Pat Fitzgerald | Northwestern Head Coach
Opening Statement:
Thanks for being here. I want to congratulate Penn State on a well-deserved win. They beat us in all phases of the game: offensively, defensively and special teams. We knew it, it'd be a challenge for us, especially starting Athan (Kaliakmanis). I thought he handled himself very well. And then again, we're going to nitpick how we played. But I have to handle your first start from 110,000 people on the road. I couldn't be more proud of him for just taking on that challenge. And I told you that he would be poised, and it wasn't going to rattle. And I'm not sure how many plays you'd be rattled. I'd love to be able to see those on film because I didn't see it. He was confident the entire time. Not to say that's the only thing that we looked at today, but that was one of the big factors of our game. We had to find a way to get them in a rhythm early, and for that to happen we have to run the ball very successfully early, and we weren't able to do that. We got ahead early and then just couldn't get it back into rhythm. The rhythm is something that you know, if we don't have rhythm, we're not very good. And we've shown that the last three weeks that when we have rhythm, we're really good. I've got to go back, and it falls on me 100 percent, finding ways to get rhythm on the offensive side. It seems like we got two receivers out, got a quarterback out, running backs kind of in and out, banged up. So we've got to find other ways to generate offense. Defensively, I thought it was a very disappointing performance. That falls on me, the head football coach, and I got to get them to play better. We're tackling high, and people are wiggling their ways out of sacks. We got to find a way to get more pressure on the quarterback. I just didn't like how we played period. I didn't like how we played on defense, and that;s where the disappointing part comes from because we play incredibly hard, we play with that "next time" mentality, and when we don't have it we become average pretty quick. And you know, that was disappointing. I love that we all play hard. There's always fighting on our team. I'm not saying our team quit at all, not even close. But I just didn't like how we played, and that's three weeks in a row. That's my fault 100 percent, but I'll get it fixed. Special teams, we get block tipped. I mean, that's not what we do either. And again, that's my fault. And I got to find out what I'm doing to prepare and what I can do to prepare this particular team and I'll definitely do that.
Q: There were defensive breakdowns. It looked like a missed assignment on the last touchdown. What was happening with those issues?
A: Well I haven't watched the film yet. You know what I mean but to give you a real, honest answer going by what I see in the field and in our conversations. Eyes in the wrong spot, one, and not getting a call. That's why defensive football is so important. You got 11 guys, got to get the call. When we get the call, we're okay. But we got one guy who misses his call, it's not good. We saw it. You know, I thought early we stopped the run pretty well. That was really good, but then they had some explosive plays. You got to give the kid credit he made a heck of a play in the endzone, that number three that's contested, that's hard. So it's going to happen, it's a jump ball. They outcompeted us on that and got the touchdown. We're off the field on the next drive, we get a (pass interference) and score a touchdown after that. And then we get one of our young people confused on what side of the ball he's supposed to be on when he's the boundary corner. Again, that falls on me 100 percent. And I told him in there, I said "listen, we got five games left, we are 4 and 3. We've raised expectations around here," and I think that's where everybody got a really bad taste in their mouth. We expect to win every single game, period. There's a lot of really good things from this game, fortunately, but we did do some things that I needed to see tonight for us to be able to take some huge steps forward, and that's what I'm proud of the team for. But again, I got to be better as head football coach.
Q: Did you guys get behind the sticks quite a bit and fall victim to the crowd? Was that something that Penn State was doing?
A: I think it was a mixture. You know, the umpire… bless him. You're not allowed to say anything, simulate snap count. But with 110,000 people you really think the umpire is hearing anything? Are they saying hut? You know, plus when they're moving? They're making sounds but that's all that's part of having home field advantage when it's that loud. And you know, our guys have to be disciplined. Clap was very different than a sound or a shift or a move. And that got us early, that got us in the first half. We were behind the sticks and we were behind the sticks, again, when we are behind the sticks on offense we're not very good, when we are out of rhythm we're not very good.
Q: You were very complimentary of Penn State's talent. How do you feel you guys are in that category of developing guys to be able to defeat some of these teams?
A: I mean, they're very talented. They've got the number one recruit in the country, a quarterback right there, right. They got the number one running back in the country. We don't have the number one running back in the country and recruiting. I don't know how to really answer your question. I think that what we do is we play really sharp football. We tackle really well on defense, we get takeaways, play incredibly hard, play very smart, run the football, play action passes, control the clock. That's how we're going to win games, just like we beat him in 2019. We are missing our top receiver, and didn't have our quarterback tonight. That wasn't the case in '19. They're a really good football team. When you look at the film, I don't think they played very well against Michigan, and I said that to our entire team. I don't think they played very well against Michigan, and I'm not here to evaluate Penn State's talent or not, but when you look at that film, they played a lot better here then they did against Michigan, and they're a really good football team. There's a reason why they're ranked top-16 in the country. They're a really good football team. I mean, are we ranked top-16 in the country right now in terms of talent, skill and record? No. If that's what you're asking, I mean they showed that they were better than us. They are a really good football team…really good football team. Well coached, James (Franklin) does a great job.