Football

MADISON, Wis. — The play call that drove Northwestern fans crazy against Wisconsin goes back to a rainy Saturday in Boston at the end of February.

At the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference — a well-attended summit that focuses on the intersection between sports and analytics — over 50 teams attended a job fair to find new additions to their analytics staffs. There were two recruiters representing college football programs. Both were from Northwestern.

After the Wildcats’ (1-3, 0-2 Big Ten) 24-15 loss to No. 8 Wisconsin (4-0, 2-0), coach Pat Fitzgerald cited the previous conversations he’s had with analytics experts as the reason he went for the two point conversion down 15 points with 8:45 left in the game and again down 9 points four minutes later. Instead of making it a clean 14-point deficit on the first attempt, the analytics told the Wildcats to try to cut a bigger dent in the deficit.

“You go for two early, which unfortunately a lot of people don’t believe in,” Fitzgerald said. “You can’t ever know what’s going to happen next so you have to assume that we need to score as many points as we can right here right now.”

It’s all explained on Fitzgerald’s play sheet, which he fastens to his belt loop and carries with him every game. At one point, a person who’d crunch the number explained to Fitzgerald how to handle situations like this, and he said the conversation was a learning experience for him after decades of football experience.

This week, he watched a YouTube video of Baltimore Ravens coach John Harbaugh explaining why a team should take as many points as it can when making a multi-score comeback. Baltimore went for two when it was down 11 points in the fourth quarter last weekend against the Chiefs and Harbaugh drew criticism for the decision, but he said weeks of preparation go into decisions like these.

“If you do your homework online, even, and you pull up how football analytics work you can dig up a lot of information,” Harbaugh said Monday in the video Fitzgerald referenced. “While you may think getting it to 10 is the thing to do, it’s the thing to do if you want to get into overtime. It’s not the thing to do if you want to win the game in regulation if that’s the thing you’re trying to do.”

The reason NU lost Saturday wasn’t because of its decision to go for the conversion — it had more to do with executing the play calls. The Cats got the first opportunity for a two point conversion after a touchdown cut their deficit to 15 points. On the play, backup quarterback Aidan Smith threw a shuttle pass to redshirt freshman running back Drake Anderson, who was tackled behind the line of scrimmage.

After another touchdown that made it a 24-15 game, Smith connected again on a pass to Anderson in the backfield, but the running back lost yardage for second time and it remained a two-score game.

NU got the ball back again for two-minute drill, but the Cats turned the ball over on downs before they made into the redzone. Smith, playing in his second consecutive game after starter Hunter Johnson left with a knee injury, said he stands by the play calls in two of the game’s defining moments.

“Those are plays we rep during the week and went well,” Smith said. “We’ve just got to trust in the playcalling. Those are the two plays that do work and it just comes down to execution. Part of that can be on me and part of that just comes down to the execution of those plays.”

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