Football

Five games into the season, Northwestern is basically where everyone thought they’d be.

Yet fans are panicking.

It’s a classic case of recency bias. After three weeks without a win — a bye, then losses to two of the top seven teams in the country — it feels like the roof is caving in, like all the preseason optimism about this autumn representing a step forward from last year’s 7-6 campaign was misguided. But neither of those conclusions are justified.

Let’s remember two things. First, in The Daily’s season preview, I predicted the Wildcats would lose to Duke, Wisconsin and Penn State — which they did — and still finish the season 8-4.

Second, in his own season preview, SB Nation college football guru Bill Connelly gave NU better than 80 percent odds against each of Nevada and Bowling Green, worse than 25 percent odds against each of Wisconsin and Penn State and a near-toss up 54 percent chance against Duke. Other than that toss up landing on the “L” side, the Cats’ campaign has also followed those projections exactly.

Staying competitive with the Badgers and Nittany Lions, much less beating either one, was always going to be a tough task for NU this year. The Cats, while a solid team, are not a national title contender. Those two teams, now the outright favorites in their respective Big Ten divisions, very much are. And, for what it’s worth, NU was quite competitive in both first halves.

Staying competitive with, and beating, the Terrapins — or, for that matter, the Hawkeyes, Spartans, Cornhuskers, Boilermakers, Golden Gophers and Fighting Illini, too — seems a far more reasonable expectation. None of those squads rank in the top 25 in S&P+, an all-inclusive evaluator of team performance, representing a drastic difference from the 7th- and 4th-best rankings of the Cats’ last two opponents.

Fans may indeed learn more about the quality of this year’s NU team based on its performance Saturday at Maryland than they have from the first five games combined.

The Terrapins have relatively impressive road wins against Texas and Minnesota under their belt, but are also down to their third- or maybe even fourth-string quarterback and completed just three passes in a 62-14 loss at Ohio State last week. Their recruiting is historically in the same range as the Cats. Their home-field atmosphere is more comparable to Ryan Field than Camp Randall Stadium.

Maryland is, all in all, a middle-of-the-road Big Ten team, and if the Cats lose this one, the panicking around Evanston might suddenly become more warranted.

If the Cats win, however, they’ll be 3-3 at the season’s midpoint — pretty much what any reasonable critic could’ve forecasted months ago — and on track to decide their own fate in the far-less-predictable latter half of the schedule.

Of the six games that compose that latter half, four are at home. Of the six, four are against teams the Cats beat last year (and the two NU didn’t beat, Nebraska and Minnesota, have both looked considerably worse this season). Of the six, none feature the likes of Saquon Barkley or Jonathan Taylor staring down the Cats’ linebackers.

Of the six, all six are winnable.

A four- or five-win second-half performance would likely guide NU to the Holiday or Music City Bowl, which is exactly where most pundits spotted the purple before the season even began. A more disappointing showing could instead send the Cats to the Quick Lane Bowl or keep them out of the postseason altogether, which truly would be a reason for despair.

But a 2-3 record at this point in the schedule is absolutely not.

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Twitter: @benpope111