The going will get tougher for Northwestern's defense against Michigan

It was a familiar sight on a Saturday afternoon in Evanston.

There was a Gallagher, wearing purple and flying all over the field, making seemingly every tackle. Only this time, it was Bryce doing what his older brother, Blake, had done for the last three years as a Wildcat linebacker.

Blake Gallagher led the team with 10 tackles and picked up his first career sack against Rutgers on Saturday. In general, Northwestern's defense had their best performance of the season.

They had held Indiana State and Ohio in check, but this was the first time the Cats' defense wasn't run over when facing a Power-Five offense. They held Rutgers to just 222 yards and seven points, while racking up four sacks and allowing the Scarlet Knights to enter the red zone only twice.

They also largely prevented big plays, a problem in previous games against Michigan State, Duke and Nebraska.

The performance was reminiscent of past Northwestern defenses that have had a lot of success. The Wildcats kept their three linebackers, Gallagher, Chris Bergin and Peter McIntyre, on the field for almost every snap and played a lot of Cover-4 on the back end. That was what the "bend-but-don't-break" formula Northwestern relied on in years past under former defensive coordinator Mike Hankwitz.

It seemed like, coming off of the bye week, Northwestern went away from the nickel-heavy defense they had run a lot more frequently through the first five weeks of the season. Head coach Pat Fitzgerald didn't go into too many specifics about what went on during the bye week.

"Just trying to get guys to execute fundamentally," he said.

Northwestern's defense looked stout against Rutgers, but the unit will be tested much more vigorously on Saturday by Michigan. The No. 6 Wolverines boast a potent rushing attack led by the lightning-and-thunder duo of Blake Corum and Hassan Haskins and rank No. 1 in the Big Ten and No. 7 in the nation at 246.5 rushing yards per game.

Fitzgerald complimented the Wolverines' physicality and stressed the importance of slowing down the two-headed monster in the Michigan backfield.

Going into the Rutgers game, Northwestern had one of the bottom-five rush defenses in the FBS, but the Cats held up well against the Scarlet Knights, holding their rushing attack to just 63 yards and 1.9 yards per carry. Fitzgerald lauded the play of his defensive line, which he said played poorly against Nebraska, for being physical and taking up blocks, allowing the linebackers to roam free and make plays against the Scarlet Knights.

"D(efensive) line had their best game of the season," he said.

Trevor Kent and Jeremy Meiser started at defensive tackle on Saturday and plugged up the middle, while Adetomiwa Adebawore and Samdup Miller, the starting defensive ends, were able to get consistent pressure off the edge. Meiser, Adebawore and Miller each registered a sack, and Adebawore had 4.0 of the team's 11 tackles for loss.

While Northwestern's defense looked like the dominant force that the 2020 unit was, it's not realistic to expect this group to keep playing at that level. Their are eight key contributors from the 2020 defense no longer with the team, and Hankwitz, the GOAT, is no longer pulling the strings.

This group is still filled with players getting their first taste of extended playing time. But now, halfway through the season, those players, like Gallagher, are settling in and finding themselves feeling more confident in what they're doing.

"With every game you get more experience and you get more and more comfortable," Gallagher said.

How the defense holds up against Michigan on Saturday will go a long way towards answering whether or not the post-bye-week version of the defense can play at the level that is expected of a Northwestern team. Fitzgerald is ruling out nothing to make that happen, whether it's sticking in Cover-4 and leaving three linebackers out there, or mixing up looks.

"We're going to do what we need to do to get stops," he said.