An Idiot's Guide to Northwestern vs Wisconsin 2020
BG: Here is a fact about the upcoming Northwestern game: Northwestern will win. They, in fact, have already won. It’s an a priori fact. The season was determined a long time ago. What we are doing now is just discovering what that script is.
Wisconsin comes into the game after dismantling Michigan and quite possibly ending Jim Harbaugh’s tenure in Ann Arbor. The game was decided quickly enough that making grand readings from it is hard. Graham Mertz did not repeat his “wow, he could be a world-beater” week one performance against the Wolverines, going an eminently forgettable 12/22 for 127 and 2 scores. Wisconsin, for the most part, looked like Wisconsin of days gone by. They dominated a mediocre-at-best interior defensive line to the tune of 341 (!) rushing yards on 51 (!!!!!!) attempts.
The real story with Wisconsin, though, is buried in that first paragraph, which is that last week was their second game of the year following a COVID-19 outbreak that affected dozens of personnel, from players to coaching staff. This has left Wisconsin hanging on a knife’s edge. One more missed game and Wisconsin is ineligible for the Big Ten Championship game. That feels like a certainty these days.
There is little doubt that they are the best team in the Big Ten West. In a regular season with 12 chances to figure out which team is the best, Wisconsin would undoubtedly earn a Big Ten Championship appearance. But in this impossibly stupid season, Wisconsin’s season has essentially come down to this one game. They will enter it favored by 6.5 points at Ryan Field, but it would be more surprising if 2020 didn’t throw a wrench into Wisconsin’s destiny then if they did.
TJ: We apologize for the lack of Northwestern football content as the imperiling of American democracy and the demon known as “day jobs” have taken over. But we’re back. Northwestern defeated Nebraska and Purdue in the exact same fashion that they beat Iowa – play a close game, dominate defensively, fail to close out, get stop on the final drive to win. My family believes that Fitz makes the game come down to a defensive stand on purpose and they’re absolutely right. After all, Northwestern has gone 19-7 in one-possession games since I started watching in 2015, so this is all they know.
BG: Northwestern is built to be 360p Wisconsin. Their plan is very simple: smother opposing pass-catchers with one of the best secondaries in college football, let the great linebacking corps clean up for a damaged interior defensive line, and do the absolute barest of minimums on offense to win the game by a closer-than-comfortable margin.
Through four games, Northwestern has won four games, only one of which was by more than one score, and has been dominant and feckless in equal measure. The defense is extraordinary, especially in the secondary. Sky Team 6.0 is real. Northwestern’s recent history of finding 5-7 playable defensive backs who are all physical and mean and always in the right place when a wide receiver tips the ball into the air on a crossing route has continued this year. The headlock the secondary put on Purdue rocked a lot of ass.
The offense looks prettier than it did under Mick McCall, who should still be arrested for his crimes, but it doesn’t function all that much better. It currently sits somewhere around 90th in efficiency depending on what metric you swear by. Peyton Ramsey makes a lot of good decisions but throws a fluttering duck of a football. Isaiah Bowser and Drake Anderson make for a very lo-fi thunder and lightning running back duo, and Ramaud Chiakhiao-Bowman has evolved into a good wide receiver. Yet the offense still struggles to move the ball consistently and is far more comfortable trying to end the game as quickly as possible while clinging on to a 3-point lead than it is trying to score touchdowns.
TJ: To be fair, the offensive personnel is still far from what Bajakian would like. Northwestern has approximately 1.25 receivers who can get open on a regular basis and the loss of inevitable NFL first-rounder Rashawn Slater has hurt the running game. They’re not getting much production from the tight end spot – there isn’t even a player on the level of the old “superbacks” (Garrett Dickerson, Dan Vitale, or Cam Green).
BG: Nothing in this essay squares with the analysis of the first paragraph that Northwestern has already beaten Wisconsin. And that’s true. But it also doesn’t matter.
Northwestern is the team of destiny this year. All the signs point to it. A striking lack of COVID-19 cases on the team despite the Chicago area’s insistence on indoor dining. The Rube Goldberg machines they’ve set up to collect every single deflected football and turn them into interceptions. The offense that’s held together with Scotch tape and spit. The quarterback with the noodle arm who keeps finding and hitting small windows. If Northwestern was not going to win this game, we would know by now. They would not have annihilated Maryland. More importantly, a single football would have bounced Iowa’s way, or Nebraska’s way, or Purdue’s way.
None have.
Nothing about this football season has looked right, and it isn’t just the empty stadiums. Alabama is an all gas, no brake team that can’t stop a nosebleed but scores a gazillion points. Clemson lost. Notre Dame is likable. The best quarterback in the country is nicknamed Mormon Manziel, has the most punchable face since Grayson Allen, and everyone loves him. Michigan and Penn State are self-immolating. LSU sucks. Florida has an offense. Oklahoma is boring. Coastal Carolina and Indiana are legitimate top-15 teams. The Pac-12...well the Pac-12 is still doing stupid stuff every night, they’re the exception that proves the rule.
TJ: Meanwhile, last week saw another dozen cancellations, and the virus has continued to spread across the country. None of this makes sense. The public health studies of this period are going to be extremely bleak. But the band, inexplicably, plays on. You’d think the best player in the sport missing two games due to the virus and the massive increase in deaths and hospitalization would turn public opinion against college football, but it seems like there’s more willingness to soldier on than ever. Strange.
BG: In this atmosphere, A Big Ten Championship that features Ohio State and Wisconsin would be far too normal, far too chaste for this season. Thus, we can be sure that it won’t happen. And thus, we can be sure that in some fashion, whether it’s through a blocked extra point returned for a two-point conversion, or through a wide receiver reverse pass to a fullback, through a game that ends 13-9, or through some combination of the three, it will be Northwestern who wins a nearly unwatchable, nationally televised rock fight.
The Rose Bowl goes through Evanston. It still will after Saturday.
