Ten Questions: 1. Can the Cats flip their turnover ratio?

First of 10 questions we are asking that will determine Northwestern's 2023 season.

Head coach Pat Fitzgerald was asked a simple, straightforward question during spring practice this year. In so many words, a reported asked him, “What happened last season?”

The No. 1 reason Fitzgerald offered was turnovers. And he’s got a point.

Look up NCAA statistics for turnover margin for 2022 and you’ll find the Wildcats at the bottom of page three, ranked dead-last, 131st out of 131 teams, with a margin of -1.58 per game. They were -19 in turnovers over the course of the season.

Anyone that watches Northwestern football knows that numbers like that are not sustainable. The margin between wins and losses is always razor-thin for the Wildcats. When they consistently make that many more mistakes than their opponents, that margin widens way too far in the wrong direction.

Northwestern had a tried-and-true formula for winning under Fitzgerald: play rock-solid defense, don’t make mistakes and win close games. It worked remarkably well: the Cats won 48 one-score games over Fitzgerald’s first 16 seasons, second-most in the nation in the span.

But last year, they went 1-5 in games decided by eight or fewer points. Why? The Wildcats had just 12 takeaways all season, which put them in a four-way tie for the fourth-lowest total in the country. On the flip side, they turned the ball over a whopping 31 times, the second-most in the nation, behind only Rice. Put those two dismal numbers together and you can see why Northwestern lost so many close games – and, at the same time, why they also got beat by 20 or more points four times.

Northwestern came out even or on the plus side of the turnover battle in just three of 12 games. One of them, of course, was the opener against Nebraska, when the Cats were plus-2 and won their only game of the season, 31-28. They were plus-2 against Penn State in a 17-7 loss that took place in a driving rainstorm that turned Beaver Stadium into a Slip n' Slide and helped the Wildcats stay in the game despite generating just 31 yards on 28 rushing attempts.

The Wildcats were even in turnovers once, when neither they nor Ohio State turned the ball over in an ugly 21-7 loss. That game was played in gale-force winds that limited the one of the top offenses in the country (the Buckeyes’, in case you were wondering) to just 206 total yards.

But in the other nine games, Northwestern was a cumulative -23. The Wildcats were -3 or more in turnovers in four games: losses to Southern Illinois, Wisconsin, Purdue and Illinois. They were a brutal -5 against the Illini, turning the ball over six times in an embarrassing 41-3 loss to their in-state rivals in the season finale.

So, can the Cats flip that script this season?

Offensively, you have to think that the addition of graduate transfer quarterback Ben Bryant will help reduce the number of giveaways. Assuming he wins the No. 1 job, he’s a veteran who has two years of starting under his belt (one at Eastern Michigan and one at Cincinnati) and knows how to take care of the football. Last season, Bryant, who will be in his sixth year of college football in 2023, had a 21-7 TD-INT ratio.

Northwestern’s quarterbacks, on the other hand, combined for an upside-down 10-17 TD-INT ratio last season. The top two QBs, Brendan Sullivan and Ryan Hilinski, were a combined 10-10. The other four who appeared in games down the stretch when injuries sidelined both of the former starters threw seven picks without a touchdown.

You have to think that interceptions will come down with a proven and poised quarterback at the controls, especially one as experienced as Bryant. In the last two weeks of the season, with former walkon fourth-stringer Cole Freeman behind center due to injury, the Cats generated nine giveaways and had just one takeaway. Bryant’s steady hand should greatly reduce the number of miscues on offense, and better luck with the injury bug should cut down on the drastic skew of the turnover numbers.

Lost fumbles will have to improve, too. Northwestern lost 14 of them last season, more than double than the number they recovered (six). Improving the pass protection and ball security goes hand-in-hand here, even if half of last season's fumbles came from Hilinski (four) and the now-drafted Evan Hull (three).

On the other side of the ball, the Wildcat defense has to do better than an average of one takeaway per game. Last season, Northwestern got three takeaways against Nebraska and five against Penn State. The Cats only got four across the rest of the season and didn’t create a single turnover in six games, one half of the schedule.

New defensive coordinator David Braun is well aware of the issue. This spring, he listed turnovers before anything else when talking about the characteristics of his defense.

"We gotta find ways to create takeaways to put [the offense] in advantageous situations," he said.

There are several components to that. In addition to punching footballs out of ballcarriers’ arms and catching or deflecting passes in the air, the Wildcats have to create more havoc plays. Last season, they ranked 114th in the nation in sacks (1.5 per game) and 113th in TFL (4.6). Pressure on quarterbacks often lead to giveaways, and negative plays put teams in position to take chances, again increasing the chances of a miscue.

Northwestern’s defense was outstanding in creating turnovers under former DC Mike Hankwitz but struggled in two years under the just-fired Jim O’Neil. Braun needs to find a way to get his defense back to playing with confidence and flying around the field, to becoming the fundamentally sound and opportunistic unit it was not very long ago.

If Northwestern can flip their turnover numbers, the numbers in the wins and losses columns should follow suit.