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Fitz trying to press the right buttons to turn around NU's season

EVANSTON-Who says Pat Fitzgerald is anti-technology?

Don’t look now, but the head coach who likes to make fun of the cell phone culture is using a technology metaphor to jump start his 1-5 Northwestern squad.

“There’s three magic buttons to getting things fixed, and they all have to be pressed at the same time,” said Fitzgerald at his Monday press conference. “And that’s Control, Alt, Delete.

“You know what that does to your computer? What does it do?” he asked the group. “It restarts it!”

He said that final line with the excitement he would have displayed if his Wildcats would’ve scored a touchdown against No. 4 Ohio State on Friday night. Alas, they lost 52-3 and failed to cross the goal line in an embarrassing loss to the Buckeyes that brought their losing streak to four games.

Fitzgerald created a bit of a stir on social media earlier this year when he talked about wanting to throw his players’ cell phones into the lake. Then he told the “40,000 experts on Twitter” critical of his coaching tactics that his email address is “#IDontCare.”

But give him credit for a well thought-out metaphor that actually makes sense – unlike, say, an email address with a hashtag and without an @ symbol.

He made the point with his team that the three buttons – Ctrl+Alt+Delete – must be pressed together. And – get this – that they symbolize offense, defense and special teams.

So just like those keyboard buttons, all three phases must be in synch if the Wildcats want to turn around their season and win five of their next six and qualify for a bowl berth.

“If you just hit one…it doesn’t work,” he said, mocking other coaches who type with just one finger. “You have to hit all three at the same time for it to work. Kinda like offense and defense and special teams. That’s pretty creative. It might be the best T-shirt I’ve ever come up with.”

If only it were that simple.

Fitzgerald deserved a pat on the back for the slogan, but not for his team’s play. At 0-4 in conference, the Wildcats are in the basement of the Big Ten West division they won last year. They’re 1-5 overall, their worst record after six games since 1992, the year before Fitzgerald arrived on campus as a freshman linebacker from Orland Park, Ill.

Chances are it will take a heck of a lot more than three buttons to fix an offense that ranks between 126th and 130th in the country (out of 130 teams) in total, passing and scoring offense, and passing efficiency.

On the bright side, there’s no place to go but up. But to make Fitzgerald’s methphor work, the offense button is likely going to be a lot tougher to press than the other two.


What else we learned

Here are some other nuggets we picked up from Fitzgerald, who was open and jovial with the media on Monday, unlike what you might expect for the coach of a team coming off of a 49-point bludgeoning that was the Wildcats’ worst loss in 11 years.


The defense needs to pitch in, too: In addition to the well-document woes on the offensive side of the ball, Fitzgerald pointed to turnover ratio as the other big factor in the Wildcats’ struggles. He called on his normally solid defense to create more of them.

Right now, Northwestern ranks 122nd in the nation and 13th in the Big Ten with a turnover ratio of -1.0 per game. The Wildcats have turned the ball over 14 times and collected just eight.

Last season, in contrast, the Wildcats lost 19 and generated 26 for a +.5 ratio.

“We’re typically really good at that here,” said. “We’re on the wrong end of that in a major way.”

Northwestern passers have thus far thrown 10 interceptions, compared to just two touchdowns, while the defense failed to generate a single turnover in their last two outings against Ohio State or Nebraska.

“The defense is 0 for the last two weeks,” said Fitzgerald. “That needs to get flipped.”


Fitz named his youngest child after former Wildcat Brendan Smith: Fitzgerald said that his youngest son, Brendan, is named after former Northwestern safety and captain Brendan Smith.

It turns out that, right around the due date for Fitzgerald and his wife’s Stacy’s third child, Smith had a pick-six to help beat Minnesota in 2009. That night, when Fitzgerald got home, his two oldest sons, Jack and Ryan, decided that they wanted to their youngest brother after Smith, who will serve as an honorary captain for Saturday’s Homecoming game.

The boys wanted to go with “Smitty,” Smith’s nickname; Fitzgerald vetoed that idea but added Brandan to the list. When “the bundle of joy came out” Stacy said he looked like a Brendan, and the name stuck.

“I don’t know if he knows that or not, but my little guy’s named after him,” said Fitzgerald about Smith. “That’s kind of cool.”


Fitzgerald served burritos to players on Saturday: With another Saturday off, Fitzgerald said the favorite game he saw on Saturday wasn’t Illinois’ win over Wisconsin, or Penn State’s victory over Michigan. It was watching his son Jack’s sophomore team at Loyola Academy.

“That was my favorite game,” he said. “I served burritos to the guys with Stacy.”

Asked whether he focused on any college games, Fitzgerald said he watched very little. He felt too much like Chris Farley’s character in the movie “Tommy Boy,” after he got hit in the face by a 2x4. Or, in Fitzgerald’s case, the Buckeyes.

“Do I have a mark here? How about here?” he said, pointing to his face.


Fitz is just as frustrated as fans are: One-liners and cute stories aside, one thing that was apparent on Monday is that Fitzgerald is just as frustrated as fans are about how his teams are playing. He’s at a loss to explain some of the mistakes he’s seeing his players make. Even veterans.

Fitzgerald thinks guys aren’t trusting themselves, and that’s a problem for a program that has its players slap a “Trust Yourself” sign when they come onto the field to play. Some are trying to do too much.

“We’ve got guys doing things in games, I look at the tape and I go, ‘What the (he swallowed an F) are you doing?’ They’re panicking because they’re getting into a situation where they’re thinking about, I don’t know what.”


Fitz is employing both the carrot and the stick: Fitzgerald has become notorious for using “tough love” to get his team to bounce back after a slow start. The last couple years, he ramped up the physicality and intensity of practices to accelerate the development of some of his players, and it worked. Last year, for example, the team overcame a 1-3 start to win eight of its last 10 games, collecting the Big Ten West and Holiday Bowl trophies along the way.

With this team, he says he’s using both his “size 12” foot to kick the rear ends of players when necessary, as well as an arm around their shoulders. He says that he looks at “the DNA” of each player to determine how to coach him.

“You always got to be positive and look from the ground up,” said Fitzgerald. He looks first if they are playing with the correct technique – hands, feet, bent knees, etc. He senses that, with this team, “the ability to not think and just go play seems to be a detriment.” He wants them to be able to react to what’s happening on the field, not to think and then react.

He says, however, that his team has rarely shown a lack of effort.

“The No. 1 factor is effort level,” he said. “There haven’t been a lot of times I had to use the stick.”

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