Vogel battling for starting spot on O-line

Northwestern’s offensive line has already gotten quite a bit of attention in fall camp as coaches search for their “best five” linemen to start for the Wildcats. One of the players in the hunt for one of those five starting spots is redshirt freshman Gunnar Vogel.

Vogel is the youngest player to get substantial reps with the first unit, both last spring and this fall, at right tackle. While head coach Pat Fitzgerald and offensive line coach Adam Cushing emphasized that no one on the line has nailed down a starting position as of yet, Vogel is right there in the mix. There are no true positions on the offensive line right now – coaches are trying players out at different spots in their quest to identify their best quintet – Vogel has gotten all of his reps thus far at tackle.

Ask Fitzgerald and Cushing about Vogel and they both start with the same phrase: “He’s a large human being.”

Indeed he is. At 6-foot-6 and 290 pounds, Vogel is one of the biggest players on Northwestern’s roster. He is actually a few pounds lighter than he was last season, but after what he called “the toughest three months of my life” in offseason conditioning, he replaced fat with muscle and is in the best shape of his life.

“He had a great offseason, starting in January,” said Cushing. “Gunnar has embraced the work ethic and turned out every day to attack the workout. The offseason matters. We want the offseason to be able to translate to the field.

“He put himself in a good position by really working hard off the field. On the field, he’s getting one day better, little by little.”

Vogel is content where he is right now. He has gotten a lot of reps on the first team line at the right tackle spot the graduated Eric Olson played last season. Andrew Otterman, a redshirt sophomore, has also gotten reps there, as have others.

More importantly, Vogel knows what it will take for him to take the next step in his development and nail down that starting job he covets.

“I feel really good,” he said. “I put myself in a pretty good spot and I was given the opportunity by the coaches. I’ve shown the coaches that I can play hard. The biggest thing for me right now is just getting in the playbook, being pretty young.”

And “getting in the playbook” does not mean studying a binder in his room. It means running the plays in that playbook on the field.

“You can study the playbook all you want, but it’s harder to grasp until you do it live, against someone when they hit you right in the face,” said Vogel. “Getting the reps and being able to put the playbook into real life will really help me. Once I have the mental part down I will be able to cut it loose.”

Vogel enjoys cutting it lose. He plays with a nasty streak somewhat unusual for an offensive lineman. “I play with a really sharp edge,” is how he puts it.

Sometimes that aggressive, physical nature can get him in trouble – he can become off-balance if he overextends to deliver a hit – but Cushing wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I’ll take that,” said Cushing. “It’s better than the opposite.”

So Vogel will continue to grind, focusing on improving one day, one rep at a time.

“He’s learning the position, he’s completing,” said Fitzgerald. “By no stretch of the imagination is he our starting tackle right now. It’s a fluid situation. He’s working his butt off, and from that standpoint I’m really proud of where he’s at right now.”

So is Cushing. The OL coach is shuffling his line every day in a grand experiment to find his best five players, regardless of position. Regarding Vogel, he had an easy answer to whether the big red-head will be one of those starting five.

“If he can execute he’s going to play for us.”