LINCOLN, Neb. – Northwestern took its poor play on defense personally.
In NU’s 28-25 victory over Nebraska, the defense came up with what the players said was its best performance of the season. After suffering abuse at the hands of Big Ten offenses the entire season, the defense decided to take a stand against the ninth-ranked team in the country.
“We really had that passion today, ” junior defensive end Quentin Williams said. “A lot of guys were really getting after it. We had a lot of passion in practice this week and the defense collectively put our foot down this week.”
That passion allowed the Wildcats to hold the ninth-best rushing attack in the country to just 122 yards on the ground. They held the fourth-best rusher in the Big Ten, running back Rex Burkhead, to just 69 rushing yards, while limiting quarterback Taylor Martinez, the sixth-best rusher in the conference, to only 53 yards on the ground.
Freshman safety Ibraheim Campbell said that the defense did not focus on stopping anybody in particular, but rather tried to minimize all of Nebraska’s big playmakers. Williams said the defense was just trying to force Martinez to throw the ball. The Cats were successful in both endeavors, giving up only two plays of 20 yards or more and forcing Martinez to throw the ball 37 times.
“(There was) no specific stress on any one guy on the offense,” Campbell said. “They have a lot of threats and we treated them all the same just trying to contain them all.”
Tackling has been an issue for NU the entire season, but on Saturday the defense was able to keep such lapses to a minimum. Coach Pat Fitzgerald said the key to the Cats’ upset was their play in the trenches. Fitzgerald said the defense was able to control the line of scrimmage because the defensive line played with ferocity and defenders were able to find their correct spots.
“We were able to fit better at the second level,” Fitzgerald said. “When it looked like they may have had something, we tackled as well as we tackled all year. It’s about 11 men playing as one heartbeat on defense.”
Campbell and fellow defensive back, senior cornerback Jordan Mabin, led NU in tackles, a trend that doesn’t always represent strong defensive play. But on Saturday, Campbell said that the defensive line and linebackers did a great job funneling Nebraska’s runners to the correct places, making the tackling much easier for the defensive backs.
Sophomore defensive end Tyler Scott’s return to the lineup after a shoulder injury kept him out of the previous two games helped add depth to the defensive line. Williams said that one of the strengths of NU’s contingent of defensive ends is their ability to communicate with one another. He said that the ends did a great job of relaying information to one another between plays and between drives.
“One thing we do really well as defensive ends is communicate with each other,” Williams said. “We’ll come off the field and we’ll tell each other what’s going on out there, communicate with the coaches and get it all fixed. Any changes we had, any adjustments, anything we saw out there, we translated to our fellow players.”
The defensive performance not only impressed sophomore quarterback Kain Colter, but also saved him and the offense. Colter said that there were numerous times in the first half in which the offense made costly mistakes and the defense was there to clean it up.
“The defense played their butts off especially in that first half,” Colter said. “(The) offense wasn’t really giving them much help. (We) kept putting them in bad field position, and they just kept taking the ball away and fighting their butts off.”
