The NIU Huskies completed their first week of practice yesterday as they prepare for the 2017 football season.
NIU is coming off a (5-7) record, their first losing season since 1999. The Huskies had also been in 8 straight bowl games until last season.
Northern Illinois University head football coach Rod Carey spoke at NIU's DeKalb Media Day press conference at the Barsema Hall of Champions to talk about the upcoming 2017 season.
NIU Head Football Coach Rod Carey
“It’s a little different schedule than it’s been from the standpoint of the NCAA moved the rule back, so we can report a little earlier and we still have two weeks of summer school here. We’re having to juggle some schedules with the guys and what have you. With that, Monday through Thursday is when you have class in the summer, so for this week we just concluded and next week, Tuesday and Thursday, we practice bright and early at 5:30 a.m. It’s like I’m going fishing, that’s what time we do that.
“We’ve had two good practices so far with the helmets. We gave the acclimatization, which is the official term of it. This afternoon, here at three o’clock, we’re going to go and put shoulder pads on. So we’re in half-pads, and that’s part of that routine as well, to get moving towards full pad, which will then be Sunday. We’ll learn a lot more about our football team, today.
“I tell you what; I like the effort and attitude they’ve come out with, so far. I know I sound like a broken record when I say that, but this team has been a little bit different in that, when it’s approached the offseason, when it’s approached spring ball and then the summer, I wanted to sit back and see a little bit there how the first two practices went. As far as how they came back and were ready to go from their summer training, because the coaches decided to let the assistant coaches have some time off, we didn’t have our hands on them the complete summer. Certainly for a majority of it, we did. I liked the way they took leadership. You could tell the first two practices, they did the work that we asked them to do, which was good.
“Obviously, I’m going to get asked the question ‘who is our quarterback.’ I don’t know yet. If I knew, I probably wouldn’t tell you guys anyway. If I knew, I’d probably tell you so I didn’t have to answer the questions, when it comes down to it. We’re at a competition. We’ve obviously been through this before back in 2014, replacing [Jordan] Lynch. We had this same situation, where three candidates were really in there, and it took us a little time to figure out who was going to be the guy.
“I don’t know that it’s going to play out that same way, that same scenario this time. We may have a guy that takes control of it in fall camp. It may take us a couple of games into the season. It may take us until conference. I’m not a two-quarterback guy. I know people say ‘well, that’s not true. You’ve played a bunch of them the last couple of years.’ I’d like to have one, but sometimes, football doesn’t work out like that. We just kind of have to let this team take its form through the work that we have to do every day, and we have to let these quarterbacks take their form on the work that they have to do every day. That’s where I was. That’s why I’m down here late. I was sitting in those meetings getting a feel for those guys and going forward.
“It will be no easy job to replace Drew Hare in my estimation. I know Drew didn’t play much last year, and the year before, he got hurt at the end of the year, but you’re talking about a quarterback that has a championship, one of the four in this school’s history. He’s one of the four quarterbacks that have a championship, five actually if you count hall of famer George Bork. Really, you’re talking about a situation where it’s a hard guy to replace, and we’ve been doing that on the fly the last couple years. Now that we’ve got the offseason, and this is kind of the scheduled time that we knew we’d have to replace him, guys are stepping up. There’s more teach time. There’s more practice time. There are more of those things that can go into finding that quarterback, and I’m excited about that process.”
On each NIU quarterback
“I can handicap them on experience. That would be a place to start with. Santa ended the year last year, coming in leading us to a comeback victory, and then winning his last start. Ryan Graham, in ’15, kind of was in that same scenario that Santa was this last year, and then hit some bumps in the road early last year. I’d say those two, experience wise, are probably have it. Marcus Childers through the first eight or nine practices of spring ball maybe wasn’t really in the competition, but then the last six to seven, wedged himself in there. If you have to handicap, you probably have to go with games played, so Ryan’s played the most, Santa’s played the second and Marcus has played the least.
“Rodney Hall came in early in January. We were really excited about him and still are. He’s with us, and he’s doing a fine job, but that transition sometimes can be overrated when a guy comes in early because when you jump from high school to college, your life kind of slows down. Now, he’s really adjusted to college life, and we’ve seen him take strides, at least in his first two practices. I don’t know that he’s in the competition though, yet."
On what he thinks NIU’s strengths will be this year
“It’s only two practices in without pads on. You’d have to look at the experience factor, and the situation that we went through last year, I know caused us to play a lot of different guys, maybe before they were ready, maybe in some cases not before they were ready. The strength coming into this year is that we have a lot of competition going on in a lot of spots because there are incumbent starters that are coming back off injuries. You never lose your job over an injury. They’re coming back as starters, but they’ve got a lot of guys behind them that have played a lot of football. I think the competition that you have, even at an established position like defensive back for our team, you sit and say that on paper is a strength, but you look at the competition there and that’s really the strength because they can’t get comfortable. We just have such great competition going all over the board. I’m excited to see how it pans out.”
The season opener for NIU is Friday, September 1st when Boston College plays at Huskie Stadium in DeKalb.
