Finally, the Hunter Johnson mystery is solved

Well, the big question has finally been answered. There’s a good reason that quarterback Hunter Johnson isn’t playing, after all.

Head coach Pat Fitzgerald can stop tippy-toeing around the issue during every press conference and playing games with the depth chart, and fans can stop speculating about why the former five-star recruit hasn’t gotten a single snap over the last three games.

As Teddy Greenstein reported in the Chicago Tribune on Tuesday, Johnson, a redshirt sophomore transfer from Clemson, is dealing with a family health issue that has kept him sidelined these last three weeks. His mother, Shana, has breast cancer. She has had a mastectomy and is recovering from chemotherapy.

Dealing with his mother’s illness was a little too much for Johnson to bear. So Fitzgerald had a “heart to heart” with his quarterback and decided that he would keep him off the field and let him focus on his mother as she battles the disease.

For the record, I learned of the situation on Monday and was told to keep it under wraps. Given the sensitivity of the situation, that was an easy request to obey. Johnson decided to open up to Greenstein on Tuesday.

I think it was the right move. As I wrote on Monday, in the absence of facts from Fitzgerald, fans were making up their own narratives. While Fitzgerald and, to a greater extent, offensive coordinator Mick McCall were bearing the brunt of the criticism, WildcatReport posters and Fitzgerald’s “40,000 experts on Twitter” were starting to turn their focus to Johnson. They wondered whether he was an entitled five-star who wasn’t a team player, whether he had a fallout with coaches or whether he was thinking of transferring.

Now they know the real reason. One source said that Johnson’s mother’s illness has “really messed with his head” and prevented Johnson from preparing to the level he needed to.

Everyone deals with family illnesses differently. Just a few years ago, Tyler Lancaster continued playing for the Wildcats while his father battled cancer. Northwestern basketball player Kevin Coble left the program for a year while his mother battled cancer.

Johnson is somewhere in between – still with the team and practicing, but not playing in games. Hopefully, it gives him some comfort during an incredibly difficult time.

Fitzgerald should be applauded for putting the wellbeing of his player first. There’s a reason he’s known as a player’s coach. Not only that, but he was the one who had to face the heat from the media every week and engage in some pretty deft verbal gymnastics to hide Johnson’s secret.

It couldn’t have been easy for Fitzgerald to come up with new reasons every week for why he hadn’t at least tried inserting Johnson for starter Aidan Smith while the offense continued to flounder and he complained openly about the lack of production at the quarterback position. It was the elephant in the room, yet Fitzgerald managed to dance around it, again and again.

During his Monday press conference, he admitted that the depth chart – which has listed Smith OR Johnson as the starter the last three weeks – was a deliberate attempt to avoid talking to the media about the situation. When asked why Johnson hasn’t played, he talked about how fortunate they were to have Clayton Thorson for four years and the defense’s inability to generate turnovers, among many other things. He talked in circles, about anything other than the reason why he wasn’t playing arguably the most talented quarterback the program has ever had to try to jump start an offense on life support. Now it’s all out in the open so he won’t need to obfuscate any longer.

While Johnson’s disclosure answered the primary question swirling around the position, it doesn’t automatically solve the offense’s problems. Northwestern’s scoring average of 10.7 points per game is the worst in the country, and its yardage average of 266 is second-to-last.

We don’t know when Johnson will return and how effective he will be when he does. One person told me that Johnson may play against Indiana on Saturday. But remember that Johnson didn’t look like a savior in his first four starts. He often seemed overwhelmed and his numbers are only slightly better than Smith’s. His passing efficiency rating, for example, is four points higher than Smith’s. His mother’s illness could explain some of that, of course.

Moreover, there are other issues for the Wildcats to deal with, like dropped passes, failing to get separation, injuries, ball security, you name it. You can’t fix an offense this broken with one player, even if he plays the most important position on the field. Aaron Rodgers wouldn’t cure all the Wildcats’ ills right now.

But at least fans can breathe a little easier now. And maybe trust their coaches again.