The Meineke Car Care Bowl of Texas is a matchup of two teams with great offenses and subpar defenses. It is easy to say that the team that plays the best defense will win, but Northwestern does not necessarily need a spectacular defensive performance to win its first bowl game in 63 years.

Here are five reasons why NU will beat Texas A&M when the two teams square off in Houston on Saturday.

Dan Persa

The senior quarterback will be starting his first career bowl game after missing last year’s TicketCity Bowl against Texas Tech with a ruptured Achilles. He is nearly certain to become the NCAA’s all-time leader in completion percentage on Saturday and his accuracy will be needed in a game in every point will matter. Persa does a great job of avoid turnovers, a necessary skill since field position could be the difference between winning and losing this game. He has shown a knack for big performances in close games, giving the Wildcats the lead on several occasions with late scores, including his game-winning touchdown pass against Iowa last season. This game will be very tight so having an experienced and accurate passer like Persa will help in the fourth quarter.

Brian Peters

The senior safety is a ball hawk in the secondary and has made big play after big play for a shaky NU defense. Peters will need to step up as the undisputed leader of this Cats’ secondary on Saturday, as they enter their contest against the Aggies without their top cornerback. The senior has displayed this type of leadership capability before. Texas A&M quarterback Ryan Tannehill is a talented passer, but he has thrown 14 interceptions this season, something Peters can take advantage of. In his final game with the Wildcats, Peters will be motivated to do something no NU class has done since 1949: bring a bowl trophy back to Evanston.

Embracing the Monkey

In years past, the Cats and coach Pat Fitzgerald have tried to ignore the 800-pound gorilla in the room. While NU’s bowl drought has been a hot topic of conversation amongst media and fans alike the last four years, the team never embraced it and largely deflected the subject. NU has changed its mindset 180 degrees this season and has embraced the proverbial monkey on its back. Fitzgerald even stole an idea from his playing career at NU and purchased a monkey backpack with the number 63 jersey on it to represent the bowl drought. A different player everyday wears the backpack, a constant reminder of the pressure to win a bowl game. The only way to stop the talk about the drought is to recognize the challenge and overcome it, and for the first time in a long time, that is exactly what NU is doing.

Momentum

The fact that NU is even in Houston after starting the season 2-5 is a tiny miracle. The Cats have won four of their last five games and their last game away from Ryan Field resulted in an upset over then-No. 9 Nebraska. Momentum is key in any sport and NU has the winning mojo on its side for the time being. The same cannot be said for Texas A&M, which lost four of its last five, most of which came in heartbreaking fashion. How a team finishes a season is arguably more important than how it starts it. The Aggies proved why they were a top-10 team through the first seven weeks of the season, but they could not get the necessary victories in December to maintain that distinction.

Distractions

Texas A&M has had to deal with many distractions this week as the game approaches. The first is its coaching situation. Coach Mike Sherman was fired after the Aggies lost to No. 24 Texas to close out the season and the interim coach, Tim DeRuyter, has been hired as the new coach at Fresno State. The Aggies’ motivation has also been questioned because this game seems beneath a team ranked No. 8 to start the season. The final distraction is the most serious of them all. Texas A&M is mourning the loss of offensive lineman Joseph Villavisencio, who died in a car crash on Dec. 23. The death of a teammate can be a rallying point for some teams, but for others it can be a distraction that overshadows their preparation.

This article is the 14th of our 15-part Road to Meineke series. We will be posting an article every night, except for Christmas Eve and Christmas, to help prepare you for Northwestern’s matchup with Texas A&M in the Meineke Car Care Bowl of Texas. Join us again Friday night as football beat writer Josh Walfish reports live from Houston following pregame press conferences.