Ten thoughts on Mick McCall's ouster

Well, that was fast. Northwestern head coach Pat Fitzgerald wasted no time answering the central question of the offseason.

On Sunday, a day after the Wildcats’ season-ending win over Illinois, the Northwestern program announced that Mick McCall would not return as offensive coordinator. Before the Land of Lincoln Trophy could even go to an engraver, the decision that had been debated all season in the Twitterverse was made.

And, in my view, it was the right one.

The release didn’t specify whether the 12-year assistant was fired or he resigned; it intimated that it may have been a mutual decision.

Whatever the reason, the bottom line is that Northwestern’s offense, which has struggled mightily in recent years, will be directed by a new coach moving forward.

Here are my thoughts on the move:

1. Fitz telegraphed his decision a couple weeks ago: Fitzgerald said some things during his press conference before the Minnesota game that seemed, at the time, to be an indictment not only of the quarterbacks, but of McCall.

When talking about the lack of preseason preparation by his QBs, he said, “Should I have anticipated that our play would have been this inconsistent? Nah, not really. But then once we saw that it was, we tried to do some things a little bit differently, but we can’t have quarterback play the way that it is right now and expect to compete to win games consistently and compete to win championships.”

Later, he added, “We’ve got to do a better job coaching them. We’ve got to do a better job developing them… As I talk about things will get fixed, that’s the No. 1 room that I will get fixed. Period. End of discussion. It’s not hard. It’s not complicated. It’s painfully obvious.”

Then, “I believe in all of (the QBs). I believe they’re all good enough to help us win. Andrew (Marty) and Jason (Whittaker) are just chomping at the bit for an opportunity and I think Aidan (Smith) and Hunter (Johnson), the guys that have played, they’ve got to play better and they’ve got to perform better, and we’ve got to coach them better. So that combination of things, we’ll get it fixed.”

Reading between the lines, McCall’s days seemed numbered.

2. McCall’s failure in 2019 was QB development, not stats: While people may point to Northwestern’s dreadful offense this season as Exhibit A in the case against McCall, this season’s failure had more to do with quarterback development than it did poor numbers.

NU was going to experience a falloff after the graduation of four-year starter Clayton Thorson. Still, no one thought it would be this steep as NU ranked 126th out of 130 teams in scoring and 124th in total offense. And the problem, as Fitzgerald said almost weekly throughout the year, was the quarterback position.

The head coach made clear last month that the problem was in preparation by QBs who didn’t think they were going to play. So that’s on the QBs – mainly Johnson and Smith, who started 11 of 12 games. But the fact that neither showed any appreciable improvement during the year and were making the same mistakes at the end of the season that they were in the beginning is on McCall.

Johnson, the former five-star Clemson transfer, often looked like a walkon and battled injuries, as well as a family health crisis. Smith was gutsy but made a lot of mistakes. It wasn’t until Andrew Marty came on in Week 11 against Minnesota, and then again in Saturday’s 29-10 win over Illinois, that the offense showed any signs of life.

That’s the central issue here. Why on earth, over 13 weeks, until Marty came and ran his way to productivity at the position, didn’t NU’s quarterbacks get better? Why didn’t they develop? Fitzgerald was lamenting the same mistakes by his quarterbacks in November that he was in August. That’s unacceptable – as Sunday’s move showed.

3. The offense was trending down. Way down: The truth is, the Wildcat offense had been on a steady downward trend, even if the team enjoyed success on the field. Look at the numbers over the last four seasons:

McCall’s best-scoring team was in 2012, when the Cats averaged 31.7 points per game under Kain Colter and Trevor Siemian as QB1 and QB1A, and with Venric Mark at running back. In seven years since then, that scoring total has eroded to just over half. McCall could never reached that 2012 level again, despite having Northwestern’s all-time passing leader (Clayton Thorson) and all-time rushing leader (Justin Jackson) at his disposal from 2015-17.

4. The offense had grown stale: More than numbers, even, the optics of Northwestern’s attack the last few years were bad. The Wildcat offense seemed to lack imagination.

When Thorson was the quarterback, fans’ pet peeve was the speed option play that never seemed to go anwhere, but was called again and again. The Wildcats didn’t take many shots downfield, making them easier to defend as team’s stacked the box against them without the threat of a vertical game. Third-down throws were often short of the line to gain. Receivers failed to gain separation, even against man-to-man coverage. The Wildcats were always near the bottom of the country in terms of explosion plays.

Some of this was no doubt by design, as Fitzgerald grew more conservative offensively and his notion of “complementary football” built around a dominating defense. And it worked, leading to 36 wins, three bowl victories and a Big Ten West title from 2015-18.

But the team achieved most of that despite the offense, not because of it. It’s possible to have both.

5. Johnson’s struggles looked worse as other transfer QBs flourished: The expectations of the Northwestern fan base may have been unrealistic to start the season, but no one could have foreseen a former five-star prospect performing that poorly. And what made matters worse is the success that other high-profile transfers had.

Georgia transfer Justin Fields, another five-star who was in his first year at Ohio State, lit up the Big Ten and destroyed Northwestern, throwing for four touchdowns in a 52-3 win. Michigan transfer Brandon Peters led Illinois to an upset of Wisconsin, six wins and a bowl berth (he was out on Saturday against Northwestern). Outside of the Big Ten, Alabama transfer Jalen Hurts thrived at Oklahoma, while Ohio State transfer Joe Burrow will likely win the Heisman Trophy at LSU.

Fitzgerald repeated time and again that Johnson was still learning the offense, but Even Purdue’s Austin O’Connell, a third-string sophomore walkon making his first start, beat Northwestern this season, throwing for 271 yards and two TDs (with two INTs) in the process.

It’s unfair to compare quarterbacks in different situations at different schools with different weapons at their disposal, but fans saw all that and wondered what happened to Johnson. Why was it taking him so long to learn McCall’s offense? Is it that difficult to learn? Why can other coordinators get their QBs up to speed more quickly while NU’s couldn’t?

6. The coaching staff is in the midst of a huge transformation: Northwestern’s coaching staff was completely intact from 2010 through 2017. Since then, however, there have been several changes and only five of the nine coaches from that 2010 staff will be employed by Fitzgerald in 2020.

Defensive backs coach Jerry Brown retired and linebackers coach Randy Bates left to become the defensive coordinator at Pitt after the 2017 season. So Fitzgerald moved Matt MacPherson from running backs to defensive backs, and hired Lou Ayeni as running backs coach and Tim McGarigle as linebackers coach. Then Jeff Genyk jumped on board to fill the new special teams coaching position.

Last season, offensive line coach Adam Cushing left to become the head coach at Eastern Illinois and Fitzgerald brought in Kurt Anderson in what has been hailed as a brilliant stroke. Now, McCall’s departure leaves an opening at a coordinator position and the biggest opportunity to influence the program.

The five holdovers from 2017: defensive coordinator Mike Hankwitz, defensive line coach Marty Long, superbacks coach Bob Heffner, wide receivers coach Dennis Springer and MacPherson, albeit in a new role.

7. Expect the next guy to be a name coach: We will speculate about McCall replacement possibilities at another time, but expect Northwestern to go after some established coaching veterans with impressive resumes.

This isn’t your father’s Northwestern that didn’t pay assistants at a level to compete with other Power Five programs. The building of the Walter Athletics Center was a “championship commitment” on the part of the administration and donors, as Fitzgerald likes to say. Don’t expect those same people to skimp in hiring an offensive coordinator that could put the program over the top after sinking $270 million into the Fitz-Carlton. Plus, there’s all that BTN TV money on hand now.

The money will likely be there to go after a Power Five coordinator if that’s the direction Fitzgerald decides to go. As Fitzgerald’s salary has risen – to a reported $5.1 million by USA Today – so has his assistant pool. And remember, both McCall and Hankwitz were big-name hires back in 2008.

Northwestern’s defense is championship caliber. The offense needs to raise its level to match it.

8. There’s still a lot of work to do at QB: No matter who assumes the reins of the offense, the quarterback situation will be up in the air and he will have plenty of work to do.

Marty has shown the most promise and was the only one of the five QBs to take a snap this season who was able to move the offense with any consistency. But he did almost all of it with his legs, and it’s questionable whether a quarterback can run the ball as much as he did – 46 times in two games! – and survive in the Big Ten.

Johnson is by leaps and bounds the most gifted passer, and he gets a partial pass for the injuries and family issues he had to deal with this season. But the fact remains that he looked tentative and overwhelmed in the pocket and his confidence likely needs to be restored – that likely goes for his teammates’ confidence in him, too.

Smith may have proven himself to be a reliable backup but not more. Rumors had TJ Green petitioning for a sixth year, but will now be up for learning a new coordinator’s system for his final fall? Jason Whittaker has only been used as a Wildcat quarterback thus far.

Plus, the one new quarterback NU was going to add to the mix next season, 2020 prospect Aidan Atkinson, took himself out of the running, and NU’s class, with his arrest late last month on sexual assault charges.

9. McCall did a lot of good things: McCall’s philosophy of Players-Formations-Plays, in that order, is at the heart of Northwestern’s program. He also presided over offenses that helped produce nine bowl appearances, four bowl wins and three 10-win seasons.

Thorson finished his career with records for passing yards, completions, passing touchdowns and wins, and is one of just five QBs in Big Ten history to throw for 10,000 yards. Justin Jackson is NU’s all-time leader with 5,440 rushing yards, 6,298 all-purpose yards and 41 rushing touchdowns.

What’s more McCall coached and developed three NFL quarterbacks in Mike Kafka, Semian and Thorson, the most in the Big Ten over that span. Current NFL players like Danny Vitale, Garrett Dickerson and Austin Carr all developed in his offense.

Last season, McCall managed Thorson’s return from ACL surgery and pivoted from a QB-centered offense to one built around Isaiah Bowser and the running game.

On Saturday, he took a fourth-string QB (Marty), one scholarship running back (Drake Anderson) joined by a converted safety (Coco Azema) and converted wide receiver (Ray Niro) in the backfield, and engineered 378 rushing yards and a win over Illinois. At least he went out with a bang.

10. Former players celebrating McCall’s ouster is a bad look: We noticed that some former players, Solomon Vault most conspicuously, reveled in the news that McCall would not return to Northwestern.

Former players certainly have the right to feel that way; some may have legitimate axes to grind with their former coach. We have no idea what goes on in a locker room. Still, that kind of dirty laundry shouldn’t be aired out in social media.

If Northwestern is the football family it purports to be, that kind of stuff should be kept in-house.