For a sport that is known to be so physical, the game of football is really a mental one at the end of the day.
You can have all the on-paper talent in the world, but without the right mentality, it doesn’t
mean anything throughout a full season. (If you don’t believe me, just ask preseason top-five teams Clemson, Penn State and Texas.)
For Northwestern, though, the opposite has been the case. All season long, head coach David Braun and Co. have donned the slogan “comfort is the enemy,” stressing the idea that the ‘Cats can never get too comfortable with the position they are currently in.
“In the Big Ten, you can’t afford to ever take your foot off the gas,” Braun said postgame.
In the first half against Purdue, that mentality was on display more than ever. In front of a full house and the 1995 Rose Bowl Wildcats watching, Northwestern looked absolutely dominant. The ‘Cats outgained the Boilermakers 203 to 57, had 16 first downs compared to Purdue’s two and won the time of possession battle by nearly 15 total minutes.
With a 13-0 lead at half, the game was by no means out of reach for the Boilers, though. The Wildcats kept their foot on the gas into the third quarter, however, padding on another touchdown via the Stone-Wilde connection that just about everyone in Evanston has heard about at this point.
And despite a fourth quarter that saw some offensive lapses, including both of NU’s turnovers in the game, the Wildcats defense remained stiff. It forced three turnovers of their own in the fourth quarter on the way to a shutout, the first from the Wildcats defense since 2017.
Braun was the first to shout out the defensive effort from Saturday’s game in the postgame press conference. But despite the three-score victory, he didn’t seem all that satisfied.
“We got comfortable,” Braun said in reference to the offense’s struggles in the fourth quarter. “And when we got comfortable, it got sloppy.”
Braun’s mentality has characterized the level of play we have seem from the ‘Cats as this season has rolled on. Never satisfied, always hungry. And it’s one thing to say it, but another to truly emulate it.
Northwestern could have gotten comfortable after back-t0-back wins against UCLA and Lousiana-Monroe. It could have gotten even more comfortable after a huge upset victory away from home against the goliath Penn State. And it can get comfortable now, after having rattled off four straight and currently sitting just one win away from bowl eligibility with five regular season games still to go. But we know that won’t happen, because that just isn’t how this team rolls.
“The second we start to get comfortable, or pat ourselves on the back, we’re exposing ourselves to regressing. And that can’t happen,” Braun said.
Sitting at 5-2 and tied for third in the Big Ten with a 3-1 conference record, Northwestern is in a position currently that few anticipated it would be at this or any point in the season. But this isn’t the first time NU has defied expectations, this season or any other. And it won’t be the last.
When asked about the expectations he has for this team now, Braun remained adamant that his expectations have never truly changed and that he wouldn’t put a ceiling on his program. Instead, his focus was about nothing more than what was to come right ahead of him.
“Our program made a commitment that we were going to take it one week at a time, and be on a mission to go 1-0 each week,” Braun said.
For a team projected to finish in the basement of the Big Ten this season by just about every media poll out there, a bowl game to end the season doesn’t seem so bad. But that isn’t the mentality Braun would like us to have. One game away from playing postseason football, just scraping our way to 6-6 shouldn’t be the focus. For now, it’s all about beating Nebraska.
