CHICAGO-On Thursday at Big Ten Media Days, Minnesota coach PJ Fleck asserted that teams don’t actually “win” many of the games they play. More often than not, the other team loses them by making mistakes.
Fleck wasn't specifically talking about Northwestern when he was on the dais, but he might as well have been. Very few teams win more tight games or make fewer mistakes to lose them than the Wildcats. They are 9-2 in one-score games over the last two years, and 44-27 (.721) in head coach Pat Fitzgerald’s 13-year career – about 15 points better than his overall winning percentage of .578. The Wildcats have also won five straight overtime games, dating back to 2014.
That tells you a couple things. First, Northwestern plays in a lot of close games. And second, they certainly know how to close them out in crunch time.
Take last year, for example. After blowing fourth-quarter leads in losses to Akron and Michigan in September, the Wildcats didn’t lose another one-score game all season. They beat Nebraska in overtime, they came back in the fourth quarter to beat Rutgers and Iowa by three and four points, respectively, and they preserved a win over Illinois with a fourth-quarter interception.
So, we wondered, what is it about the Wildcats that enable them to win those tight games? What is the program’s secret sauce?
Like most things about Northwestern, the answers we got from head coach Pat Fitzgerald and the three players he brought with him to Big Ten Media Days last week – linebacker Paddy Fisher, defensive end Joe Gaziano and center Jared Thomas – were not sexy. Each of them mentioned boring things like discipline, fundamentals and “doing all the little things” as keys to their heart-stopping victories.
Fitzgerald, though, takes it a step further to what he thinks is the root cause of it all.
“I think you recruit it, first of all,” said Fitzgerald. “You recruit character guys that don’t flinch in those situations.”
He maintains that the qualities they look for in their players – things like character, leadership, work ethic – are the reasons the Wildcats make the plays they need to make late in the game. He points to last year’s Iowa and Nebraska games, in particular, where Northwestern out-executed their opponent to sew up wins late in the games.
Against the Hawkeyes, the Wildcats trailed in the fourth quarter until wide receiver Bennett Skowronek made a brilliant, diving touchdown catch to take a 14-10 lead with 9:27 left. Then, the defense forced Iowa to fumble on its next two possessions to ice the game and cinch the Big Ten West division championship.
“It’s not like we did anything magical,” said Fitzgerald. “But that goes back to the fundamentals we coach every day about going after the football, watching guys that, they’re maybe blocked, but they’re going in punching the ball with their off arm, and the ball’s going out. Those things don’t happen by accident.”
No, they don’t. And that’s exactly what Thomas, a fifth-year senior, was talking about when he said that paying attention to “little things” in practice is what enables the team to accomplish big things on Saturdays.
“Starting behind the line, instead of on the line. Finishing through the line, and not just to the line. Pulling your knee all the way up on the stretch and not just half doing it,” he said. “You may think that those things don’t actually matter, but they do because you’re focusing on the small things.”
He continued, “It’s stressed in everything we do in practice, so it’s no surprise when we get out to the game. It’s just an application from one to the other. It’s stressed day in and day out. It’s not just a game-day type of thing, it’s in everything we do.”
In the Nebraska game, Northwestern looked down and out, trailing by 10 points with less than three minutes remaining. But after a field goal and a stop, the Wildcats got the ball back at their own one-yard line, trailing 21-14 with just 2:02 left in the game. Talk about drama.
True to form, the Wildcats didn’t flinch, driving 99 yards in 1:50 to score a touchdown and tie the game with 12 seconds left. Then, they won it on a Drew Luckenbaugh field goal in overtime.
“You think about the Nebraska game – and I hate to single a play out – but we go 99 yards (for the game-tying touchdown) because we got 15 (yards) for free,” he said, referring to a roughing-the-passer penalty against Nebraska’s Carlos Davis on the first play of the drive. “That was a big play on that drive. Fifteen for free, and the time’s not running… All those things add up. It’s confidence in the moment, having success there, not panicking, not flinching, and then having guys that are really disciplined.”
That discipline is why, Fitzgerald says, “We don’t get a really bad penalty that’s going to set us back behind the chains, or give them a late PI call that’s going to give them free yards, or get a late hit.”
While Fitzgerald credits his players character for not making mistakes and winning games, Gaziano, a fifth-year senior, thinks it all begins with the coach.
“That’s a top-down thing,” said Gaziano, a captain who is on the Bednarik Award watch list. “Coach Fitz is huge on doing things right and not cutting corners, so we’re not going to take the easy way out and try to get things done quickly.”
Really, Fitzgerald’s Northwestern teams are built to win close games. He identified several keys to winning nail-biters, and the Wildcats’ strengths up match up pretty well with them.
“No. 1 is points. Turnover ratio is No. 2. First-down success, third-down avoidance,” he said. “We’re really, really good in the red zone. We’re really good in penalty avoidance. We’re really good in turnover ratio. You don’t see us beat ourselves and make a whole lot of execution mistakes. Those are things that you can control.”
You want discipline? The Wildcats have it. They were the least penalized team in the nation last season, drawing just 40 flags for 363 yards, the lowest numbers in both categories. They also don’t turn the ball over very often: their turnover margin of plus-7 was the third-best in the Big Ten and tied for 27th in the country.
Down the stretch, with the game on the line, that discipline carries over. That’s what Gaziano thinks, anyway.
“In crunch time, guys know that you don’t get away from your fundamentals, you stick to what you know,” he said. “It might not be the most extravagant, it might not be the flashiest, but it’s going to get the job done.”
Fisher, a two-time All-Big Ten selection at linebacker and the leader of Northwestern’s defense, thinks there has to be more to it than just discipline and fundamentals, however. He says it also requires a little fearlessness.
He should know: he picked off an AJ Bush pass deep in Northwestern territory with 2:30 left in the fourth quarter to save a 24-16 win over Illinois in the regular-season finale last season.
“We’ve got guys who are cutting it loose, that are playing ball, that are having fun with it, that aren’t afraid to make plays,” he said. “And when their name is called and they make a play, it’s not surprising because this is what we train for.”
The other question in this matter is why Northwestern plays in so many close games in the first place. Well over 40% of Fitzgerald’s 166 career games (71) have been decided by one score or less. That makes for a lot of anxious moments on the sidelines.
The Wildcats certainly rise to the occasion and beat favorites in close games – especially on the road, where they went 5-0 last season. But it cuts both ways because they also tend to play down to the competition, as they did in narrow wins over Rutgers and Illinois, and in the loss to Akron last season.
Gaziano thinks that the nature of the rugged Big Ten, where “winning games is tough,” is why the Wildcats make one-score games a habit. “You give a punch, take a punch,” he said. “You want to be the last man standing in the boxing match and give more punches than you receive.”
Fitzgerald isn’t sure why the “Cardiac Cats” get involved in so many dramatic games, but he knows one thing: he would just as soon not have as many.
“We’re in a lot of them. That’s why I don’t sleep well. A ton of them,” he said. “We don’t want to be in close games. Trust me, I’d rather be up three scores.”
That’s not the case for Fisher. He wouldn’t have it any other way.
“Why we’re in those positions, I do not know,” he said. “But I like them. It’s crunch time, you gotta make a play. If you don’t, you lose. If you do, you win. It’s a nerve racking position to be in, but it’s really cool to see the poise and the confidence of each player that’s in that position.
“I love it.”
