INDIANAPOLIS — When it comes to Northwestern giving up a home game at Ryan Field to face Nebraska in Dublin, Ireland to open the season in a month, Pat Fitzgerald said laughing on Tuesday: “I didn’t really have a voice.”
That’s fine, added the Northwestern coach.
Part of the “new normal” is conference games being played more frequently in the opening weeks, and Fitzgerald’s team is no stranger to that. It’s the Irish environment that both Nebraska and the Northwest are working hard to make sure they’re ready to handle.
“This game (in Dublin) started a few years ago,” Fitzgerald said of the original plans. “I didn’t expect to have a tough season last year but we did. It is what it is. hug it. Lean in. Have fun with this trip.”
Fitzgerald was relaxed as usual in front of the media at Tuesday’s Big Ten Media Days, even embracing it when a final question was not asked on the main stage despite a request from the presenter. “That’s what happens when you win three games,” he joked.
Of course, Nebraska also only won three games.
The stakes would be high enough anyway just because it’s a season opener, but now you have two programs from 3-9 seasons playing a game out of country that seems to be of immense importance to maybe help the winner see that Script to flip 2021.
Surely you want to take away some memories when you take a trip to Ireland. But winning is all that decides whether it was a success or a noot.
“We didn’t deserve a bowl trip. We don’t deserve this trip. This is a business trip,” said the Husker head coach Scott Frost said Tuesday of the August 27 game. “We’ll get a chance to have some experiences while we’re over there, but the focus is on going there and playing a football game.”
Frost said he stressed to his team that they need to be disciplined from the flight over there to the way they behave at the hotel to keep the game center stage at all times.
The Huskers turned to the Nebraska Athletic Performance Laboratory (NAPL) for advice on how best to manage sleep and travel schedules. They have thought about the nutritional situation to give players the right fuel. The monthly plan was thought about and even more thought.
“We’re going there earlier than suggested. We’ll try to get our players to sleep along the way, then give them a little time and train them without practicing and Get up the next day and try to start our week back where we left off. We have a plan for that,” Frost said. “A lot of these we got help from some really smart people. A couple of guys that were part of NFL teams that have been to London before and played there.”
As serious as the game is for both sides, Fitzgerald said Northwestern will not leave Ireland until Monday after the game to give players a day to enjoy the scenery with their families. It’s something the Wildcats can do since they don’t play next Saturday. Nebraska does.
But Fitzgerald knows his team still has a lot of work to do before then.
“We have to get better. We have to build on what we did in winter training this summer,” said the coach. “We have to improve these 25 exercises and get better. We have to manage the move over there. hug it. Have fun when it’s time to have fun. And then be really focused when it’s time to practice and be in meetings. I’ve got enough staff and a group of veterans enough. We’ve been pretty damn good at bowl games lately when we get there. If we go there I think we’ve won four in a row and I think we have a pretty good plan on how to handle an off-game week game if that makes sense. But we have to play a lot better than last year in Lincoln.
That was a nod to Nebraska’s 56-7 win, which was by far the most polished Husker performance of the year. A game in which Nebraska rushed for 427 yards and had 657 yards of offense.
“I have faith in Scott and her staff. They had a great plan,” Fitzgerald said. “Their players played really well but we have to play a lot better if we expect to beat them.”
Though Northwestern is picked last by many in the West Division in preseason polls, those who follow the Big Ten know the Wildcats are not a squad to count on. After Northwestern went 3-9 in 2019, the Wildcats came back during the shortened 2020 Covid season to win the division. Only twice in Fitzgerald’s time there (2013 and 2014) did the Wildcats have back-to-back losses and quickly bounced back the next year with 10 wins.
“We place a lot of emphasis on the word ‘react,'” Fitzgerald said. “You wish you could have reacted a little better in the season last year. But it didn’t quite go the way we wanted. So you focus on the things you can control in the off-season. You look at the schematics, the basics, the techniques. As a coach, you analyze things and take responsibility first. And the boys have to embrace that too.”
Last year also had some unique parts, Fitzgerald thinks. His side was inexperienced and didn’t have as many super seniors as other teams in the Big Ten.
“We knew it was going to be a challenge. Did we think we could be a bowl team? I definitely did.
But it’s a new year and just like the Huskers, the defensive end of the Northwest are planning better days ahead Adetomiva Adebawore is too.
“I won’t say you don’t want to enjoy it. They want to enjoy it,” Adebawore said of the upcoming trip. “But at the end of the day you have to understand the task at hand and that is to beat Nebraska. This is our opponent. We want to beat them. So we make sure we do everything in our power to beat them.”