Posted by ESPN.com's Adam Rittenberg

Here's the second half of my interview with Northwestern head coach Pat Fitzgerald. For Part I, click here.

I know a lot of NU fans had high expectations for this team and they might be disappointed that you guys aren't 8-0. Is that OK to have those expectations at this point, or is the program not quite there to warrant those expectations?

Fitzgerald: It may just be me philosophically, but I really don't care what people expect of us. We have expectations internally and no offense to anybody outside of our program, but you have no idea what's going on. From my standpoint, we're the best team we could be right now. Can we be better? Without a doubt. Are we pleased with where we're at? No. But our guys have persevered and we've stayed the course and we put ourselves in position to do something special this year. Yeah, I like that there's expectations that are high, but if I worried about expectations and I worried about what other people said about our program, I probably wouldn't have come here in 1993 and I'd be wasting a lot of my time.

How tough have the injuries been this season and how nice has it been to see some of the guys come out of nowhere to make contributions?

Fitzgerald: That's part of the game. Injuries are going to always happen. I wish they didn't. We don't put our focus in on that. We put our focus on being prepared and picking up the flag when your turn is called. Opportunity presents itself in a lot of crazy ways. That's why I'm proud of our guys. We've have this now for multiple years where we've had guys go down who, when we start the season, we say, 'Hey, we expect him to be able to make some plays for us and continue to grow.' Our guys continue to trust and believe in what we do and how we do it and our brand of football. It gives us a chance to compete and if it gives us a chance to compete, we've got a chance to win.

The resiliency, is that embedded in the program's culture now? You look at last week, it seems like you're best with your backs against the wall.

Fitzgerald: I really felt that when I was here with [former head coach Randy Walker]. We were tough-minded, we were able to persevere, we were able to fight through difficult times and stay the course. If you do that, usually good things will happen in this game, like they do in life. If you ride the roller-coaster of emotion, you ride the roller-coaster of, 'Somebody said this about you and the expectations are here and I'm Corey Wootton and I'm going to have 100 sacks this year and I'm trying to respond from injuries,' you're going to keep fighting that little voice in your head. You've just got to keep working to get better and keep working to improve and when you do, you have a chance to play your best football at the end of the year. And hopefully, we're going to have a chance to do that.