Cats drop heartbreaker to Iowa at Wrigley Field

CHICAGO-They call it the Friendly Confines, but Wrigley Field has been anything but friendly for Northwestern.

The Wildcats lost their third straight game on Clark and Addison in gut-wrenching fashion when Iowa kicker Drew Stevens drilled a 52-yard field goal into the right field bleachers with just 14 seconds left to give the Hawkeyes a 10-7 win.

The game was a brutal rock fight for 58 minutes, with one score and 14 punts, but it delivered a final two minutes that was as exciting as any shootout.

Northwestern, which didn’t top the 100-yard mark in total offense until midway through the fourth quarter, finally got on the board when Brendan Sullivan hit Cam Johnson, who wrested the ball away from Jamari Harris, for a 5-yard touchdown pass that tied the score at 7 with 1:50 left.

But Iowa quarterback Deacon Hill, who was limited to just 65 passing yards in the entire game, found Kaleb Brown along the sideline for a 23-yard gain – by far the biggest play of the day for the Hawkeyes – to the NU 38-yard line to set up Stevens’ game-winner four plays later.

A visibly spent Northwestern interim head coach David Braun said he was left “speechless” after the loss that dropped the Wildcats to 4-5 overall and 2-4 in the Big Ten.

“I deeply wanted to see this team come out of Wrigley with a win,” said Braun. “You saw a team today that embodied what a team really looks like.”

The coach added that he blamed himself for the defensive call that resulted in Brown’s big catch for the Hawkeyes. He elected to play a soft zone rather than tight coverage to challenge the Hawkeyes’ receivers.

“You’re not going to see me pointing fingers at anyone other than myself,” he said.

Northwestern finished with just 170 yards of offense, one more than Iowa but the team’s lowest output of the season. Yet in the fourth quarter, the offense found a rhythm, getting inside the Iowa 10-yard line twice. The second time resulted in the touchdown, but the Wildcats were stopped at the goal line after earning a first down at the Iowa 2-yard line the first trip.

On first down, Cam Porter ran up the middle to the 1. On second down, Sullivan’s quarterback sneak was stuffed for no gain. On third, Porter was sent between the guards again for no yards. After three straight plays up the middle netted one yard, what did the Wildcats do on fourth down? They ran another Sullivan sneak. He was stuffed again, for no gain.

But Sullivan said that the offense’s confidence never wavered, even after getting stoned from inside the 1. The defense got a three-and-out, and Northwestern came right back down for the tying touchdown that preceded Stevens’ heroics.

The first quarter was a brutal slog, as expected, though the ugly was mostly supplied by the Wildcats.

Hill, who looks – and usually plays – more like a defensive tackle than a quarterback, threw six passes in the first period. Three of them drew pass-interference penalties against the Wildcats, and the other three were completions.

But the Hawkeyes failed to capitalize on two trips into the Northwestern end of the field in the opening period. On the first drive, a third-down strip sack by Jaylen Pate for an 8-yard loss not only stopped the drive, it knocked them out of field-goal range. On the second trip, Stevens’ 53-yard field goal attempt, into the same end zone as his winner, hit the foul pole – er, right upright – and bounced back.

Northwestern’s offensive “attack” meanwhile, ran nine plays for -2 yards on their two possessions, though they did manage to rack up one first down.

While the Wildcat offense sputtered, the defense kept coming up with big plays. Iowa’s first drive of the second quarter reached the NU 26-yard line, but that’s when Theran Johnson picked off Hill’s throw to Nico Ragaini in the end zone to stop another drive cold.

That was about it in terms of the first half. It lived up to its billing as a pitcher’s duel as the two teams combined for 0 points, 10 punts and 110 yards of combined total offense. Northwestern, in fact, had more negative yards in penalties (51) than positive yards of total offense (29) – and Iowa declined two more flags against the Wildcats.

The Wildcats made the biggest mistake of the game on their first drive of the third quarter. Iowa’s Anterio Thompson partially blocked Hunter Renner’s punt deep in NU territory, and the Hawkeyes took over at the NU 25-yard line.

That’s all the Hawkeyes needed, as seven bludgeoning plays later, Hill hit tight end Addison Ostrenga on a bootleg for a 6-yard touchdown pass that looked like it may have decided the game. But that was before the last two minutes produced an offensive explosion.

The numbers for this game were brutal. Iowa averaged 3.0 yards per play, Northwestern 2.8. The teams combined for just 26 first downs.

But in a way, it was a beautiful game – the most beautiful 10-7 game you'll ever see – even if the ending wasn’t pretty for the Wildcats.