With a 16-play, four-minute scoring drive to open the game against Minnesota, Randy Walker’s offense appeared as if it could return to last season’s form by bullying right through the flaws that have stunted the scoring attack so far this season.
“Keep the main thing the main thing,” Walker kept saying last week, after the “old-fashioned butt-whipping” Northwestern took at the hands of Ohio State. And the main thing was clearly speed.
The strategy worked as the Cats fired off play after play, leaving the Golden Gophers defense barely enough time to align — let alone repeatedly realign.
NU’s second drive came and went into the end zone even faster. The Wildcats (4-1, 2-1 Big Ten) picked up 66 yards on three plays in 20 seconds.
But with all the evidence pointing toward a resurgence of last season’s hurry-up, no-huddle attack, the tempo suddenly stalled. And the rain had nothing to do with it.
Word traveled to Walker on the sideline that the officials wanted the game to slow down.
The referees weren’t enforcing a loose edict from Big Ten official higher-ups that 12 to 15 seconds should elapse before the ball is put in play.
“When they allow a long time between putting the ball in play, it changes the game for us,” Walker said. “The tempo can either favor us or really hurt us. And sometimes it’s slow enough we might as well just get in the huddle.”
Walker said that pace allows opposing defenses to better prepare for each snap, putting the Cats in a position of reacting instead of forcing other teams to react to them.
During the first two drives, the Cats were snapping the ball after only two or three seconds had ticked off the 25-second play clock. But the pace shifted from a quick dash to a slow crawl. Excluding a third-quarter field goal, NU’s offense didn’t make a contribution to the scoreboard the rest of the game.
But Walker said he has no intention of taking his complaints to the officials or the conference office.
“There’s a thing in this league about $10,000,” said Walker, referring to the Big Ten fine for coaches who criticize officials. “I’m still just a good old country boy and that’s a lot of money where I’m from.”
Quarterback Zak Kustok more diplomatically attributed the slow pace later in the game to the weather. Officials had to hold up the action to wipe down the football once the rain began to fall, and in the fourth quarter they were substituting a fresh pigskin every few plays.
NU’s early offensive success was enough to pad the score and place the Cats back in the good graces of the Associated Press pollsters, who bumped NU back up to No. 22 after a week of unranked ignominy.
But whether the Cats will be allowed to control the pace of the game in better weather conditions may dictate how the rest of their season plays out.
Offensive tackle Mike Souza said NU’s offense is capable of keeping up the pace of the first two drives, without referee intervention, for 60 minutes. The team trains at an even faster tempo in practice than on game day.
After that first four-minute drive, Souza said he and his teammates weren’t even panting.
“We really weren’t tired at all,” he said. “We could’ve just kept playing, it was amazing. We worked so hard after Ohio State to improve.”
But Walker knows his team’s impeccable conditioning — one of its greatest advantages — will be useless if the players are held up at the line of scrimmage so opponents and officials can catch their breath.
And, of course, it makes for a less exciting game.
“They’re not letting us play, so we might as well just go back and stand there like everybody else,” Walker said. “And all those people (in the stands) paid 30 bucks to watch us sit in the huddle.”
