Sept. 29, 2010
By Skip Myslenski
NUsports.com Special Contributor
It is called The Pit and not without reason. The work done there is brutal and bestial and borderline barbaric, fierce and ferocious and furiously frenetic, viral and vicious and vibrating always with violence. It is an unforgiving place, raw and rowdy, riotous and unruly, tempestuous and tumultuous, and to survive its laborers must be not only strong and steeled and inured to savagery. They must also possess the stoutest of hearts.
Rarely, during a game, is the public's eye drawn here. It is attracted instead to the quarterback's whippet arm or the running back's beguiling move or the graceful dance unfurled by some nimble wide receiver. But The Pit, where no such niceties abound, is the place where the gravest action unfolds, and it is there too that the 'Cat defensive linemen earn the scholarships they were given.
"You just hear a whole bunch of smashing and spitting and crawling and cutting. It's crazy. It's crazy," is how one of them, senior tackle Corbin Bryant, describes his place of business.
"It's the most-physical place you're ever going to be," says another, the junior end Kevin Watt. "Every single play you're hitting someone. It's tough. Every single play you're hitting a guy and you have to get off him and make a tackle."
He arrived here in advance of the '08 season and into the trash bin went the read-and-react style the 'Cat defense had long played. The linemen, in that scheme, would absorb blows as they analyzed the play unfolding before them, but now that would no longer be their fate. Now, under the aegis of their new defensive coordinator Mike Hankwitz, they would be the aggressor, the attacker, the assault weapon unleashed, and here they would attempt always to disrupt those pretty patterns offenses like to paint.
"I thought that was the hallmark of what we'd done in the mid-90s when we were pretty good on defense," says 'Cat head coach Pat Fitzgerald, explaining the move. "So when he came in here, the attitude we wanted to have in the front is attack. We changed our mindset upfront a little bit and it's paid dividends."
"But you talk about the ultimate dirty job," says Hankwitz himself. "You're up there, you've got a 300-plus pound guy across from you and you're smashing, play after play. It takes a mental toughness and you can't let it slip a little. If you start not attacking, not getting up (into the blocker), all of a sudden they're coming after you. So it takes a tremendous mental toughness to keep doing it, especially as the game goes along."
The Way Of Hank, then, has nothing to do with Zen or Taoism or any of the esoteric routes to true bliss. His Way is more prosaic, more physical, even-more psychologically daunting, and with its arrival the linemen's already dirty job just got a lot dirtier. An adjustment period would follow as each adapted to this new Way, which tolerated no rest, no relaxation, no retreat from aggression. For if any one of them wilted, explains Fitzgerald, "Now you just become a read-and-react guy with an attack mentality and you get vertical seams in the defense and you get a diagonal runway. So it goes hand in hand. You've got be mentally tough and you've got to be physically tough."
But even the stoutest of pack animals can break under its burden and so The Way also demanded a stockpile of bodies, that stockpile that differentiates the current 'Cats from so many of their predecessors. Inside they have not only starters Bryant and the redshirt junior Jack DiNardo. They can also roll in the true freshman Will Hampton and the redshirt sophomore Brian Arnfelt and the 315-pound redshirt junior Niko Mafuli. ("He's a big sucker, now, the biggest interior guy we have, size and strength, and he's learning to attack," Hankwitz says of the last.) Then, at the ends, they have not only starters Watt and junior Vince Browne. They can also roll in the redshirt freshman Tyler Scott and the redshirt sophomore Quentin Williams.
"Fortunately," says Hankwitz, "we have the depth where we have guys who can go in there and we can keep a guy a little fresher. When you play teams like Minnesota, 350-pounders, 320-pounders, and their whole deal -- the Wisconsins, the Minnesotas, the Iowas -- their whole deal is to try and control the line of scrimmage. So we have to be able to do that in those kinds of games. They're going to try and get you off balance to be able to run the ball and get you in second-and-four, second-and-five, where you don't know what to defend. So that depth can only help us in the long run."
"It's critical. Critical," echoes Fitzgerald. "That's why you see us running so many guys through. You want to have a wave. If you have just one single wave, you can't really make a difference. But you just keep hitting them with different waves and you can erode hopefully the advantage they have in size. . . Earlier in the season I thought this was the deepest group that we've had, top to bottom. It might not have the flash name like a (Corey) Wootten or a (John) Gill or a (Luis) Castillo or a (Barry) Cofield. But we're playing a lot of guys and, hopefully, by the end of the year, we will (have that flash name.)"
Aggression and indefatigability are not all that is demanded by The Way of Hank, which has fashioned a defense that is surrendering a mere 15.5 points-per-game as it prepares for its Saturday visit to Minnesota. It also requires the flexibility he is granted by the depth now surrounding him. So, on passing downs, DiNardo exits and Watt slides into his tackle spot and Williams takes over his spot at end. "Who're the rabbits? Who can get in the backfield and affect the quarterback?" explains Fitzgerald. "We've done that for years. Think back a couple years, we put Corey on the nose against Missouri in the (Alamo) bowl game. So we're going to be creative, we're going to play to our best strengths and also try to take advantage of some things we might see on tape to help our guys be successful."
"We're trying," says Hankwitz, "to get a little more quickness and athleticism in there to go against the guards, and we're trying to get a little more speed off the edge to make the tackles have to stretch. We're trying to get better matchups. There's times when we still need to get more pressure from four-man rushes. But I think it's expanding."
"It's really interesting to be around Coach Hank and his style of defense," Williams finally says. "Coach Hank's been around a lot, he's been around the Big Ten. We have a lot of guys who can make plays who might not be a great guy for the 3-4 or a great guy for the 4-3. You've got to do a lot of different stuff today. We play to our strengths and that's something Coach Hank does really well. He caters to the type of players we have. It seems he's done that everywhere he's been. We're happy to have him here."
"It's definitely more fun to attack," Corbin Bryant says with a smile.
"It's a lot better," says Vince Browne.
"Everyone attacks. It's preached to us over and over. If we're not attacking, we're not doing something right," says Kevin Watt.
"It's who we are, it's what we recruit to, that's our identity," says Pat Fitzgerald.
But Hank says it's a dirty job.
"It is tough," says Bryant. "But through the off-season we go through different stages like Winning Edge and spring practice to get us mentally ready to push on 300-pounds every play."
"One of the things we stress here is having a positive mental attitude and that's what we work on all season long and all off-season long," says Watt. "So I really feel we have a strong mental attitude to go out there and beat on guys."
Does it help being familiar with the system?
"I think that's a big part of (the line's success)," says Jack DiNardo. "All the guys who play now, most of us have been in the system three years and it's become more than our defensive philosophy. It's our attitude, the attacking style. It's like muscle memory now and easier for us to bring to the games."
"The more you're thinking (as they did during the adjustment period), the slower you play. That's another reason I think that experience is crucial," says Browne.
And the depth?
"Our coaches say all the time, 'Go as hard as you can, as long as you can,'" says Browne. "Just knowing you've got somebody who'll pick up the flag and keep everything going out there allows you to go out and play as hard as you can."
"Our mantra is 'As hard as you can, as long as you can,'" says Bryant. "So when you need a break, you have one of your brothers come in to help you out. That makes our job a lot easier."
"That's been a huge advantage for us," says DiNardo. "Being able to have fresh bodies in there, guys being able to go extremely hard, play at an extremely high level, then get out and someone else comes in and plays at a high level. That's going to be an advantage for us the rest of the season."
"Just being around the same guys so long, there's an unspoken trust you develop," says Watt. "It's not necessarily just being on the field together. It's being around each other all the time. I've been hanging out with Corbin for four years, I've been hanging with Vince, Jack and a lot of these guys three, four years. It's like a really good basketball team. When people have played together for awhile, they know where people are going to be, they know what they're going to call, they know when to pass the ball. I feel that's like us on the D line. We know how we are on the field and how we blend with each other. It's a big benefit."
The final word on The Way of Hank shall go to Watt, who says: "Being able to attack someone instead of reading, that's what football is all about. It's being physical. It kind of stunk when you had to sit back and react instead of just go. Now you're the one delivering the blow. What football player doesn't want to do that?"
Check out the full Skip Myslenski NUsports.com Archive!
Be the first to know what's going on with the 'Cats -- Follow @NU_Sports on Twitter and become a fan of Northwestern Athletics on Facebook! Get the latest news, schedule updates, video and interact with NU. For more information on following specific Northwestern teams online, visit our Social Media page!