An interesting thing happened on Saturday at Ryan Field. The Wildcats won a football game in which they rushed for less than 100 yards. That doesn’t happen very often.
Northwestern ran for just 64 yards against a ferocious Michigan State front seven that allowed just 2.3 yards per rush. Yet the Wildcats still beat the No. 16 Spartans 39-31 in a triple-overtime thriller.
The now 5-3 Wildcats failed to hit the century mark three times this season before Saturday and lost all three – to Duke, Wisconsin and Penn State – by a combined score of 105-48. Last year Northwestern went 1-3 while rushing for less than 100 yards; the year before, 0-2, the only two losses during a 10-2 regular season.
That’s what typically occurs when Northwestern doesn’t reach triple digits in rushing. The Wildcats get off the bus wanting to run the ball and establish their best player, Justin Jackson. In Jackson’s career Northwestern has gone 19-4 in games when he has run for 100 or more yards. When he doesn’t, things often get ugly, as they did this season in Durham, in Madison (before a late NU rally made it respectable) and in Evanston against Penn State.
Jackson didn’t come close to 100 yards on Saturday. The Ballcarrier netted just 41 yards and a touchdown on 17 carries, an average of just 2.4 yards per rush. His longest run of the night was six yards, mostly because the No. 1 rushing defense in the Big Ten was zeroed in on No. 21 like paparazzi on Kim Kardashian.
So what happened against MSU? How was Northwestern able to overcome an anemic rushing attack that usually spells disaster?
For one, they unleashed Clayton Thorson and the passing game. Northwestern’s junior quarterback had a brilliant game, completing 33 of 48 passes for 356 yards and two touchdowns and took just one sack. Maybe more important than that, he didn’t throw a single interception in those 48 attempts; it was Thorson’s second straight turnover-less game.
“I thought Clayton had a career day throwing the football, he was pretty much spot-on most of the day,” said head coach Pat Fitzgerald after the game. He continued, “I mean they had everybody in the box now, they had everybody to stop the run…”
Give the Wildcats credit for not being overly stubborn and continuing to send Jackson or Jeremy Larkin into the teeth of an MSU defense that was eating running backs alive. The Wildcats ran the ball just 28 times against the Spartans; the only time they ran the ball fewer times this season was against Duke, when they got multiple scores behind and had to throw out of necessity. This time, they did it by choice.
Also credit Northwestern receivers for stepping up to make plays. Wide receiver Flynn Nagel set career highs with eight catches and 87 yards. Superback Cameron Green did the same with seven catches for 76 yards, and also notched his first career TD and a career-best 25-yard catch. The two receivers were at their best when it mattered most: they combined for six catches for 66 yards and two TDs in the three overtime sessions.
Another key for Northwestern was finding ways to get Jackson the ball in space in the passing game. Jackson had a terrible night running the ball, so he became Thorson’s second-favorite receiving target, catching seven passes for 51 yards.
Dumping the ball off to Jackson in the flat and letting him go to work in the open field was often Thorson’s best option. Handoffs were not working, so Northwestern used short passes as a way to get their best weapon the ball.
“21 [Jackson] is a football player,” said an admiring Michigan State head coach Mark Dantonio. “We’ve been saying that all week. When they had a good play, they found ways to get the ball in his hands. He didn’t run the ball for that much. I think he probably had 50 yards rushing maybe total, but they found a way to get him the ball in space, just dumping it to him out there where we had leverage tackling wise and couldn’t quite get him down. They would move the chains. It wasn’t like they were ripping off 40-yarders, but they were moving the chains on us.”
Oh, and when Jackson wasn’t running or catching the ball, he found time to throw a touchdown pass to Bennett Skowronek in the fourth quarter.
The last major contributor to Northwestern’s groundless success was something the Wildcats have long been known for: taking what the defense gives them. Thorson took some shots downfield when they were there, but the bread-and-butter all night were shallow crossing routes.
Why were those passes there? As Dantonio explained after the game, MSU played man coverage for most of the night, and when they brought pressure, which was often, “then we don’t have an extra player in there to take the crossing routes, so you have to chase the crossing route in those situations.”
That’s what happened on Nagel’s game-winner in the third overtime: it was a short throw from Thorson that Nagel turned into a 22-yard touchdown by beating the trailing Josiah Scott to the corner.
Essentially, Michigan State gambled during the game that its blitzers would get to Thorson before Thorson could find an open receiver. The Spartans lost that gamble a lot on Saturday.
“You’ve got to really give their quarterback, Clayton Thorson, a lot of credit. He stood in the pocket. He played very effectively,” he said.
So Northwestern found a way to win without a running game. That’s something the Wildcats can have confidence in the rest of the season, but they would rather not have to do it again.
