[NU Sports] Fitz (was: Groan!)

[SjT (Stephen J. Truog)]

> We all knew this would be a "learn on the job" sort
> of engagement.  You know
> he is going to get better.

Exactly - I'm perfectly comfortable with Fitz as our
coach. In fact, I love that we have a coach who is a
"Northwestern man" (to borrow Bo's phrase), will be
here hopefully for a long time and will do everything
he can to build a winning program. He has the
optimism, enthusiasm and ability to be a head coach
and we need to make sure he's our coach.

The coordinators, however, are where we need help.
Fitz is young and understandably relies on his
coordinators - which is fine for many coaches new and
experienced. But our coordinators have not been up to
the task this year - both lack innovation and
imagination so far.

> Among other things, hopefully he learned that he
> could have won this game by
> kicking field goals.  

Hard to argue with that, but I still won't fault Fitz
for taking the points off the board. We should be able
to make 4th and 2 against Duke. And we had chance
after chance to score after the decision. At the time,
our D was allowing big plays and our O was stagnant -
trading 3 for 7 wasn't good and we needed a TD to
swing back momentum. Who knew Duke would go
uber-conservative in the play calling in the second
half?!

And let's not forget that more experienced coaches
have made similar mistakes - most notably in NU's
history is Barnett's 2-point conversion decisions
before the 4th quarter in the Rose Bowl.

The 4th down decision was way down the list of
problems yesterday and regardless, I'm 100 percent
sure Fitz is our man and proud to have him in purple.

If things don't start changing soon, however, I think
we need to do some serious re-evaluating of the
assistants and either pony up some money to bring in
big-name assistants with the lure of near total
control over their side of the ball (which I don't
think Fitz would object to) ... or scour the MAC for
some up-and-coming assistants who may not be on our
staff for long but could teach a few tricks while Fitz
grows into the job.

GO CATS!!!
-SjT

* * * * * * * * *
STEPHEN J. TRUOG
sjtruog at yahoo.com
GO CATS!!!


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