With season hanging in the balance, Northwestern goes back to drawing board

The definition of insanity according to Albert Einstein is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results.

Northwestern's defense has had over a week to think about what happened in their last game. Nebraska did whatever they wanted offensively, totaling over 600 yards of total offense and lighting up the scoreboard to the tune of 56 points. Jim O'Neil's first five games as defensive coordinator could not have gone any worse. The Wildcats are 2-3 overall and 0-2 in Big Ten play, while allowing a staggering 41.3 points per game to Power 5 opponents. The Wildcats came into this season with dreams of repeating as Big Ten West Champions and making a return trip to Indianapolis this December, that dream is well in the rearview mirror, with No. 2 Iowa two games ahead in the standings.

With the way Northwestern's defense is playing, NU is staring a 2-10 record in the face. That would be a disaster coming off of the success of 2020 and make the 3-9 record of 2019 look a lot less like a fluke. Something had to change if NU wanted different results from the defense, and the Wildcats' well-timed bye week presented them with an opportunity.

Head Coach Pat Fitzgerald and the defensive staff went back and looked at what went wrong during the team's first five games. The coaches looked at where offenses attacked NU's defense and came up with a plan to prevent those same lapses. The plan started with the fundamentals. Northwestern is usually one of the most fundamentally-sound teams in college football, but they have struggled mightily with basics like tackling in 2021. They presented it to the players and spent the bye week working on their plan to get the defense, and the season, back on track.

Fitzgerald notoriously hates getting into specifics, so the details of this plan were not disclosed, but one area he did mention was NU's struggles in setting the edge. Even back in week one, Michigan State running back Kenneth Walker III consistently got around the edge and created huge plays for the Spartans. Adrian Martinez and Nebraska's running backs just did the same in Lincoln. Fitzgerald said that failing to set the edge throws off the run fits for the linebackers and safeties and allows the defense to get gashed for big chunks of yardage. One word came up frequently throughout Northwestern's media availability on Monday: physicality.

"Across the board we have to be more physical," Fitzgerald said.

Senior defensive tackle Jeremy Meiser echoed that sentiment, but turned the blame on himself.

"I need to be more physical; my play isn't where it needs to be," he said. "I need to control the line of scrimmage."

Meiser and his fellow defensive tackle Joe Spivak did anything but control the line of scrimmage against Nebraska. The two were consistently blown off the ball, giving Nebraska ballcarriers a free run into the secondary. Like Meiser said, they have to be better; if they aren't, they could see their playing dwindle going forward. Fitzgerald not so subtly hinted that roles were up for grabs on the defense during these two weeks of practice and in the coming games.

"We'll kind of rotate guys until someone takes over," he said.

There may be some new faces running a scheme with some new wrinkles when Rutgers comes to Ryan Field on Saturday. Whether or not it's enough to reverse the course of the defense's season remains to be seen. Either way, it can't get any worse.