First of all, I want to make it clear that I am a “you are what you are” guy. NU is 8-2 and earned every one of those wins. They deserve to be ranked 18th, or wherever they wind up in the playoff rankings tomorrow.
My question, though, is how good a team this really is, record aside. They have a potentially elite defense and better-than-expected special teams, but the offense is so limited and I’m not sure they’ve gotten better as they year has gone along. NU can run the ball, but when they faced great run defenses in Iowa and Michigan, they got stuffed. The passing game is anemic, ranking 118th in the country with 146.6 yards per game. It’s tough to beat good teams when you are so one-dimensional.
Fortunately, NU hasn’t played many good teams in a watered down Big Ten. The Cats beat Stanford in the opener, which opened everyone’s eyes and remains the feather in their caps. Since then, they’ve played two very good teams, in my mind – Michigan and Iowa – and got destroyed by a combined 78-10. Some of the luster has come off of the Duke win in the last couple weeks. We thought Minnesota was legit at the time, but the Gophers are now 1-5 in the Big Ten. Their last three wins have been less than impressive. They nipped mediocre Nebraska and Penn State teams by two each in games that could have gone either way, and they just posted an ugly seven-point win over a lousy Purdue team on Saturday.
The Cats have won every close game they’ve played. That’s a BIG positive, of course -- they make the plays they have to in crunch time, and they’ve come up with enough big plays to make up for a woefully inconsistent offense. But the fact that they needed to get down to crunch time three straight weeks against middling competition is also telling.
So how good are these guys? When I compare this team to previous Northwestern squads under Fitz, they might rank fourth, behind 2012 (Gator Bowl), 2008 (Alamo) and maybe even 2009 (Outback). This team has by far Fitz’s best defense, and if you have to be better on one side of the ball, you pick defense. But they are so inefficient offensively I don’t know if they could score enough to beat any of those other Cat teams.
Thoughts? I want to hear what the board thinks.
My question, though, is how good a team this really is, record aside. They have a potentially elite defense and better-than-expected special teams, but the offense is so limited and I’m not sure they’ve gotten better as they year has gone along. NU can run the ball, but when they faced great run defenses in Iowa and Michigan, they got stuffed. The passing game is anemic, ranking 118th in the country with 146.6 yards per game. It’s tough to beat good teams when you are so one-dimensional.
Fortunately, NU hasn’t played many good teams in a watered down Big Ten. The Cats beat Stanford in the opener, which opened everyone’s eyes and remains the feather in their caps. Since then, they’ve played two very good teams, in my mind – Michigan and Iowa – and got destroyed by a combined 78-10. Some of the luster has come off of the Duke win in the last couple weeks. We thought Minnesota was legit at the time, but the Gophers are now 1-5 in the Big Ten. Their last three wins have been less than impressive. They nipped mediocre Nebraska and Penn State teams by two each in games that could have gone either way, and they just posted an ugly seven-point win over a lousy Purdue team on Saturday.
The Cats have won every close game they’ve played. That’s a BIG positive, of course -- they make the plays they have to in crunch time, and they’ve come up with enough big plays to make up for a woefully inconsistent offense. But the fact that they needed to get down to crunch time three straight weeks against middling competition is also telling.
So how good are these guys? When I compare this team to previous Northwestern squads under Fitz, they might rank fourth, behind 2012 (Gator Bowl), 2008 (Alamo) and maybe even 2009 (Outback). This team has by far Fitz’s best defense, and if you have to be better on one side of the ball, you pick defense. But they are so inefficient offensively I don’t know if they could score enough to beat any of those other Cat teams.
Thoughts? I want to hear what the board thinks.
