Pat Fitzgerald to test team mentally in first week of training camp

Northwestern is known for being one of the most cerebral football teams in the country and much of that has to do with the way there are conditioned mentally in training camp.

While teams around the country might slowly install their playbooks, coach Pat Fitzgerald bombards his team in the first week of practice in the hopes of having the basics of the playbook installed by the end of the first week of training camp.

“We want to get everything in mentally,” Fitzgerald said. “We want to throw a lot at them and really, really stress them mentally so we can have basically the entire foundation of our offense, defense and kicking game in by the time we leave [for the second week of camp in Kenosha, Wis.] Saturday. Then we want to push the guys to continue their conditioning that they came in to camp with an do it in a football context.”