Ball security will be key when Northwestern faces Penn State

Northwestern is a hard program to figure out.

In 2018 and 2020, the Wildcats won the Big Ten’s West Division title and played for the conference championship. In 2019 and 2021, they went 1-8 in league play and finished last in the division. Even by the standards of modern college football, with the transfer portal adding to the roster upheaval that has always been a part of the game, those are some wild momentum swings.

If their recent pattern holds in 2022, we’ll be seeing the Wildcats in Lucas Oil Stadium on Dec. 3. But after vacillating between irrelevance and Big Ten title contention the past four years, it appears as though the pattern isn’t going to hold. Northwestern has not looked like a division title hopeful lately. 

Since beating Nebraska on opening day, 31-28, the Wildcats have lost three in a row, and only one of those defeats — a 31-23 setback against Duke in Week 2 — was to a Power Five opponent. They’ve also dropped a 31-24 decision to Southern Illinois, and last weekend they fell to Miami (Ohio) 17-14 in their nonconference finale. 

In the loss to the Salukis of the Missouri Valley Football Conference, Northwestern saw two fourth-quarter drives end in fumbles, scuttling their comeback bid. Last week against Miami, they fumbled again in the final seconds, ending whatever hope they had of making a desperate comeback. 

Turnovers hinder Wildcats

The giveaways were reflective of a season-long problem. Through four games, the Wildcats have turned the ball over 10 times, including 7 fumbles. As they get set to resume their Big Ten season this week with a visit to Penn State, their minus-5 turnover margin is the league’s worst. 

To longtime coach Pat Fitzgerald, those numbers make this year’s results pretty easy to figure out. His teams aren’t the kind that can withstand a lapse in fundamentals, and holding onto the football is perhaps the game’s most basic skill. 

“We’ve got to win the turnover battle,” Fitzgerald said. “That’s how we’re built. That’s how we’ve won. There’s nothing secret about that. It’s not like we’re winning games 100-2. We win a lot of one-score games. … We’ve got to play cleaner. We’ve got to coach our guys to play cleaner, and that’s in all three phases.”

As it happens, the team they’ll be facing on Saturday in Beaver Stadium is the Big Ten leader in turnover margin. The Nittany Lions are at plus-8, which is double the differential of the league’s next-best teams, Michigan and Wisconsin, both of which are sporting plus-4 margins. The Lions have committed just one turnover all season — quarterback Sean Clifford’s pick-six in the fourth quarter of the season opener at Purdue. 

Fitzgerald knows he’s got a tough draw this week with the Wildcats looking to turn their season around in State College. He’s well aware of what Clifford has done in his six years at Penn State, even though his team hasn’t faced the Nittany Lions since 2017, two years before the former four-star prospect from St. Xavier High in Cincinnati became PSU’s starter. 

“I think I recruited Sean back in the ’80s,” Fitzgerald said. “He’s been there forever. I remember when he was at St. X. He’s had an unbelievable career.”

Northwestern still upbeat

Fitzgerald said the team’s rocky start hasn’t eroded his confidence now that the Big Ten season is set to resume.

“We had ample opportunities early in all three of those [losses] to seize momentum, and we didn’t,” he said. “That’s something we have to continue to stress, and just keep grinding. 

“I really like this group of guys. They’ve got a confidence about them. Maybe we’ve taken some body shots, they’ve got a confidence about them. If we keep working, we’re going to improve, and if we improve, we’re going to win.”

The one piece of good news to come from Northwestern’s disappointing September is that its lone victory is a conference win. The Wildcats are undefeated in Big Ten play and tied for the lead in the West Division, courtesy of their win in Ireland over the reeling Cornhuskers. 

“Nobody wants to be where we’re at, but at the same time, we’re still 1-0 in the Big Ten,” Fitzgerald said. “You can’t take that away from us right now, so we’ve got to build off of that. We’ve got a huge challenge this week against an outstanding team.”