Subverting expectations
To quote J.A. Adande from his panel at this week’s Journalism 202 Lecture, “Every game is a chapter in the story of the season.” So far, it has been hard to fit this chapter in with the rest of Northwestern’s
2025 football story.
Think about where NU was last Wednesday, riding the high of the program’s biggest win in years. Most of the talking points were of the declarative variety: “The Wildcats have turned a corner,” “The team isn’t the same as the one that lost by 20 to Tulane,” “We are so back.” Even the skeptics didn’t doubt the quality of the performance, and everyone agreed that night at Happy Valley meant something.
The main question concerned whether the ‘Cats could replicate that performance. Saturday was supposed to provide an answer to that question, or at least point to something resembling one.
Maybe I, personally, got too ambitious after that win and am taking NU’s first shutout since 2017 for granted, but this wasn’t exactly how I expected this chapter to pick up where the prior one left off.
To start with the positives and address the elephant in the room: zero points allowed. The Purdue offense came into the game having gained at least 350 yards in every game it had played so far. The NU defense held it to 57 yards in the first half, forced three turnovers and didn’t allow a fourth-down conversion on three tries.
Yes, Ryan Browne left the game with an injury; the Purdue offense looked equally terrible with and without him. The NU secondary has been a bright spot all year, but this game served as its shining moment. A truly potent Boilermakers offense had no answers against the ‘Cats. Even the most optimistic NU fan wouldn’t have dreamed of a shutout leading up to the game.
What the most optimistic NU fan might have expected was a good showing from the offense. In that facet, they likely left the game disappointed.
And I think that’s where most of my own personal confusion stems from. Every single team that had played Purdue this season going into Saturday had immense success against its pass defense. The only exception was Ball State in Week One, the same Ball State that ranks 133rd in the FBS in passing yards
But against this same defense, NU struggled through the air. Preston Stone’s completion percentage was lower than Purdue backup Malachi Singleton’s, and of course, his streak of three games without an interception came to an end.
The gameplan was different from the one that produced so much success last week. The quick screen passes and play-action passes were almost nowhere to be found. Instead, Stone was given true dropbacks and encouraged to scan the field and hit his receivers. Being more ambitious with the play-calling, especially against a defense as leaky as Purdue has been so far, is a move I agree with. But the results we got are concerning.
This Purdue defense is as bad as it gets in the Big Ten. If this game is anything to go by, then Stone and the passing attack won’t be able to bail out the run game should they ever get stifled. That’s one less avenue NU has to potentially win a game going forward. Making the offense easy for Stone was a recipe for an efficient passing offense, but apparently, it’s the only recipe.
The same “tale of two halves” type of performance that almost cost NU the win against UCLA was on full display again this week. It didn’t end up mattering this time out, but you would like to see this team be able to keep its foot on the gas for all 60 minutes more consistently.
What ought we to think?
Objectively, the defense proved it can cover up for a poor passing performance from Stone, and against a good offense at that. The ’Cats play Nebraska, Illinois and USC before the season ends, all of which are good offenses. The Purdue game could be an indicator that NU can realistically slow down those squads.
Those games become a lot more manageable if NU goes in knowing it doesn’t need 30 points to win, and 20 might be good enough. And maybe the clean, efficient 21 points in Happy Valley are a more realistic measure of this team’s ability than the sloppy, inefficient 19 points on Saturday. This line of thinking is reasonable and likely more rational than the thought process of being disappointed in an offense for not scoring more.
The one thing that this week did demonstrate conclusively is that progress is not necessarily linear. This week might not have represented the great leap into the good, good caliber of team that would’ve beaten Purdue by 25 or 30 instead of sputtering out in the second half. Some (me) may have hoped for that kind of jump after last week. Some (me) may have been foolish for expecting such a thing considering the state the Nittany Lions were in, but you can’t blame anyone for hoping.
But good teams can win in numerous ways, and NU proved it can do that. Yes, we can question if the team performed better than it did last week, but it was a great deal better than Purdue this week. That ought to be a good enough way to close a chapter.
