I am on my 27th year of season tickets. My opinions are based upon what I see at the games. As of right now, this is the worst NU team during those 27 years. I do not think NU will win another game this year. I am not a fan of JON or the Defense, but the problem with NU is Bajakian and Anderson. They blow. Is it due to their deficiencies or Fitz'? I don't know. But the offense is bad, bad, and bad.

My seats are row 61 in the east stands. Hillinski had some issues with accuracy, but he made some really beautiful throws. The major problem from my vantage point is that our receivers were just not open. So many of our routes involve throws to the sideline. There are no slants. Not too many crossing routes. Not many rubs routes. On one third and six, we took out our tight end and went five wide. NU was heading toward Welsh Ryan Arena. After the snap, NU abandoned the middle of the field allowing Miami to use the sideline to their advantage. There was no one open. Hilinski threw a low ball to the visitor sideline. Most would say it was a bad throw. I thought it was good throw given all of the bad options. This was not a singular events It happened all night, just as it occurred against SIU. There are few easy throws. Wide receivers are not open. Why? Scheme/coaching/talent. Frankly, why would come to this university that will not commit to the pass. The passing scheme/attack is terrible. If our upperclassmen cannot get separation, why not play young players? If it is not due to speed, it is due to the scheme. Our opponents, except Nebraska, seem to know exactly what we will run. All the receivers grow up playing in seven on seven leagues year round. They may require coaching on blocking, but it's not rocket science. Speed kills. Your fastest players should be on the field. Maybe we don't have speed. If so, that is function of the system we run which does not attract talent. I won't even go into the terrible running game. Bajakian has to go.

This is Kurt Anderson's fourth season coaching the offensive line. He has had 4 full off-seasons. Our offensive line did not control the line of scrimmage against Duke, SIU, or Miami. Any argument that he does not have his players is specious at best. He wants the road grader or whatever and doe snot have it. Frankly, very few teams do. It is his job to get them trained and ready. He has not. Skoronski came in polished and proven. I wonder how much outside training Slater received. I find this unit more disappointing than the defense. The running game is terrible. We ran for 76 against Duke. Kansas ran for 204 against Duke. We ran for 167 against SIU and 107 against Miami. These yardage results are complete ""itshows. Frankly, I think this is another example of a bad buddy hire. Anderson has to go.

The offense sucks. NU is Vanderbilt bad. Another poster stated a completely new system must be implemented. Frankly, I do not think these coaches can do it. Further, I certainly question if Fitz has the ability to make the changes.

He will only get better. Now, I think he will get eviscerated by Iowa and ILL, but he's legit

1. I miss having a defense
2. Ferentz finally benches Petras de Milo so the 2nd string guy has some prep ahead of our game

It would be kind of cool if JON’s time at NU were bookended by 70+ yard touchdown runs.

While I don’t expect that to be the case, Illinois also has a strong running game, right?

the Ole Miss fanbase is melting down as a private plane flew from Oxford to Lincoln on the 16th.

Is Lane coming to the B1G?

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It's the backup QB battle in College Park: Edwards for Maryland vs. Sullivan for NU. Hilinski is available, Tagovailoa is not.

Let's get it on!

...the more I feel like we just might win today. Head says no, heart says yes. Go 'Cats!

An entirely different team -- he's turned 3 or 4 Hillinski sacks into first down runs...

Keep doing this? Why not!

I believe PFF scored 69 offensive snaps for Wisconsin two weeks ago. Again, it shouldn't surprise you to know most of NU's defenders declined a bit across the board. I'll make not where it's different, but there are only a couple examples.

I'm diving the line into semi-arbitrary interior and edge again per PFF designations because we have so many linemen with snaps at this point.

EDGE Defender - This is the best position on the team, in PFF's opinion, as the Cats have four players with grades above the replacement level 60.
McLaughlin - 49 snaps, actually edging out Tomi this week. McLaughlin is still ranked at 67 overall after the tough week.
Tomi - 48 snaps. Still a 74 overall after slipping a couple points.
Johnson, R - 17 snaps, which is down big for him as he'd been up over 40 vs PSU. PFF liked his game and his overall and rush defense scores went up a couple poitns each in his limited time and he's sitting at 69 overall.
Pate - 20 snaps. 62 overall.
Hubbard - 15 snaps, only 3 vs the run and 12 vs the pass. Hubbard is the edge PFF hates at 54 overall, and it's been interesting to see his usage drop and drop and drop this year. NU simply does not allow him to appear vs the run, and he's got a terrible 49.1 PFF grade vs the run to show for it. He is capable of rushing the pass though, even after a bad week vs Wisco, with a 66 in pass rush still.

Interior Defender
O'Rourke - 50 snaps.
Butler - 31 snaps. PFF is grading him really, really badly, worst on the line at 47 overall. His composites are a bit higher though, so I believe his overall is impacted by penalties.
Holmes - 29 snaps. Dunno if he got dinged but it's a small snap count for him and PFF thinks he struggled quite a bit as his numbers fell a little more than most and he's barely above 60 for the year now.
Story - 10 snaps.
Gold - 4 snaps
Bastone - 2 snaps
Brendan Flakes - His first and only snap of the season.

Linebacker
Mueller - 69 snaps. Disappointing he wasn't one of the ones rotated out.
Metz - 58 snaps. Another high week for him, partially forced by the hurt personnel in the secondary forcing Heard to play safety. Still, PFF calls Metz NU's best overall linebacker with an overall score of 70 on the season respectable play of 65 vs the rush and continuing to cover well at 74. Metz also has the most varied usage of all the linebackers: n his 204 snaps this season, 95 were classified as "box" snaps with a massive 42 classified as "d line" snaps. TBH, I don't know exactly what PFF uses to define exactly when a LB (or nickel/safety) goes from being tightly in the box to explicitly on the line), but obviously it implies they have him walked up more aggressively than other LBs. He's also been n coverage in the slot 64 times and even out wide 3 times. All the other LBs are almost always defined as in the box by PFF, so Metz really is the versitile guy at his heavy star role. His snaps vs Wisconsin mirrored these usages.
Gallagher - 57 snaps. I'm modestly interested what happened here to get Gallagher out of the game. Gallagher has caught his fair share of criticism around here, including from me, but he has been able to stop the run at times and PFF has actually graded him very well vs the run this year, reaching as high as the high 70s. His issue has been in coverage, where he's been terrible. Well that popped up vs Wisconsin as his grades across all phases collapsed pretty hard, basically the worst fall on the team. His coverage score in particular fell to an abysmal 47 with his overall just hanging on at 63, down several points. His run defense is still up at 72, but that fell a bunch of points too. He had a bad day and he's just painfully easy to pick on in the passing game. I'm sort of curious to see vs Maryland if Gallagher comes out playing. Did he get benched, or just dinged up vs Wisconsin?
Uihlein - 12 snaps in replacement of Gallagher. Graded well vs the run (67) but badly vs the pass (52).

Davis and Soares DNP

Safety/Nickel
Lewis - 69 snaps. I believe Lewis has only missed one defensive snap all year. He's bee the stalwart on NU's defense, and to PFF's eyes the best player in our backend at 66 overall (though not grading great in coverage). Lewis spent a whopping 44 snaps in the box vs Wisconsin, meaning NU very often had 3 LBs on the field plus Lewis up in the box. The first three games Lewis was much more used as a normal free safety and walked out into the slot, but for the last three games they've been stuffing him in the box more and more often. He's not a star, but Nu is using him in interesting ways and he's been steady.
Heard - 38 snaps. If Rod was on the field, he was in the box or in the slot almost entirely.
Wallace - 18 snaps.
Turner - 24 snaps. 13 in the box and 9 back at free safety. He was the msot frequent NU safety by far to be back at FS on a rate basis.

CB - All these guys pretty much always play out wide. None graded well (except Hollis vs the run, who is all the way up to 83 after the last couple of weeks).
Mitchell - 60 snaps.
Hollis - 56 snaps
Johnson, T - 22 snaps

I was hoping for this.

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Not sure I would feel about this? Could see it happening.

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Old Trapper, "The Official Beef Jerky of the Big Ten"

Seriously? Does the Big Ten have an Official Malbec to go with their Beef Jerky?

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With photos/renderings.

Sorry I'm mobile or would post this better...

Karmic change coming
Reversal of ill fortune
Terps extirpated

You'd think I'd have managed to get this out faster with the bye, but nope!

It won't be a surprise from a grade standpoint to know that the offense was basically rated weekly across the board. Pretty much everybody declined a little, with only a couple small exceptions. As such, I'm not going to make a lot of comments on grade unless somebody really deviated from this trend in either direction. However, snaps are a little interesting.

NU had 68 total offensive snaps this week

QB
Hilinski and Sullivan each had 31 snaps. The run play vs dropback distrobution between the two was nearly even with roughly a 1:3 ratio, with the difference obviously being Sullivan ended up scrambling several times out of pass sets as well as Sullivna being much more involved in the running game while he was on the field compared to Hillinski. From the standpoint of the playcalls though, it was a pretty similar mix. Richardson had 6 snaps, which is a number we'll see reoccur a lot. NU's last drive of the game was 6 snaps, and we saw a nearly total rollover of players down the depth chart for that drive. Nobody graded well, btw.

RB - Exactly 68 snaps for this group, which is sorta interesting, the lowest RB snap ratio of the season.
Hull - Led with 39 snaps with his usual mix of being mostly in the backfield but also in the slot and out wide a bit. Hull's grades continue to slowly decline to the point he's graded as a very middling back overall and carrying the rock, but still has very strong numbers as a receiver.
Tyus - 14 snaps. He hasn't played all that much but PFF has some positive things to say about Tyus.
Porter - 8 snaps
Clair - back on the field with 7 snaps

WR - 174 snaps, 2.55 per play, about average for the year
Malik - 49 snaps. Grades stayed nearly flat and he remains our only receiver with a playable grade.
Navarro - 37 snaps
Kirtz - 34 snaps, and one of the only guys on the offense to noticeably improve his grade, up to 57.4 from 54.4. His couple of nice catches made an impact, but it's still a tough year overall.
Gill - 21 snaps
GHP - 15 snaps, high point of the season for GHP
Niro -10 snaps
Bacon - 8 snaps
Calvin Johnson - 6 snaps, his first snaps on offense of the year after getting out there on special teams recently. With 6 snaps, seems like he was plugged in for that last drive.
Jack Kennedy - 3 snaps, his first of the year

TE - 1.31 per snap. NU has gone on the heavier side in recent weeks relative to their first few games. It... hasn't helped run the ball through the stacked fronts. As an aside, as a group PFF gives pretty poor grades to all of NU's TEs in their run blocking.
Gordon - 36 snaps. Gordon hasn't made a huge impact in a few weeks and his overall grades are slowly dipping down. He's still at 67.4 as a receiever, but only 64 overall with his low blocking scores, and with the Big Ten being a TE heavy conference he doesn't rank particularly well there any more.
Lang - 44 snaps
Olges - 9 snaps
Manigieri DNP again. People called me wrong when I said I was concerned he was being brought back for a graduate year, but with only 29 snaps on the season, poor blocking grades, and no notable contributions to speak of, it seems like it was indeed a misallocation of scholarships.

O Line
For the first time this season, Skoronski, Schmidt, Wiederkehr, and Priebe didn't play every single snap as the whole offensive line was swapped out wholesale for the final drive. Those steady four and Picozzi all played the first 62 snaps as a unit. Skoronski and Priebe basically held their past (strong) grades and are the anchor of the unit, while Schmidt's grades are sagging a big overall, though he is still graded alright at 67 overall. Centers seem to have a hard time achieving really high grades from PFF so this 67 is above average, and his 67 run blocking is actually viewed as one of the better scores from a center nationally, but his slipping pass blocking numbers at 62 rank well below average. Wiederkehr was flat in the 62 range and Picozzi was viewed as having a rough day with his numbers slipping down to around Wiederkehr's. The RG situation has been the primary source of issues on NU's O line this year, whether stemming from Picozzi being forced into action and providing only mediocre results or from the disaster that was Wiederkehr's game at RG.

For the last drive, we saw 6 snaps for Tiernan, D'Antonio, and Wrather as well as the first 6 snaps of the year for Josh Thompson and Zach Franks. Tiernan graded well again in limited time and PFF continues to be interested in more of him, although hthe level of competition he's seen has been very low.

Anyone going to the Maryland game? My daughter goes there so I am thinking of going to the game and watching a rejuvenated NU team win - I can dream that the bye will be what the doctor ordered.

Here's a surprise. Northwestern's defense ranks 46th in the nation in stop rate (definition below), according to TheAthletic. That's better than a lot of pretty good teams, including UCLA, Utah, Oklahoma State and, most relevant right now, Maryland. It's also better than Duke and Miami, two teams that beat NU. Unfortunately, four of the teams NU faces in the coming weeks -- Illinois (3), Iowa (4), Ohio State (5) and Minnesota (9) -- rank in the Top 10.

Definition from the story: What is stop rate? It’s a basic measurement of success: the percentage of a defense’s drives that end in punts, turnovers or a turnover on downs. This simple metric can offer a more accurate reflection of a defense’s effectiveness in today’s faster-tempo game than yards per game or points per game.

For comparison's sake, NU ranks 75th in scoring defense and 95th in total defense.

I seriously cannot find it. Please reply with the link to unsubscribe.

I sorta raised this in another conversation, but it bears mentioning that none of the "Academic P5" schools - I am specifically referring to Duke, Stanford, Vandy, and us...are killing it right now. And before you say "but Duke..." the have no quality wins, and just lost to Ga Tech, who just fired their head coach and AD.

Apart from the Harbaugh era I think we could objectively say that Northwestern has been the most successful of this group over the past 10-15 years. Although none of us are happy with Fitz right now, I'd argue our relative success compared to others has been largely due to stability and talent - both from the players and yes, the coaches.

Just asking because it's the Monday of a bye week and I'm kinda sick of talking about firing coaches...how much do we think the arrival of NIL and the Transfer Portal is or will impact schools that prioritize academics? Is there a correlation here? Looking directly that Northwestern's situation, I would argue we've lost more than we've gained from the Portal up to this point, and as a "booster" by definition, I've not seen or heard NU say or do anything related to NIL - like it doesn't even exist.

Out of curiosity, does anyone have any knowledge of how our academic peers are handling these two things? Are we all just getting smoked because we want to die on some hill of integrity and virtue that isn't real?

Now my #1 guy I would like at OC next year. I’ve become increasingly convinced that Fitz needs a “head coach for offense” position, a guy who can run that side of the ball basically on his own. Chryst is that guy to a T. Plus his offensive mindset fits with Fitz.