After Jonathan Fields didn’t see a minute of playing time in his third disappointing season at Northwestern, he had a talk with his mother, Carolyn Fields.

He hadn’t been the same since the passing of his father just before his high school graduation in 2001. He had no desire to be at NU or to play football. Carolyn Fields decided it was time for that to change.

“She was like, ‘Your dad is gone, but I’m still here, so you still have someone you need to live for,'” Fields said. “That’s what got me going. It’s not fair to my mom that I just quit my life because my dad died.”

Fields, a Houston native, is extremely close to his mother but was just as close to his father. He saw his dad every day even though his parents were divorced.

“He was my best friend. I’d rather hang out with him than hang out with my friends,” Fields said, his voice soft as he recalled the day he stopped by his dad’s house on the way to an optometrist appointment.

He found his 69-year-old father dead of a heart attack.

Even after his father passed away, things back home continued to call his attention away from football. During his second year of college, he became a father himself.

“My baby Kaitlyn is at home in Houston right now, so I’ve just got football and school,” said Fields, who sees his daughter once a month. “She will be 2 in December. I like to play with her a lot — she softened me up.”

Fields said the distractions off the field prevented him from being completely focused on doing what he had to do on the football field.

But after his mother talked to him about how he was living, the 5-foot-9 receiver changed his approach to NU football so much that junior quarterback Brett Basanez described the difference as “night and day.”

“I wasn’t going to come to school,” Fields said. “I just wanted to give up on life. I’m barely getting over it right now.”

Fields didn’t go home this past summer like he had the previous two years. He worked hard in the weight room and during running drills, and he passed his conditioning drills for the first time. By the end of the off-season, Fields had become an Iron Cat, a weight-lifting distinction he had never come close to achieving.

“To be an Iron Cat here is a pretty significant thing,” coach Randy Walker said. “Before we even started playing football, his tremendous gains in the weight room, his outstanding conditioning level, all of those things he did — he made a statement saying ‘I’m someone to be reckoned with.'”

The hard work in the offseason paid off immediately. In the opening game of the season, Fields exploded onto the college football scene. He caught eight passes for 202 yards and three touchdowns in the Cats’ 45-42 loss to TCU.

Though he hasn’t caught a touchdown since the first game, Fields is second on the team with 25 catches for 363 yards.

“I have a new attitude toward the game,” Fields said. “It feels great ’cause I always knew I could do it. It was just a matter of me putting my mind together.”

Walker certainly is glad Fields was able to get things together this year because he adds another dimension to a dangerous NU attack. Despite his size, Fields is one of the fastest players on the team, and the Cats look to exploit that whenever they can.

“A kid that can run the way he can run and can change directions the way that he can — if (opponents) are playing a certain defense that’s going to give him the ball, he’s going to be able to make plays,” NU wide receiver coach Garrick McGee said.

McGee had no problem praising the redshirt junior, but that didn’t stop the coach from teasing Fields earlier: “They’re doing a story about you? What are they, out of ideas?”

Fields stood flexing in a pose better suited to Hulk Hogan’s stature than his own small frame. He turned to his coach, kissed his bicep and laughed. “What can I say coach?”

Reach Paul Tenorio at [email protected].