If you’re looking for 60 minutes of textbook football coaching Saturday, keep your eyes off Randy Walker.
He rarely calls plays, leaving the nuts and bolts to an assembly of assistants jammed into a cubicle seven stories above field level. In-game speeches and consultations are usually delegated to others, such as animated linebackers coach Pat Fitzgerald.
Instead, Walker takes on the role of glorified clapper/referee haggler during games, content with giving up the controls.
Like it or not, Walker isn’t a big factor on Saturdays. Some questionable gameday decisions this season trace back to the fact that he’s more preparation prophet than game guru. He’ll tell you the real work starts on Monday morning, the first day of next season.
“You can’t do much about football from August to December,” he says.
The goal is simple: get players to where they need to be. After the opening kick, it’s out of his hands.
But looking back on this root canal of a season, Walker couldn’t even get his troops to square one. Asked to reveal this season’s turning point or moment of definition, Walker looked down in disgust, then stated the obvious: “Air Force.” That’s Game 1, for all you keeping score.
He then went on a self-hating rant, criticizing his personnel decisions, admitting his misperception of the team’s development on Opening Day and questioning how much his team learned to compete in the offseason.
The first two faults are excusable. Coaches make mistakes. Tony Stauss looked like the right guy to me. So did an offense with great depth at the skill positions. However, the third fault is unacceptable, especially for a Walker-coached team.
After four years at the helm, Walker should be getting complete-game efforts from his players. He shouldn’t get quarter-long dry spells against Ohio State and Minnesota, or no-shows against Penn State and Purdue. Rather, he needs flickers of hope by now: A stop on 3rd-and-7 at Minnesota with 2:17 left, maybe an early lead against No. 6 Iowa on the road. NU never pulled off the extraordinary this season. In truth, the Wildcats haven’t for 19 games.
In 2000, NU also had dry spells (the second quarter against Michigan, the first half against Minnesota), but it gutted out games and pulled off the unbelievable. It would be impossible to ask that of this squad in this season, but a pinch of promise would suffice.
“Frustrating,” running back Noah Herron labels 2002. “Not playing up to our ability and not being on the same page.”
A lack of cohesion was evident in NU’s game strategy, execution and response to adversity. And, as Walker will attest, forming that competitive bond is his main offseason responsibility, one he has fulfilled in the past.
“He’s a guy who’s going to push you and push you and push you,” said Mike Bass, Walker’s former quarterback at Miami (Ohio), after the coach was hired at NU in 1999. “Some people can take it better than others.”
So maybe Walker and these players don’t mesh, but from the looks of it, they’re going to have to make the best of it.
Walker’s season kicks off on Monday. He’s got nine months to craft a competitor for 2003.
“Woody Hayes said you roller skate in the winter and ice skate in the summer,” Walker says.
The ice is getting thin — Walker’s got one year to win.
Adam Rittenberg is a Medill senior. He can be reached at [email protected].
