DETROIT –
Wait a minute … What was all that one-in-a-million talk?
Just two days before Northwestern was to take on Eastern Michigan, coach Pat Fitzgerald loosely paraphrased Lloyd Christmas from “Dumb and Dumber” when discussing the chances running back Tyrell Sutton would play Friday night.
“Well, as they said in ‘Dumb and Dumber,’ ‘One in a million. Are you saying there’s a chance? Yeah, of course,'” Fitzgerald said after Wednesday morning’s practice.
Sutton was on the field three minutes into Friday’s game at Ford Field. He hadn’t played since he was injured in the Wildcats’ second game of the year against Nevada, which was five weeks ago.
On NU’s first offensive series, there was Sutton in the backfield for one play, only to get yanked out right away. Then after a series off, Sutton got another play, this time he actually got to touch the ball – flipping it to wide receiver Eric Peterman for a reverse that went for 21 yards and set up a field goal to make the score 7-3 near the end of the first quarter. Then back to the bench he went. He played in one more series and almost got the ball, as quarterback C.J. Bacher threw a screen pass in his general direction.
That was all Sutton played, but that was a lot for someone not even listed on the depth chart.
“We weren’t sure if Tyrell was going to be 100 percent ready to go,” Bacher said. “But we knew we could use him as a decoy, so we were able to do that and Eric (Peterman) had a very nice run.”
So Peterman, a wide receiver, ended up with two more carries than Sutton’s zero. The former Big Ten freshman of the year was a decoy.
Fitzgerald said he didn’t want to risk getting Sutton injured, but then why play him at all? Why have him be a part of a reverse – a play where the running back who gives the ball to the receiver routinely gets knocked to the ground by a defender or two.
“We wanted to get him out there and get him going,” Fitzgerald said. “Getting ready in pre-game warm-ups he felt pretty good. Our plan was to use him but not overuse him.”
Three plays aren’t enough to “get him going.” And Fitzgerald couldn’t have thought he needed a decoy to beat lowly Eastern Michigan, which is 2-6 on the season.
Sutton was mismanaged by the coaching staff last season, as he received only 189 carries (61 fewer than in his record-setting freshman campaign), and now it has continued this year. There was no reason to risk Sutton getting injured for three plays, especially three plays against a Mid-American Conference bottom dweller. Sutton should have played enough to actually get real work or not at all.
By all indications, he’s fully healthy. He practiced all week and looked fine in his few plays.
There’s no way to know for sure, however, as Sutton wasn’t made available to the media after practices last week or after Friday’s game. And Fitzgerald, like most coaches, is as evasive as possible when talking about injuries.
It would seem like Sutton is ready to play for real next week at Purdue, but if this week is anything like next week, no one not on the team will know about it until game time.
But least if he is used as a decoy against Purdue it would be almost worth it to get another Big Ten win.
Gameday editor Abe Rakov is a Medill senior. He can be reached at [email protected].
