Football

The noise is starting to get louder now. It’s been simmering under the surface, crescendoing up when times are bad and easing when times are good. It was an annoyance at first, something you could tune out if you concentrated hard enough. But it’s growing now, more than it ever has.

It was first a few people on Twitter, then a few more who thought they were smarter than the coach whose offense looked stuck in the mud. Then it was analytical breakdowns that seemed to reach the same conclusion. And then, finally, it was Friday night, when it appeared on a real life sign, not on the internet but at Ryan Field.

Fire McCall.

Northwestern’s embattled offensive coordinator has been the target of a staggering amount of criticism throughout his 12 years at Northwestern. But it’s never been as prevalent as now, with Northwestern sitting at 1-5 just a season after winning the Big Ten West.

“I don’t hear anything,” Mick McCall said. “I don’t hear anything. I don’t — how can I do a justice to our guys with worrying about that? I can’t do anything about that. I can’t. They pay for a ticket and they want to go, cool, whatever. It’s up to them. I can’t do anything about that. All I can do is be here for our guys, try to work my butt off for the guys, and that’s all I can do.”

Pick whatever stat you want to illustrate just how dismal NU’s offense has been this season. Among the 130 FBS teams, the Cats are 127th in total offense. They’re 125th in SP+.

So as Northwestern prepares to host No. 20 Iowa in Saturday’s homecoming in Evanston, the Wildcats face several pressing questions: Can the Wildcats turn their season around? And if they can’t, will there be any major changes within the program?

***

Halfway through the season, NU is already out of the Big Ten title race. The Cats have zero chance of defending their Big Ten West trophy, and all their attention is now on trying to reach the six-win threshold for bowl eligibility. It won’t be easy.

Replacing Clayton Thorson, NU’s all-time winningest quarterback, was never going to be a walk in the park. Hunter Johnson — the No. 1 quarterback in 2017 recruiting rankings — was supposed to fill his shoes. He hasn’t.

After several lackluster performances and an injury, Johnson appears to have lost the starting job to junior Aidan Smith, who began the season as an afterthought competing for NU’s third-string spot.

While Smith and Johnson are both listed as starters on the depth chart, McCall said this week that Smith — who’s started the last two games — is “the guy right now.”

In NU’s last outing against Ohio State, Smith threw for just 42 yards and an interception, completing six of 20 pass attempts. One thing is clear: If the Cats are going to turn their season around, it has to start with whoever’s under center.

“We’ve got to execute a little bit better and just get some consistency in the throwing game,” McCall said. “I think the biggest thing is the quarterback. Continuing to get more consistent, throw a more consistent ball, throwing it on people, being decisive with his decisions. I think that’s the biggest thing.”

As NU’s offense struggles, the defense has fared admirably, save for last week’s demolition at the hands of Justin Fields and the explosive Buckeyes. The defense single-handedly kept the Cats competitive in losses to Stanford and Wisconsin and gave them chances to win in almost every game.

As frustrating as it might be, defensive end Joe Gaziano said the defense only focuses on their side of the ball.

“Our job as a defense is to hold them to fewer points than our offense scores no matter how many points that is,” Gaziano said. “So we’re going out there to put up defensive stands on every series every time we’re on the field. We’re not pointing fingers.”

***

Just 10 months ago, Thorson was standing near the end zone at Lucas Oil Stadium, looking at the sea of red and white confetti that had taken over the field. Ohio State was celebrating a Big Ten title and a trip to the Rose Bowl.

“Just a little extra motivation for the future,” he said later.

It wasn’t so much the disappointment of losing to a great team, but the realization that NU was this close — literally 60 minutes away — from a trip to the Rose Bowl for the first time this century.

A month later, after the latest in a series of improbable comebacks, it was Pat Fitzgerald’s admission that “this is home forever!” that inspired even more confidence in Northwestern football. Sure, the Cats were losing their quarterback and a few other major pieces. But they had their first-ever five-star quarterback recruit, and the future was bright.

But now NU is staring at its first losing season since 2014, making it much easier to look back than toward a murky future.

While players and coaches alike have consistently blamed “one-man breakdowns” and lack of execution, empirical evidence suggests the problems go a little deeper than that.

It was two of Thorson’s best performances that turned the 2018 season around at Michigan State and at home against Nebraska. It was Isaiah Bowser’s breakout game that saved the Cats during a trip to Piscataway, N.J. It was Bennett Skowronek’s highlight-reel catch that won NU the Big Ten West title on a chilly afternoon in Iowa City.

But Thorson is gone. Bowser and Skowronek have battled injuries most of the season. The two guys who made key plays on those program-defining drives against the Spartans and Cornhuskers — Cam Green and Flynn Nagel — are gone as well. It may not have felt this way at the beginning of the season, but NU is trotting out a radically different team than the one that had so much success a year ago.

Still, four of NU’s last six games come against unranked teams, including a five-game stretch with four home contests and a meeting with lowly Massachusetts. If NU can find a way out of its offensive funk, the season could be salvaged.

And though McCall has helmed NU’s offense for over a decade, he admits that this year’s iteration has struggled more than any other.

“It is what it is right now,” he said. “The answers are in this building. The answers are in this room of what we’re doing. So we have to find those answers and go be consistent with those guys, with what we’ve got. That’s the bottom line.”

But the answers need to come sooner than later. Gaziano has been one of NU’s most consistent players throughout the last four years, and he knows the season — and his hopes of reaching a fourth bowl game — have reached an inflection point.

“It’s one of those things where, if not now, then when? So you kind of have to say to yourself ‘I’m gonna step up and be prepared more,’” he said. “Our backs are against the wall at this point. We’ve gotta fight.”

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Twitter: @thejonahdylan