According to the Gospel of Pat Fitzgerald, football is 10 percent what happens to you and 90 percent how you respond.

For once, I think Fitzgerald has not taken one of his mantras far enough. Northwestern’s 9-3 season has been 100 percent about response.

By winning nine games, this team has achieved something only four others in school history have. To do it, the Cats had to overcome more obstacles than a reporter trying to get Fitzgerald to admit to his team’s overall record.

First, there have been the injuries. Every team has them, but NU has had more than its fair share of serious ones. Since summer practice, the Cats have lost five starters plus two regular contributors for the season. On top of that, quarterback C.J. Bachér missed two games.

If those setbacks bothered the Cats, they did not show it.

Jordan Mabin stepped in at cornerback for Justan Vaughn and leads the team with three interceptions. Nate Williams stepped in at middle linebacker for Malcolm Arrington and has played well, culminating in a 10-tackle performance in the regular season finale. Stephen Simmons has scored a pair of touchdowns and shown some improvement since replacing Tyrell Sutton and Omar Conteh. Mike Kafka took over at quarterback for Bachér and led the team to a crucial victory at Minnesota with a record-setting rushing performance.

The list goes on.

“The team embraced responding,” Bachér said. “I don’t know if it was anything the coaches said as much as just having a lot of character and a lot of guys that have invested so much in this program, and when their number was called, they were able to step up.”

Bachér went on to say that the tough times he and his teammates have been through over the past few years are part of the reason the team has been able to react to adversity so well this season. He’s probably right about that.

This program had to fight through the tragic death of coach Randy Walker. And while everything else pales in comparison to that unfortunate situation, NU also had to swallow a bitter pill last season, when a 1-3 finish left them 6-6 and one win shy of a bowl berth.

The Cats seem determined not to repeat their mistakes of a year ago by not allowing losses to snowball into losing streaks.

When NU suffered its first defeat of the season by getting blown out in the first half by Michigan State, it came back the next week and waxed Purdue. When the Cats dropped a potentially devastating road contest to lowly Indiana, they went on the road the next week and eked out a win against a hot Minnesota squad. And after a third-straight blowout loss to Ohio State three weeks ago, they returned in the following game and earned a rare victory in the Big House against Michigan.

It’s all due to that one word: respond.

“This season, we’ve faced a lot of adversity — losing Tyrell, Omar and Malcolm — but guys have stepped up in their place, and each time we’ve lost a game, we’ve come back strong the next game and been able to pull out a victory, so that’s been a huge theme for us,” Bachér said.

But Saturday against Illinois, the Cats accomplished something they had not accomplished in a while, responding to a win with an even better win.

NU had not won consecutive games since beating Ohio and then following that with a victory over Iowa in the Big Ten opener. But after topping the Wolverines last week, the Cats came out Saturday and put together their best, most complete performance of the season to defeat their in-state rivals.

Now we just have to see how the bowl representatives respond to that performance in choosing who goes where for the holidays.

a-simon@u.northwestern.edu

Tags: C.J. Bacher, Jordan Mabin, Nate Williams, Pat Fitzgerald, Stephen Simmons