EIU’s Garoppolo falls short vs. NU
When Eastern Illinois quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo and his teammates watched video of Northwestern’s defense this week, they thought they discovered holes to exploit.
That’ll happen when you surrender 351 passing yards as the Wildcats did in last week’s 24-17 win at Boston College.
The problem with that logic? Northwestern’s defenders watched the same video, matched it to Eastern Illinois’ tendencies, and decided to adjust some coverages.
So when Garoppolo dropped back on the fourth play of Northwestern’s 42-21 victory Saturday and thought he had wide receiver Jeremy Rykard open on a deep slant, he never thought NU senior linebacker Bryce McNaul would be waiting there to pick off his pass.
“After last week’s game at Boston College, we kind of recognized that if we were scouting ourselves, we would look at that seam as being a little bit vulnerable,” McNaul said.
“Game-planning them and watching film on them, we saw they like to run that route a lot. That’s something we expected a little bit, and coaches put me in a good position.”
“He got me,” said Garoppolo, the sophomore QB from Rolling Meadows High School. “I’ll give him that one. I thought he was going to fall down to the ‘under’ route. As soon I went to release it, he dropped off and got right underneath it. It was a nice play by him, but I shouldn’t even have been throwing it there to begin with.”
McNaul returned his interception to EIU’s 42-yard line. Five plays later, Kain Colter’s 6-yard keeper gave Northwestern a 7-0 lead it wouldn’t relinquish.
“The first interception, that was pretty devastating,” Garoppolo said. “That swung the whole momentum. You can’t start that way if you’re going to beat a Big Ten school.
“That was their home opener. They had all the momentum in the world. You can’t give them plays like that. I think that was a real killer.”
Garoppolo finished with decent numbers in his first start against a Football Bowl Subdivision team. He hit 14 of 25 passes for 209 yards and the interception. He also completed a 72-yard touchdown bomb to Kenny Whittaker that will serve as this week’s teachable moment for Northwestern’s pass defense.
With EIU trailing 14-0 midway through the second quarter, Garoppolo offered a play-action fake that sucked in safeties Brian Peters and Ibraheim Campbell.
When they finally noticed Garoppolo rolling left with the ball, nobody noticed Whittaker had sneaked behind them for the easiest score EIU will get all season.
“We fully expected that route,” NU coach Pat Fitzgerald said. “They’ve run that for success now, I don’t know, for the last two years. Now we get in there and teach tape exactly how not to play it.
“We did a terrible job coaching it during the week because both safeties were to take the vertical (route by Whittaker). And the boundary corner was (covering) the ‘sink’ (route) and the field corner was to take the top vertical. And I think we went 0-for-4. So, touchdown. That’s not very good. We’ve got to do a better job coaching.”