Think about this for a moment. The Wildcats gave up a pick-six in the first quarter to fall behind 14-0. They gave up 86- and 59-yard touchdown passes. They had a punt blocked. They allowed 40 points as an underdog in a road game against a conference foe.
And they won the game by two touchdowns.
If you were writing an instructional manual for how to lose a Big Ten game on the road, you would include getting behind early and allowing momentum-changing turnovers, big plays and blocked kicks. Any one of those things could cost you a football game, let alone all of them.
Yet the Wildcats somehow found a way to bounce back from each of those potentially disastrous situations to make big plays of their own and claim a 54-40 win over Michigan State that no one could have predicted just a few weeks ago.
Northwestern has already gotten a lot of media attention for its offensive explosion against the Spartans – and deservedly so. Fifty-four points were the most Northwestern scored in a game since 2000, and the most Michigan State has ever surrendered in a home game. The Wildcats scored more points on Saturday than they did in their first three games combined (52).
But the way the Wildcats responded from adversity and answered the bell time and again at Spartan Stadium was perhaps the most impressive part of this victory. It mirrors how his Wildcat squad overcame a horrendous 0-2 start to win its second straight Big Ten road game.
“I’m really proud of our guys’ resiliency, found a way to win on the road and get us back to .500 for the season,” said head coach Pat Fitzgerald after the game.
“Sometimes bad things happen, and I think it’s more about how you respond than (the bad thing that happened).”
Perhaps the biggest blow the Wildcats survived was the first: Justin Layne’s 43-yard interception return for a touchdown in the first quarter. Michigan State had just opened the scoring with a TD, and less than a minute and a half later, a Spartan was back in the end zone, giving the home team a 14-0 lead with 8:31 left in the opening quarter.
At that point, in a hostile environment, with the crowd sensing blood in the water, a team can dig a hole it will never crawl out of. This was Michigan State’s Homecoming, and even though the Spartans came into the contest losing three straight, momentum was clearly on their side.
Quarterback Clayton Thorson, who had “just made a decision he’d like to have back,” took ownership of his misread of the coverage, said Fitzgerald. “(He) didn’t lose his composure, didn’t get upset.”
Instead, he rebounded and helped the Wildcats score 33 of the next 36 points. He threw two touchdowns and ran for another during that period and was helped by a Justin Jackson touchdown run, a Jack Mitchell field goal and a Joe Gaziano safety. He wound up completing a career-high 77 percent of his passes (27-of-35) for 281 yards and three touchdowns on the day.
After Thorson's 9-yard scoring run with 6:49 left in the third quarter, the Wildcats were cruising, holding a 33-17 lead.
That’s when Michigan State hit back. Hard.
MSU head coach Mark Dantonio decided to pull his starter, redshirt freshman Brian Lewerke, who had just won an open competition in practice that week, and replace him with fifth-year senior Tyler O’Connor, who had started the first five games of the season for the Spartans.
If Dantonio was looking to create a spark, he got an electrical storm. On his second pass attempt, O’Connor threw a 59-yard touchdown pass to R.J. Shelton. The play was covered well by Godwin Igwebuike, but when the safety leaped to knock the ball away, he instead tipped it into the air, and Shelton corralled it and raced in for the score.
Lightning struck again less than four minutes later when O’Connor once again hit Shelton, this time for an 86-yard TD. The Spartan wide receiver had gotten a couple steps on cornerback Alonzo Mayo after two safeties who “were on a different page,” according to Fitzgerald, didn’t offer deep help.
Suddenly, that 16-point Northwestern lead was down to two with 2:08 left in the third quarter. The dormant crowd, which had booed the Spartans near the end of the half, was now back to a full-throated roar and the temperature on the visitors’ sideline no doubt rose a few degrees.
“We gave them Uncle Mo,” said Fitzgerald, recalling those two explosion plays. “Momentum went right over to their sideline.”
But if those two bombs started a fire, Solomon Vault was the Wildcats’ bucket of cold water. He extinguished the flame just seconds later when he fielded the ensuing kickoff on a bounce at the 5-yard line and weaved his way 95 yards to the end zone.
Touchdown, Northwestern. Momentum restored.
Northwestern would go on to add 14 more points before Michigan State blocked Hunter Niswander’s fourth-quarter punt. It resulted in a Spartan field goal with 56 seconds left that were the final points of the game. While the block and the resulting score didn’t matter in this game with the outcome already decided, Fitzgerald knew that he would have to work this week to fix a potentially fatal flaw in his punting unit. “You lose football games giving up blocked punts,” he said.
The way Northwestern repeatedly bounced back from negative plays in this game resembled how this team bounced back from negative games earlier in the season. After starting the year by losing home games to underdogs Western Michigan and Illinois State, Northwestern has now won two straight Big Ten road games to raise its record to 3-3 (2-1 Big Ten).
The offense that managed to score just seven points against the Redbirds has scored 92 points over the last two weeks in road wins at Iowa and Michigan State. The offensive line that allowed 15 sacks through four games has now surrendered just two in two games. Jackson, who was held under 100 rushing yards in three straight games, ran for a career-high 188 yards on Saturday and 359 in the last two. Thorson, who had one touchdown pass through two games now has 10 over the last four.
Ask Fitzgerald what has changed this year, and he doesn’t have any schematic or sexy answer. His team suffered from injuries early in the season, and the young guys that replaced them are beginning to hit their stride. All he can tell you is that his team continued to work hard in practice and the results are beginning to show.
“We could pout and feel sorry for ourselves and start to point fingers, or we can stay on the grind and keep the pedal down,” he said. “The only (people who were) were going to get it fixed was us.”
Then Fitzgerald summed everything up with a simple statement that tells the story of not only the win against Michigan State, but the Wildcats’ 2016 season.
“Good things usually happen when you respond.”
