By Skip Myslenski
NUsports.com Special Contributor
On further review. . . .
THE 'CATS are still winless in the Big Ten and saddled by a five-game losing streak as they prepare for a Saturday night visit to Indiana, which is a surprising 6-2 overall and 3-2 in conference. So this week, Pat Fitzgerald said at his traditional Monday presser, he'll be having more one-on-ones with his players than he has in the past.
"Just to get the guys to be confident and trust themselves," he explained at one point during that session. "You might not believe me. But they've been working incredibly hard in practice. I don't have any issues at all with attitude. We've got to get them to play cleaner and take it to Saturday."
"Just to do nothing more than encourage them, just really to raise their confidence," he would add at another. "I'll do that at some point this week with Aidan."
THAT WOULD BE AIDAN SMITH, the junior who took over at quarterback when starter Hunter Johnson's knee got dinged in the fourth quarter of the 'Cats' Sept. 28 loss at Wisconsin. He would guide the 'Cats to a pair of scores that afternoon in Madison, but since then his offense has managed just a single touchdown total against Nebraska and Ohio State and Iowa. So that position, not surprisingly, was a topic of conversation on Monday, and that produced this sampling from Fitzgerald:
"We had some nickels we could take and decided not to take them for some reason. Where we had some guys who were open and decided not to take them," he said, referring to last Saturday's game with the Hawkeyes. "Consequently everybody says the o line wasn't very good. The ball should have been out of our hands. . . . You're running a shallow crossing route and the guy is right in front of us, get him the ball. The concept might be covered on the outside, but the guy is open right in front of us. Take the nickel. Take the five yards and let the guy go make a play. We had that multiple times on Saturday. Multiple times. It's just confidence, trust. . . . A lot of the quarterbacks on Sunday, they don't hold the ball real long. The ball is out right now. We're calling a lot of those plays. Sometimes we're seeing them, sometimes we're not."
"We've got to get production out of that room," he also said of the situation in general. "Both guys, obviously, aren't happy with the way they're playing. . .and they want to win in the worst way, and they want to win for their teammates in the worst way. I know probably everybody outside of this building is frustrated. But its not even close to the frustration our guys have. It's my job to keep that going in the right direction, and just stay motivated. Just try to find every little ounce of things to give the guys confidence, and get them to take what the defense gives us. It's not any more complicated than that."
"I would say this," he finally said when asked why, on the weekly depth chart, the starting quarterback is listed as Smith "or" Johnson. "We were dealing with an injury situation a couple weeks ago and we made the decision to go in the direction we've gone. We'll see as things progress. The bottom line is we've got to win, we've got to play better at that position, and so we're going to evaluate every rep, every day. We'll see how things progress. The guys know that. I wish we had things solidified. . . . It's the elephant in the room. It's painfully obvious. But we've got to help them too. You look at the turnover ratio. We're minus nine. We've got to do a better job taking the ball away and making momentum plays. We haven't done that now over the last month. So it's like a perfect storm."
CREATING TURNOVERS is not only something the 'Cats work on every day, it has also been a feature of their best editions, a vital ingredient in their recipe of success. But over their last three games they have created not a single one, and so this topic too was a hot one on Monday.
"Catching the ball. Stripping the ball. Recovering fumbles," Fitzgerald said. "It's not magical. We work our butt off on it every day. Every single day. It's kind of like the quarterback. It's, 'Why is there this disconnect and it's not happening on Saturday?' Usually when it rains it pours a little bit there. We're in the Sahara desert right now. It would be nice to get some rain."
"In the games sometimes you get caught up in the moment. 'I just want to get the ball carrier down. I want to make the tackle,'" defensive end Joe Gaziano said when asked for an explanation. "But you need to be thinking of getting the ball out. That's the ultimate play on defense, to create opportunities for our offense. Turnovers are key in a game like that (against Iowa) when you're going back and forth against a Big Ten West opponent. To get the ball out you ned to be thinking about it during the play, and rely on your training. We do those drills everyday. Punch it out, rake it out, scrape it out, whatever it may be. We've got to be thinking about it throughout the play."
"It's been tough," concluded corner Trae Williams. "Just knowing our coaches, how hard they stress it going all the way back to spring ball. We stress it ourselves. We always talk in the db room, 'Don't wait for the play. Go make the play happen.' You don't know when the play's going to come to you, you don't know when the running back's not going to be holding the ball tightly. So we need to force the issue. I talk to the safeties, I talk to the corners before every drive. 'Let's go try to make a play.' We just haven't been able to make them."
ONE GUY who has consistently made plays is senior Gaziano, who has 5.5 sacks on the season and 26.5 in his career. That leaves him just 1.5 shy of the school record set in the mid-'90s by Casey Dailey, who has been, Gaziano admitted Monday, "The screen saver on my phone since the off-season. It's something I've been looking at a long time. I've been motivated to reach that record. it's something special for me to make a lasting impression on the program, to have the career sack record. I've worked in the off-season perfecting my craft and to slowly pass a lot of guys I've looked up to—Dean Lowry; Corey Wootton; VInce Brown; Ifeadi (Odenigbo), to pass him this season was really special. To pass Casey Dailey would be a dream come true. That's something special I'm looking forward to. But it isn't over. I've still have to get those two sacks and hopefully more to help the team win games."
QUICKLY NOTED: Defensive end Earnest Brown IV, who missed the Iowa game, is done for the year.
"You hate to see a guy like that go out," Gaziano said of him. "He's played a lot of great ball and was starting to come along really well. You hate to see a guy hitting his stride get an injury, and you hope his recovery is speedy and goes well."
Defensive tackle Trevor Kent also also sat out that game and, Fitzgerald said Monday, "We hope to get him back sooner rather than later."
But he said wide out JJ Jefferson, who was injured against Iowa, is out this week against the Hoosiers.
AND FINALLY, Gaziano, when asked the mood of the team:
"We have another opportunity in front of us. We can do math. We know how many games we have left. We know how many are needed to win to get to a bowl game. We're excited to play an opponent we haven't seen before. Ready to get after it. Spirits are up. We know what we have to do to get to the post-season."