EVANSTON-No one is quite sure who Northwestern’s quarterback will be in the season opener on Saturday. Everyone knows that Stanford’s will be senior K.J. Costello.

And in talking about the Cardinal signal caller during Monday’s press conference, Northwestern head coach Pat Fitzgerald invoked the name of another quarterback that should put a shudder down the spines of Wildcat fans and defenders alike: Duke’s Daniel Jones.

Jones, NU followers will remember, tore up Wildcat defenses in his three years as a starter for the Blue Devils. He racked up 934 yards of total offense, with seven touchdowns and just one interception, in winning two of three games against the Wildcats.

Fitzgerald sees a lot of similarities between Costello, a third-year starter, and Jones, who was taken with the sixth overall pick in the draft by the New York Giants last spring.

“(Costello)’s a great player,” said Fitzgerald. “He reminds me watching him of what we had to get prepared for by playing Jones at Duke the last couple years.

“I thought Jones going into the last few years was one of the best quarterbacks we were going to see all year. Hence, he was the (second) quarterback off the board (in the NFL draft). I feel the same way when I watch K.J. on tape.”

Costello, a powerful 6-foot-5, 222-pounder, is coming off of a season that ranks as one of the best in Cardinal history – and that’s saying something, as the program has produced the likes of Jim Plunkett, John Elway and Andrew Luck.

Costello started all 13 games and completed 65.1 percent of his passes for 3,540 yards (second-most in a season in school history), with 29 touchdowns (third-most) and 11 interceptions in leading Stanford to a 9-4 record in 2018. His seven 300-yard efforts were also second-most in a season in Cardinal annals. He already stands 10th on Stanford’s all-time passers list, and one more year like last one will easily put him in the top five.

Those accomplishments have certainly caught Fitzgerald’s eye.

“I see a guy with a high, high ceiling, and he has all kinds of Stanford passing records, and there’s been a pretty good inflow of quarterbacks that have played there,” said Fitzgerald with a chuckle. “He’s just next in line of the great Stanford quarterbacks. He’s really efficient, he does a good job of spreading the ball around to all of his weapons.”

Costello lost some of those weapons to graduation, including running back Bryce Love (fourth-round draft pick) and wide receivers JJ Arcega-Whiteside (second) and Kaden Smith (sixth). But the No. 25 Cardinal still have standout tight end Colby Parkinson (29 rec., 485 yds., 7 TDs) and receivers like Michael Wilson, Connor Wedington and Osiris St. Brown at his disposal.

Wildcat defenders and captains Paddy Fisher and Trae Williams had words of praise for Costello, too. Williams, a fifth-year senior cornerback, has seen quite a few passers in his time in Evanston, and he says Costello is one of those guys who can beat you with his arm or his feet.

“Costello is a very good passer,” said Williams, who was just elected captain by his teammates. “Bigger dude. Real good arm strength, arm talent. Can fit in a lot of good fade balls, back shoulders. He does those really well – as well as I’ve ever seen by a quarterback…

“He’s sneaky athletic also. He can make some plays running the ball, too, so we have to have something in our game plan for that, too.”

Time is on their side: The last time Northwestern played Stanford, in the 2015 season opener, the kickoff time got almost as much attention as the result.

The Cardinal complained after the game that the 11 a.m. kickoff – 9 a.m. in their home Pacific time zone – was at least partially responsible for their lackluster performance in a stunning 16-6 upset loss to the Wildcats.

This time, it’s Northwestern that has to cross two times zones. But because the game is at 1 p.m. Pacific time and 3 p.m. Central, Fitzgerald doesn’t think it will be too big of a hurdle for his team. He says he will talk to the team about their sleep patterns and that the flight to the Bay Area will be “a little bit like going to Rutgers last year, just a little bit longer,” and will require them to stretch before they touch down.

But they won’t have to reset their internal clocks to be ready for kickoff.

“If it was a night game, it would be different,” said Fitzgerald. “We had the Cal game (the season opener in 2014) that kicked off after 10 o’clock in our bodies. We had to really change our body clocks for that.”

Balancing act: Fitzgerald said that his staff has to balance two opposing forces during fall camp.

“You have to put them in position to be prepared for the opener…and then this other position of being healthy,” he said. So it’s a constant push-and-pull between pushing too hard and not pushing hard enough.

Fitzgerald showed his team some stats from Florida’s ugly 24-20 win over Miami on Saturday night as an example of two teams that weren’t quite ready to play. The two teams combined for 23 penalties, 11 sacks and five turnovers.

His team, he feels, is physically and mentally ready to play on Saturday, yet they have very few players who are out with injury. Northwestern won’t publish its injury list until Thursday, but only a couple presumed starters were missing from the two-deep released on Monday: superback Trey Pugh and guard Sam Stovall.

“We’ve put together a really good training camp schedule,” he said. “We adjusted it a couple years ago. We come out as healthy as we ever have and, I think, in as good a shape as we’ve ever been.”

Punter impresses Fitz: When asked to identify a player who made a big jump since last season, Fitzgerald raised a few eyebrows with his choice. But in his mind, no one has done more than punter Daniel Kubiuk, who is back for a sixth year after missing the last two years with an injury.

“(He’s) a guy that, two years ago, we thought was going to be our starting punter. Battled through injury for two straight years, and to come out and No. 1, execute, and improve, and take over a role we had hoped he would take over.”

Kubiuk, a walkon, redshirted his first year in Evanston way back in 2014. He spent two years as a backup quarterback, making one appearance in 2015 while moonlighting as a pitcher for Northwestern’s baseball team, making 18 appearances and 10 starts in 2016. Kubiuk focused solely on football and moved to punter in 2017, when he appeared in three games as a backup to Hunter Niswander. He then sat out all of last season as grad transfer Jake Collins took over the punter’s job.

Fitzgerald appreciates what Kubiuk had to fight through to get to where he is.

“We obviously had a great job by Jake last year, and now to have ‘Kubes’ step up and be positon to where he’s at,” he said. “You ask anybody in our program and might say another position, but for me, Danny has stepped up to this point… He’s done a terrific job.”