The game still hung in the balance when Northwestern took over at its own 22-yard line with 30 seconds left, trailing 10-7. What ensued was a fitting conclusion to one of the Wildcats’ ugliest offensive displays in recent memory.
On the first snap, Johnson dropped back to pass. With heavy pressure coming from his right, he tried to run to his left. He raised his arm to throw when he was hit by Casey Toohill and fumbled. The ball rolled into the end zone, where Jordan Fox fell on it for a touchdown to give Stanford its final points in a 17-7 season-opening win.
On a day when the Northwestern offense could muster just 210 yards and a former five-star quarterback looked like a walkon, the ending seemed like poetic justice.
Though the offense will get most of the well-deserved blame for this fiasco, all three phases had a hand in it. The defense uncharacteristically missed more tackles than it had in any game in recent memory, and while they created four turnovers, they couldn’t get off of the field as the Cardinal converted 7 of 16 third downs. The special teams contributed with a missed 38-yard Charlie Kuhbander field goal in the third quarter that would have made the game a tie on that fateful final possession.
Still, it was the offense that looked the most inept, by far. Northwestern head coach Pat Fitzgerald didn’t disclose the identity of his starting quarterback until minutes before kickoff on Saturday, theoretically to give his offense an advantage against the 25th-ranked Cardinal.
That strategy backfired. Big-time.
Johnson got the start but the Wildcat offense flopped around like a trout in a canoe for more than three quarters before producing its only score with just 7:49 left in the fourth quarter. Fitzgerald, facing a fourth-and-1 at the Stanford 6, elected to go for a first down and Johnson picked it up on a run. Three plays later, John Moten IV punched it in from the 1 to close to within 10-7.
But that’s as close as the Wildcats could get.
Johnson, the ballyhooed Clemson transfer, looked overmatched in this contest from the outset. Rumors were that he was still getting a handle on the offense and it showed, as he finished just 6 of 17 for 55 yards, with two interceptions.
He certainly didn’t get off to the kind of start he envisioned in his first game in Purple-and-White. His first throw as a Wildcat was a throwaway – no one was open on a sprintout to the right, so he chucked it into the NU sideline. His second pass was promptly intercepted. Johnson’s short throw to Berkeley Holman over the middle was on target, but Holman got bumped before the ball arrived and it went through his hands and into the hands of Andrew Pryts at the NU 46-yard line.
So, after his first possession, Johnson was 0-for-1 with one interception for a quarterback rating of minus-100. It didn’t get much better from there. He finished the half completing just 1-of-4 passes for three yards.
While Northwestern’s first three possessions under Johnson netted just 33 yards and one first down, Stanford dominated play, if not the scoreboard, with ball control. The Cardinal had the ball for a whopping 22:57 of the first 30 minutes and outgained Northwestern in yardage 215 to 79 in the first half. Yet they held just a 10-0 lead at the half.
It probably would have been just 7-0 if not for a costly personal foul on Earnest Brown near the end of the half. Brown came in late with a forearm to the head of sliding quarterback KJ Costello, and the 15-yard infraction put the Cardinal in position for Jet Toner to knock in a 51-yard field goal on the last play of the half.
Brown's hit also knocked Costello – who was 16 of 20 passing for 152 yards and one TD to that point – out of the game for good, as Davis Mills took over for the Cardinal from that point on and finished 7 of 14 for 81 yards passing,
Former walkon TJ Green started the second half for Northwestern in place of the ineffective Johnson. He had come on in relief of Johnson with three minutes to go in the first half and gave the moribund offense a spark, going 4-for-6 for 32 yards to drive Northwestern to the Stanford 34 until they failed on a fourth-down try.
The offense clicked under Green in the third quarter, marching to the Stanford 5-yard line behind 40 yards rushing from Isaiah Bowser and a 23-yard pass to Jesse Brown. But just when it looked like Northwester’s offense found a rhythm, disaster struck.
Green was sacked and fumbled, and Stanford’s Kendall Williamson recovered it. Green got carted to the locker room with an apparent leg injury and didn’t return. Bowser, Rashaun Slater and Berkeley Holman all followed suit and were sidelined in the second half.
Northwestern’s defense came up with a big play in the third quarter when Greg Newsome II scooped up a Mills fumble and raced 18 yards to the Stanford 21. But Johnson and the impotent offense gained just one yard in three plays and Kuhbander pushed his field-goal attempt to the right to squander the opportunity.
On Northwestern’s next possession, Johnson’s late sideline throw across the field was picked by Paulson Adebo to give the Cardinal the ball at the NU 38 in the third quarter. Stanford drove to the 11, but Trevor Kent partially blocked Toner’s 29-yard field goal try, which hit the upright and bounced wide left. Another bullet dodged.
While the Wildcat defense created four turnovers and gave the offense several chances to get untracked, they couldn’t come up with the stop they needed last in the game. Facing a second-and-12 with less than 2:30 left, Stanford handed the ball off to Cameron Scarlett in the backfield. Safety Travis Whillock steamed in from the right side and had Scarlett dead to rights three yards in the backfield. But Scarlett sidestepped him – another blatant missed tackle in space – and rumbled for 10 yards. The Cardinal picked up the third-and-2 and got the clock all the way down to 30 seconds before they surrendered the ball.
How bad was Johnson? Despite the fact that he played just two drives, Green had more passing yards than Johnson, 62-55 and his passer rating of 112.1 was almost triple Johnson’s 38.9.
Bowser led Northwestern with 54 yards rushing, while Scarlett paced the Cardinal with 97.
Northwestern gets next week off before facing UNLV at Ryan Field on Sept. 14. The Wildcats have plenty of work to do in the interim.
