By Skip Myslenski
NUsports.com Special Contributor
His Wildcats have just opened Big Ten play with an 11-point loss to Nebraska and now, at the front end of his press conference, Pat Fitzgerald is saying, "Recurring theme this year. We beat ourselves. Too many self-inflicted wounds. Holding calls. Missed field goals. Missed extra points. Bad eyes. Bad tackling. I'm really disappointed."
His 'Cats have just lost for the third time in four games and now, in the belly of his press conference, Pat Fitzgerald is saying, "These guys better figure it out pretty quick. They better walk out of the locker room, they better hug who they love, they better go too bed and they better wake up and they better get ready to get their rear ends coached off this week. That's what's going to happen. I'm not going to sit here and I'm not going to take it and I'm not going to accept it. So they better buckle it up. They better start hydrating right now. It's not acceptable, the way we're playing, and it starts and ends with me. So I'm going to fix it."
His 'Cats have just concluded a game they littered with misdemeanors and now, at the back end of his press conference, Pat Fitzgerald is recalling a pair of third-and-one holding calls on guard Connor Mahoney that effectively aborted those two possessions. "Those are critical penalties," he is saying now. "You cannot do that and expect to win. Those are the things losers do. And when you're 1-and-3, that's why you're at where you're at. When you self-inflict, when you get penalties in crunch-time situations, when you throw interceptions in the red zone, you miss extra points, you miss field goals— you keep adding all those one-things up, it ends up equaling a loss. We've had three of those games and the young men in that locker room have to figure out the discipline it takes to be a winner consistently. We've typically been that way in my time. But for whatever reason right now, we are choosing not to do that. I've got to get that fixed. That's the bottom line. We know how to win. But we can't do the things that losers do and that's what we're doing right now. You are what your record says you are and it's not very good. We've got to get it fixed and we've got to get it fixed in a hurry."
Pat Fitzgerald, with his words, provided the big-picture view of his Wildcats' performance Saturday night at Ryan Field, and then the linebacker Jaylen Prater distilled it down to its very essence. He was one of four players who succeeded their coach into the interview room and here he noted quite succinctly, "It goes back to what we keep saying. Doing the little things, doing your job. We've just got to be better at doing the little stuff. That's going to come up every time, every question. At the end of the day, that's what we didn't do today. We didn't do our jobs good enough."
His defense did its job just fine in the first quarter, shutting the Huskers out through those 15 minutes. But in the second quarter it got nicked for a field goal, and then gouged by a 59-yard explosion play (Tommy Armstrong to Alonzo Moore) that led to a Nebraska touchdown on the very next snap. In the third quarter it buckled even further, surrendering touchdown drives of 80 and 79 yards, and by evening's end it had given up 556 yards of total offense, 378 of them by Armstrong (132 rushing, 246 passing).
"He's a good player," Prater would say of the Husker quarterback. "But a lot of it was self-inflicted wounds. We've just got to be better at doing our jobs, the little things."
"Nothing we didn't practice," Fitzgerald would say when asked what led to the Husker's offensive successes. "They were running a zone-read option with the tight end coming back across the formation. Looked like we just didn't fit it right. It's mind-boggling to me. Mind-boggling. We did it all week in practice. So. Again. I've got to look at why when I watch the tape tonight and I've got to fix it."
That offense, in turn, had its own moments, the first coming five minutes into the second quarter when Thorson, off play action left, swept right, cut inside behind the kick-out blocks of center Brad North and guard Tommy Doles and traipsed 42-yards for the touchdown that put the 'Cats up 7-3. They were down 10-7 when they took the second-half kickoff and here again the offense looked proficient, quickly driving to a second-and-11 at the Nebraska 24. But here Thorson threw a skinny post to Macan Wilson in the end zone, and it was picked by Husker safety Aaron Williams.
"It's kind of a base thing. When the safety's there and we're running double post, you've got to cross his face and we didn't do it," Fitzgerald would say when asked about the breakdown on this play. "That was huge."
"Maybe," Thorson would say when that analysis was passed on to him. "But I think I could have hit another guy for a touchdown. I've got to do that. There's a lot of different things that go into it. It's not just the receiver's fault. I probably could have hit another guy for a touchdown."
Instead the Huskers took this turnover and drove for their own touchdown, putting them up 17-7, and now the 'Cat offense did respond, Thorson finding Austin Carr for 24 yards and a touchdown. But now Jack Mitchell, who had pushed a 27-yard field goal attempt wide right in the first quarter, clanked the PAT off the left upright, which left the 'Cats down four. The Huskers now unfurled their second drive of this quarter to push their lead to 11, which is where it remained when the fourth quarter opened.
Here, in these final 15 minutes, the 'Cats would have a pair of possessions. The first started promisingly. But on a third-and-one from their own 46, Mahoney's second holding call of the evening negated a 14-yard scamper by Justin Jackson and led to a punt. The second, in this affair's final four minutes, ended with Husker corner Joshua Kalu jumping an out to Carr and grabbing off his team's second interception of the half. As he celebrated the 'Cat receiver remained on his knees, a stark tableau of disappointment.
Pat Fitzgerald later said the kicker's job is "Obviously wide open right now." He noted that Nebraska had gone 8-of-15 on third-and-fourth down conversions while his team had gone 5-of-16 in those situations and said, "There's the problem. We're not playing good team football. We're not getting off the field on third down and we're not sustaining drives by picking up third downs." He also said, "We've got to take a hard look at what we're doing, we've got to take a hard look at who we're doing it with" and finally he said, "We've obviously got to play more guys."
But the last words here shall go to Austin Carr, who had earlier provided this night's final snapshot. "We're close, and as a team we're tired of being close," he said here. "Offensively we need to finish. Defensively we need to put a whole game together. I'm telling the guys (as one of the team's captains) we have to come together stronger. We can't let this break us. We can't let these losses ruin our whole season. We can't throw in the towel. We have to keep pushing."
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