After that 24-5 debacle, only one thing is clear: this team’s future is as unclear as it gets.
On the evening of September 14, the Inside NU comment section was buzzing. Jack Lausch’s perfect second half in a dominant victory over Eastern Illinois had Wildcat fans wondering if Lausch was the quarterback of the future. There were heated discussions about whether Lausch could be the next Clayton Thorson.
Flash forward a week, and…hoo boy. One individual in the comments advocated for bringing back Ryan Hilinski to run the show for the season. Several more began re-litigating the Lausch-Wright debate that had been temporarily muted by the EIU showcase. But even Lausch’s most fervent defenders weren’t arguing that he’s levels above Wright, merely that starting the redshirt sophomore over the graduate transfer would provide much-needed offensive continuity.
So, what changed? Did Jack Lausch get body-swapped with Tom Brady during the EIU game and then return to form after that? Did the secondary, which had held up nicely all year, suddenly forget how to play football? Is this offensive line surprisingly solid or just a complete non-factor? The answer to all of those questions, and any others you may have about the team, is this:
We don’t know.
We simply do not know enough about this team to properly make a judgement on it, especially week-to-week. How’s Cam Porter recovering from the lower-body injury? I have no clue. Can the offensive line finish a game with the same five that started it? Beats me. Can Lausch perform well against FBS competition? Your guess is as good as mine.
The fact remains that all college football fans, by the nature of the sport, are very week-to-week in their analysis. Texas A&M, Michigan, and Notre Dame were all left for dead after home losses, but are right back in the top 25 a few weeks later. There’s only 12 of these games to react to, meaning that the reactions after each will naturally be a lot more volatile than after a bad loss from an MLB team, or even an NBA team.
Personally, my viewpoint on this team is the same as it was after the Miami (OH) game. This team has a solid-to-above-average defense and an offense that can’t really get out of its own way long enough to reward the defense for its performance. It doesn’t really matter who’s under center when they’re constantly facing third-and-eight, in the same way it doesn’t really matter how good the front seven is at run stopping if they’re on the field for over 70 snaps. If the Wildcats’ offense can simply execute at a passable level, then this team can be competitive in a majority of its games.
The issue, as we’ve seen in every game against an FBS team so far, is that this offense can’t execute at a passable level. Here’s every team with a worse third-down conversion rate than Northwestern this season: Jacksonville State, Buffalo, FIU, Southern Mississippi, Florida Atlantic, and Kent State. Even Florida State, whose start to the year almost got Mike Norvell on the hot seat, is converting third downs at a .309 clip — which is 3.4% better than the Wildcats have been doing.
The passing offense has been awful in every game except for (you guessed it) Eastern Illinois. Funnily enough, playing against an FCS squad makes the game a little easier for an offense. Remove that game, and Northwestern has passed for 387 yards in three games. That average of 129 yards a contest would put them at 128th in the nation, just ahead of a Michigan team that beat USC last week despite refusing to throw a forward pass most of the day. Even including the EIU game, Northwestern is still only passing for 158.5 yards per game. That’s behind Navy! Do you know how bad your passing attack has to be to lag behind a service academy?
And, of course, this inability to get the offense going puts the defense at a massive disadvantage. Say what you will about the first-half struggles against Washington and the second-half collapse against Duke, but the defense has by and large done its job all year long. Northwestern’s only allowing 302 yards a contest, good for 42nd in the nation. But when the offense is putting up only 294 (that’s 121st nationally), there’s very little the defense can do.
The main reason the outlook for the rest of the season is so hazy is because I have no clue how much of a fluke the line’s performance on Saturday was. If 2.3 yards per carry is going to be a theme of Big Ten play, then pack it up right now and get ready for 2025. But even against a stingy Duke defense (60th in the nation right now), Northwestern averaged almost 3.5 yards a carry and found the end zone on the ground twice.
We don’t know whether or not this offensive line is going to play like they did in Seattle or play like they did lakeside for the rest of the year. Since we don’t know that, it’s basically impossible to forecast how the rest of the year will go. But while I can’t forecast the rest of the way out, I can certainly tell you how things are looking today. There’s a lot of clouds over this football team, and it’s basically impossible to see a way out.