I have some deeply concerning news about Northwestern head coach Pat Fitzgerald: he appears to have finally fucked off. After 12 seasons with Mick McCall, who Fitzgerald hired as his offensive coordinator in 2008, Northwestern made the incredibly long-overdue move of tossing him into Lake Michigan this past offseason. McCall is a uniquely dumb man and the exact kind of football coach that makes the sport worse for having hosted him for so long. He pushed Northwestern football back about two decades during his time in Evanston and in all honesty he should probably be banned from watching the sport entirely.
It probably wasn’t entirely his fault, though. McCall was never a good offensive coordinator at any level, and I’m confident that he would’ve done poorly under just about any head coach, but Fitzgerald certainly didn’t help with any of this either. He’s a defensive curmudgeon and always will be, and seems to actively despise anything that causes his defense any sort of trouble in practice, or forces it to be on the field for more than 20 minutes a game. McCall’s mandate for those 12 seasons was likely not to score points, but rather to dribble out the clock in a way that still looked like Northwestern is at least pretending to play offense.
At his core, I think that Fitzgerald will always do this. He wants to win with defense and ball control, it’s worked pretty well for a pretty long time, and there’s no real reason to go away from that, especially because the goal at Northwestern is never going to be winning a national title. This is a program that plays within its means, understands what it can be and has generally followed a pretty solid plan its talent. Fitzball is often awful and frustrating, but it also seems to win a decent chunk of games most years, so it’s hard to complain too much.
However, the McCall struggles were just untenable in recent years. Northwestern wasted two of its best rosters in 2017 and 2018 with awful offense, and could have certainly fought for a Rose Bowl berth had there been any sort of life on that side of the ball. Without a great defense in 2019, Fitzgerald put up his worst record ever, had no offense of any sort to lean on for support, and had essentially no choice but to move away from McCall.
While Fitzgerald was never going to replace McCall with a gunslinging, truly modern offensive coordinator, I think that he did do pretty much the best thing that his soul will allow him to do, while maintaining the structure of his program as one that plays defense and hold the ball. He went out and hired Mike Bajakian.
Bajakian, for those of you not well-versed in Boston College or Tampa Bay football of recent years, is one of the few coaches in America that can run power football in a way that actually, well, works? It’s not perfect and doesn’t work as well as some of the more creative spread offenses around the country, but if you want to play the style of football that Fitzgerald does, there are about five guys that can do it. One of them is Matt Canada, so that’s one option off the board because no one on Earth seems to want to work with that guy, one is UAB OC Bryant Vincent, and the other two went to join Nick Saban in his wine cellar after venturing upon insult and haven’t been seen since. That leaves Bajakian who, again, is not perfect by any means, but certainly seems to at least have interest in things like “passing the ball down the field” or “scoring points” which marks a welcome change in this program.
He also does some pretty cool stuff with his actual play design. I was a big fan of his when he was at Boston College because he designed some really killer rushing attacks, and while I don’t know if he has the kind of back needed to build such a behemoth at Northwestern this season, I’m confident that his looks are still going to work pretty well with guys like Drake Anderson and Isaiah Bowser, as well as quarterback Peyton Ramsey.
A lot of it is just common sense runs based on leverage and freeing up athletic linemen into space, paired with a strong downfield play action game.
While the run game is more in Bajakian’s wheelhouse, I found myself more impressed with Ramsey and the passing game against Maryland. Of course, because of the opponent this all should be taken with a grain of salt, but I thought that the downfield attack was as good as anything Northwestern has shown in several decades.
A lot of that was due to the fact that receivers were open… down the field? It’s very strange to see that at Northwestern. Ramsey wasn’t slinging the ball all over the field or anything like that, but plays like this were a pretty consistent staple in the attack. This is a pretty basic inside zone play action with jet motion, a go route and a post to the field. Because there are only two actual downfield routes here, Northwestern leaves a tight end in the backfield to help block, providing extra time for Ramsey.
The design here is great. With Maryland playing a lot of zone, Northwestern takes advantage here with plenty of misdirection in the backfield. The inside zone fake pulls those linebackers in and keeps the post from the slot clean, with no one there to disrupt the release. Everything else in the play is meant to clear space right into the spot that this ball is thrown into. The jet motion holds the intermediate flat zone defender in place in what looks like a fire zone 3 (cover 3 in the back shell with a blitzing linebacker).
That leaves the go route and the post, with three deep defenders available for Maryland to try to make a play. No. 12 is in the opposite third, and while he tries to track the play, he’s just too far away from any of the action to do much of anything here.
The outside third cornerback on the play side is pattern matching and runs with the go-route, while that go-route is curling into the seam about 15 or 20 yards down the field to attack that inside-third safety as well. In other words: there’s nobody left to cover the post. Offense is a whole lot easier when you have plays like this one.
Northwestern had a couple cool plays to attack fire zone looks that Maryland kept throwing out there. This time, again with a play fake in the backfield, Northwestern overloads the field again, drawing in an intermediate zone defender and the linebackers in with the play fake and a quick route to the flats.
On that same side, they show off another outside release go route to pull the deep third corner off, with a really slick route from tight end John Raine slowing up on that intermediate zone defender to make those deep defensive backs think that they’re safe to play the go route, before slipping into the soft spot in the zone on the perimeter, which is seemingly always open against cover 3. It’s essentially a modified flood concept.
Bajakian’s ability to scheme open receivers with pre-play shifts and clever design was probably the most encouraging part of this entire game. Regardless of opponent, it seems pretty obvious that he has a strong understanding of how to leverage motion and decoy routes to create openings down the field. Here, every part of this play is telling the defense that the ball is going to the short side of the field, with motion, blocking and two routes all attacking on that same side, showing the kind of overload that worked really well on some of those overload passes.
While all of that is happening, Northwestern sneaks Bowser out into the flats and rolls Ramsey with him, meaning that even with the other nine offensive players serving essentially as a decoy, unable to help Ramsey in blocking or in providing a target, Northwestern is still creating a really easy read and throw for him.
While the run game, as mentioned, is strong as well, I really don’t have a ton of interest in talking about it at this point. It was very good against Maryland, but it was good in the exact same way that it will be all season. This scheme is going to create a strong running attack just by its nature. However, if the passing game is working too, with a smart and efficient quarterback? Watch out.