There had to be a glitch in the matrix.
For the second week in a row, Northwestern found itself in a 14-14 tie in the middle of the third quarter.
For the second week in a row, a field goal by Amado Villarreal gave the Wildcats a three-point lead heading into the fourth quarter.
And for the second week in a row, a disastrous fourth quarter sunk the Cats.
NU gave up 14 fourth-quarter points to Iowa in a 28-17 loss on Saturday. This came a week after giving up 21 to Purdue in a 35-17 loss.
A couple of weeks ago, coach Pat Fitzgerald talked about how the Cats don’t “flinch” when it comes to the fourth quarter.
He’s right. They fold.
“We’ve had a lack of execution the last couple of weeks,” center Trevor Rees said, “Not necessarily a loss of our swagger or a loss of our confidence in our ability to make plays.”
More disturbing than this lack of execution is NU’s utter abandonment of the run game when it falls behind.
This happened against Purdue. This definitely happened against Iowa. It even happened against Michigan, if anyone can remember that far back.
The Cats ran 38 plays after falling behind in these three games – 33 of them were passes. And no, I’m not counting sacks as rushes … come on.
“We have to pass the ball,” running back Tyrell Sutton said. “That’s the quickest way to get down the field. I’m not the guy who’s going to stand up here and say, ‘We need to run the ball,’ because I’m perfectly fine with protecting.”
This is theoretically true: You’re probably going to move the ball faster passing than rushing. But the Cats were down by four points against Iowa with 7:44 left in the game. That’s not exactly an all-out panic, heave-the-ball-and-pray scenario.
What about the fact that NU scored 14 points in the first quarter on drives that combined to take 6:09, running the ball seven times and passing 13 times? That’s a good play distribution. That’s not one, but two scores in less time than the Cats had to make up four points in the fourth quarter.
Sutton had 95 yards by the end of the first half.
So why stop running the ball?
“We weren’t running the ball really successfully, I didn’t feel at all, in the second half,” Fitzgerald said. “We were having glimpses of it, but we weren’t having the ton of success that we did early.”
It doesn’t matter if a team is not running the ball well; it still has to try. Iowa was down by 14 points at the end of the first quarter. It ran the ball 34 times on the game, as opposed to 36 passes. And the Hawkeyes only averaged 2.1 yards per carry.
They weren’t running well, but they kept doing it because they knew they had to. They knew it was imperative to keep showing run so the Cats’ defense couldn’t rush five, drop six and tee off on the quarterback on every play. This is, coincidentally, what Iowa’s defense did against NU in the fourth quarter, when play calling made the offense one-dimensional.
It doesn’t matter how many hook-and-ladders, direct snaps or flea flickers the offensive coaches call when things are going well. When the Cats are up against it, they become one of the most unimaginative bunches in college football: pass, pass, pass, punt. Pass, pass, pass, punt. Pass, pass, turnover. End of game.
Quarterback C.J. Bacher said the Cats have a way of dealing with games like this.
“We’re going to get in (Sunday) and Monday and watch the film,” Bacher said. “Learn from the film and then you flush it.”
The last two weeks, it has seemed as if NU is doing a lot more flushing than learning.
Maybe that’s why the season’s going down the toilet.
David Morrison is a Medill senior. He can be reached at
