The problem is in the numbers.
Allowing 40 points five times this year. Allowing 40 points eight times in the last 12 games. Allowing 333.8 rushing yards a game this season, 45 yards worse than the second-worst team in Division I-A football.
The 116th-ranked total defense. The 117th-ranked rushing defense. The 111th-ranked scoring defense. Out of 117 teams.
“I’m frustrated for our defense because we can’t stop anybody right now,” Northwestern defensive tackle Colby Clark said. “I think everyone is frustrated, but I couldn’t tell you what’s wrong.”
Neither can anyone else. Coaches have been hired. Schemes have been altered. Films have been watched.
All to no avail.
“I can’t pinpoint what’s gone wrong,” senior Raheem Covington said. “A lot of games we couldn’t stop the run, and then there have been a lot of games where we couldn’t stop the pass. It’s a lot of things.”
It could be youth: NU has four freshman and five sophomore starters. It could be inexperience: NU has only four returning starters on this year’s team. It could be size: NU has one of the smallest front fours in the conference.
“The problem must be a little bit of everything,” NU coach Randy Walker said. “If it was just one thing it would be easy to deal with, but it’s not just one thing.”
Offense-Oriented Coach
High-scoring shootouts, miracle finishes, Zak Kustok and Damien Anderson were the trademarks of NU’s 2000 Big Ten Championship season. Not the defense. The Wildcats’ identity came from the spread offense and an offensive-minded skipper.
In Randy Walker’s second season in Evanston, the team earned a trip to the Alamo Bowl, despite a defense that allowed more than 30 points and 400 yards a game. But Walker said the statistics — both then and now — are deceiving.
“I think the thing that is misleading is the style of play we have with the no-huddle offense,” Walker said. “It’s sure difficult on defenses, and we definitely don’t play an offense conducive to defense. Our defense isn’t often given enough credit for what they’re forced to do and the pressure they’re put under.”
The fast-paced, no-huddle attack is designed to tire out opposing defenses. But a side effect is that it keeps the Cats’ defense on the field, also tiring it out. Walker said he may consider re-evaluating the whole system in the future.
Walker isn’t the one scrutinizing the defense’s every move. The coach played running back at Miami (Ohio) from 1972-1975, and in 14 years of coaching as an assistant, he never oversaw defense.
“I don’t know if the defense was overlooked, but the offense was definitely concentrated on more,” said Gabe Nyenhuis, who left the NU squad during the 2000 season. “It’s not like defense wasn’t important, but he played offense. That’s what he knows.”
This season, Walker has made an effort to focus more on his defense.
“I’ve probably spent more time sitting in the defensive staff room in the last year than the previous nine years,” Walker said. “I have gotten a lot more involved, but I give people freedom to make decisions and run their schemes.”
In his 13 years as a head coach, Walker hasn’t personally known any of his defensive coordinators before hiring them. When he came to NU, he retained Jerry Brown as defensive coordinator. Walker didn’t know current defensive coordinator Greg Colby before he interviewed him last spring to replace Brown.
Colby has installed a new defensive scheme this year. It gives opposing offenses more packages and has beefed up the line to stop the run.
Still, Walker worries more about personalities than formations.
“I’m a people guy who thinks the most important thing is to get the right fit as long as I know the coach is confident, has a plan, and knows how to execute it,” Walker said.
The defense has failed to execute basic fundamentals this year, and Walker has stressed the importance of tackling and getting off blocks. Two years ago the defense didn’t emphasize such skills, Nyenhuis said.
“When the defense played bad, we would do ridiculously physical drills that would waste your legs,” Nyenhuis said. “We did nothing to work on fundamentals — it was always more punishment stuff.”
Black hole in the middle
Since 1999, opposing running backs have had little trouble finding their way through the middle of NU’s defense. The center of the line has been a black hole for NU.
Promising defensive tackles — some of whom were starters — have left the team for other schools, for personal reasons or because of injuries. This year, the Cats were left with a pair of young defensive tackles who haven’t had the chance to bulk up.
“It has been a weak spot for the past few years,” Walker said. “Part of it is when I got the job here, we lost two or three guys on the defensive line that would would have been seniors this year and would have really helped us.”
The bad luck started in Walker’s first year, when All-Big Ten tackle Jeff Dyra broke his foot and was sidelined for the season. Before the injury, Dyra had clogged running lanes and provided senior leadership at the core of the defense.
Nyenhuis transferred in 2000 and now starts at defensive tackle for No. 20 Colorado. Last year, five different players started at tackle after the two preseason starters, upperclassmen Pete Konopka and Pete Chapman, suffered injuries and played one game combined.
This year, sophomore Thomas Derricks, the strongest weightlifter in the program, was slated to start. But the prized 2001 recruit who chose NU over Nebraska, Notre Dame and Penn State left school before this season for personal reasons.
“I think we miss Thomas, and he was a great football player,” defensive tackle Matt Anderson said. “I don’t think he was the answer, but he would have helped.”
Without Derricks, the Cats have relied on sophomores Clark and Luis Castillo, who have combined to start more than 30 games the past two seasons. The duo is the only pair of opening-day, starting underclassmen tackles in the conference, crunching helmets with 300-pound linemen without having much time to add muscle in the weight room.
“We need to get them bigger, and I think both can play around 300 pounds,” Walker said. “I would love to have 320-pound guys who could explode off the ball. Right now, we do not have that guy in the program, but I think we have some guys who could get there.”
Castillo, who weighs 290 pounds, said he has gained about 15 pounds of muscle the past two seasons. The 280-pound Clark said he has added 40 pounds since he got to Evanston and has increased his bench press by more than 100 pounds.
Adding weight at defensive tackle is an obstacle many teams face in a conference with power running teams such as Penn State, Ohio State and Michigan.
“We’d like to have guys who have size in the interior line,” said Wisconsin coach Barry Alvarez. “But if they don’t have the size, we like to have someone who has growth potential and could become a bulky player.”
Alvarez and other coaches settle for players who can add weight because big and fast defensive tackles are the most difficult to recruit, even for the best coaches in the country.
“Anytime you can find a big defensive lineman, you take him,” said Mississippi State defensive coordinator Joe Lee Dunn, who is renowned as one of the best defensive coordinators in the country. “There’s a premium on those guys. Everyone in America wants them.”
NU starts at a disadvantage in the rat race for big men, said national recruiting guru Tom Lemming.
“Out of the top 100 defensive tackles, they can only recruit about 30 of them because of the school’s (academic) standards, and the talent pool is very slim for the Wildcats at defensive tackle,” Lemming said. “It’s probably good they go after smaller guys rather than overweight guys because they could put on the muscle in college. It just takes time.”
A Change in Attitude
The size and weight of the defensive tackles is easy to measure, but confidence and attitude can’t be calculated with a scale or a yard stick.
And after allowing opponents to score at will most of the season, NU’s morale
has suffered.
“A lot of times we go out there, and we all lose our confidence after the other team scores,” Castillo said. “We lose the belief that our defense can be great.”
The defense hasn’t been great since the mid-90s and, in 1995, led the nation in scoring defense. NU linebackers coach Pat Fitzgerald, a member of the 1995 defense and a two-time national defensive player of the year, said a change in attitude was key to that team’s turnaround.
“We were sick and tired of losing, we were sick and tired of being called the ‘Mildcats,’ and we were sick and tired of being called the joke of the Big Ten,” Fitzgerald said. “We made a choice together, 11 guys, that we’re going to play as one. When that happens, you have success.”
Consistency could be a key to success and a change in attitude, according to NU’s coaches. After forcing three turnovers and holding Ohio State to 27 points Oct. 5, the defense appeared to turn a corner.
But two weeks, two 400-yard rushing performances and two 40-point games later, the Cats’ defense is shaken.
“We either give up 28 points in a quarter or seven,” defensive end Ray Bogenrief said. “It seems like we either stop them three-and-out or they go and score a touchdown on us. I think one of the main things we need to work on is not losing our confidence because they get a first down.”
When things have gone bad for NU, they have gone very bad. Colby believes his unit needs to play with confidence, but he thinks the team needs to have success first.
“It’s like the chicken and the egg,” Colby said. “You have to have success with what you’re doing before becoming something they buy into 100 percent. And even though they buy into it now, it’s not as deep down inside yet because we’ve not had success yet.”
The team has not won a Big Ten game in more than a year, and the defense is on its way to finishing at the bottom of the conference for the second consecutive season.
“We need to win,” Colby said. “It’s critical because you get to the point that you keep pounding your head into the wall, working your tail off. If you don’t have success, pretty soon you start questioning yourself.”
? ? ?
While the Cats have been questioning why, critics have attacked their talent level and supporters have pointed to their youth. But Fitzgerald doesn’t blame talent, size or experience.
“I wasn’t a guy who could bench press the world, and I couldn’t run well,” Fitzgerald said. “But I could get off blocks, so if I could do it they can do it, and they just have to trust the technique I’m teaching them.”
In Fitzgerald’s eyes, the instructional sessions have just begun. He believes the team needs to focus on fundamentals before it can make the next step. And in the coaches’ eyes, the team has not always taken steps forward.
“To be frank, there has not been enough of an increase in trust,” Fitzgerald said. “If it was going in the right direction all the way, we wouldn’t be the 116th-ranked defense in the country.”
