Northwestern Pushes Boulder Up Hill, Boulder Falls Back Down Hill
An embarrassing but true anecdote about the Big Ten Championship is that I dressed up to watch it.
I, an adult man in control of all of his faculties, packed an outfit before heading to be with my sister and her fiance for the holidays in order to wear it for this special occasion. I even chose to bring, and wear, my nice shoes, a pair of Zebra Yeezy 350s. In These Times, sitting down and watching a collegiate football game, mostly by myself, is enough of an event that it required the accoutrements of Fashion.
I also woke up this morning fully convinced that Ohio State would win and win comfortably. I was not confident enough to put money on Ohio State to cover the spread, as the effects of Ohio State’s Covid outbreak seemed hard to parse. But I knew I would watch Northwestern come out early with a game plan that was good before falling away as the better team made itself apparent.
That’s the sick dichotomy ever-present in the Northwestern fandom. Anyone who follows this team with anything close to consistency knows that this is how it goes. Northwestern can play a darn near perfect season, can put together a darn near perfect college football defense, and it will not be enough to beat The Chosen of college football and their denizens of five-star recruits. Thus, the boulder hurtles down the mountain, and one must imagine the Northwestern fan very unhappy.
To beat a team like Ohio State requires Northwestern to play a perfect football game. The inequities are too high. How many players on Northwestern’s offense would see the field for Ohio State? Perhaps a few offensive linemen? That’s probably it. Meanwhile, how many players on Ohio State’s offense would see the field for Northwestern? Probably 9-or-so starters, and virtually every skill position back-up on its roster? Even with starters out from COVID-19 contact tracing, Ohio State’s talent was superior. The deck is so stacked it requires a level of executional perfection that is more theoretical than real.
And yet, for the vast majority of today’s game, Northwestern hung with and even outplayed, Ohio State. The best secondary in college football made a preseason Heisman candidate look unplayable. Justin Fields was terrible in this game, but Northwestern’s defensive backs earn all the credit. The highlight-reel play was the Brandon Joseph one-handed interception in the end zone, but the entire crew made play after play, even with Greg Newsome forced to leave the game with injury.
The interceptions they forced coupled with a newfound power run game and just enough passing yards led to a slim lead that Northwestern looked strangely capable of holding on to with a white-knuckle grip.
They did it, all of it, while playing far from their best game. Peyton Ramsey played one of, if not his worst, football game as a college quarterback. An inexplicably underthrown fade route in the end zone took 7 points off the board. A nonsensical interception while rolling out and a backbreaking fumble made three turnovers on the day for a quarterback whose primary job is to avoid making mistakes.
The run defense was getting gashed play after play as well. The weak spot for Northwestern’s defense was always the front four, but getting exposed in the way it did was surprising. The vaunted linebacker squad was seemingly taken out on every play. Still, Ryan Day helped Northwestern out by refusing to abandon the pass and accept the 10 yards they were racking up with every simple run play.
It was perhaps a B or a B+ effort from Northwestern today. And yet, they had an incredible chance to win. So much for perfection.
Somehow, what Northwestern fans will be left with from a game in which they were better than one of the top 4 teams for at least 40 minutes is an overwhelming feeling of “what could have been.” Such is life. What if Ramsey throws the ball away instead of taking that pick? What if he holds onto the ball with two hands? What if those long drives ended with 7 points instead of 3?
Northwestern does not get chances like this all that often, even in the golden age it is now living in. The last Big Ten Championship it played was a decidedly Not As Close As The Final Score Showed game where Northwestern was clearly outclassed. Still, the last conference championship Northwestern has claimed was 20 years ago now. Whenever Northwestern closes in on the conference crown, it feels like it needs to convert. It still feels like Northwestern is stealing when it gets into games like this, like the College Football Police are just outside the door waiting to arrest the Wildcats for the thought crime of Considering Themselves A Contender.
When it catches a sleepwalking Ohio State team calling the wrong plays and unable to put Northwestern behind the chains, that feeling is magnified. With Northwestern up entering the latter half of the third quarter, it felt like the door was being kicked in. Northwestern needed to grab the loot and slink out the back.
It stings that they failed to do so.
Northwestern will be back in this game, perhaps soon. Pat Fitzgerald has built a program that can expect these kinds of seasons now, a fact that shouldn’t be lost on any fan who remembers what it was like to watch Greg Colby coach a defense while unable to navigate his way out of a paper bag. But will those future games provide a better chance to actually get a win? Will Ohio State’s continued evolution into a College Football Voltron ever offer a better chance than it did this year, with 22 players forced to miss the game due to a pandemic? It’s hard to say that it will.
The feeling that remains now is another game where Northwestern fans knew the outcome beforehand, convinced themselves this time would be different, only for Northwestern to come up just shy. Northwestern can hang its hat on its exceptional defensive effort. And maybe sometime soon we can look back on the game and be proud of the effort and all those empty platitudes hindsight provides.
But what that will require is for Northwestern to eventually, finally, someday, break through and get the job done. Undeniably, Northwestern is close. But close, as today proved to show, is still so far away
