NIU poised for a big turnaround

DEKALB - Northern Illinois' opponents knew where to find Larry English last year.

Not only did the indestructible Marmion Academy graduate play 894 of a possible 916 defensive snaps, English almost always lined up at the defensive end spot across from the left tackle.

While that knowledge didn't exactly help foes stop English - he earned the Mid-American Conference's 2007 Most Valuable Player award with 10 sacks and 17 tackles for loss - it made it easier to forge a plan to slow him down.

Enter Northern Illinois' almost all-new coaching staff and its schemes.

They're going out of their way to make English as hard to read as possible.

"He will move around," said defensive coordinator Tracy Claeys, one of seven assistants that coach Jerry Kill brought with him from Southern Illinois.

"If offenses want to do something special to him, they're going to have to take time during the week (to prepare) for him to line up in different places."

In NIU's basic scheme, English will line up on the weak side with fellow fifth-year senior Craig Rusch on the strong side.

But that's too simplistic of a summation. English will stand up like a linebacker sometimes. He'll line up on an unexpected side. Heck, maybe he'll act like a defensive tackle on occasion.

"We're going to make people work if they want to do something special to block him, because he is a special player," Claeys said. "Not only that, we've got to find what we can do on the other side away from him to try to keep people from taking everybody to help on him."

That's where Rusch comes in, both as a key player and an important reminder of what went wrong last year.

Rusch, one of 11 opening-day starters in 2007 who missed a combined 54 games due to injury, has dropped to 265 pounds and been reincarnated as a chiseled defensive end after serving as an undersized defensive tackle in years past.

English can't wait to be part of a dominant duo instead of a critically acclaimed solo act.

"I think the things that people are going to have to realize - and they are going to realize - if they're going to be double-teaming me, then Craig's going to be getting to the quarterback," English said. "He's one of the main guys I'm talking about when I'm speaking about guys being injured and being back for this year that people might not know about."

Mid-American Conference media members looked at NIU's 2-10 record last fall and pegged the Huskies for another last-place finish in the MAC West.

Perhaps they didn't recall the important roles Rusch, middle linebacker Tim McCarthy, wide receiver Britt Davis and quarterback Dan Nicholson played in helping NIU to the Poinsettia Bowl in 2006.

Now that they're healthy - along with 2007 opening-day starters Montell Clanton (tailback) and Reed Cunningham (tight end) - Kill and his staff had to sort out the equivalent of 26 returning starters.

That led to a fiery fall camp where everyone except English had to battle for their jobs.

From his usual practice-field post a few yards behind the quarterback, the wired Kill was right in the middle of the competition almost every snap.

"If we screw up," said Eddie Adamski, the Carmel grad who will start his third season at center, "he tells us he's going to get us an apple and a road map."

That's Kill-ese for "get out of town."

But judging by the way he turned around Southern Illinois and his other stops in record time, it's Kill who has the road map.

For success.

"Here's the way you've got to look at it," Kill said. "I broke it down for our players. Look at last year and look at the games the Huskies lost and look at what happened.

"Nobody came in here and beat the Huskies. The Huskies lost games. That's turnovers inside the 5-yard line. Look back at the Iowa game: How many times in the red zone without a score?

"The kicking game. You know, big kickoff returns. Punt returns. We were dead last in a lot of kicking-game categories. All those things are correctable."