank of the 2000 and 2001 seasons. Filed under Kustok, Zak.
NU hopes Stauss can cash in.
Adam Rittenberg is a Medill junior. He can be reached at [email protected].
