Ho hum. Just an 8-4 season for Northwestern in 2017, predicts USA Today in its Big Ten (B1G) season preview. A generation ago, the city of Evanston would have a parade for an 8-4 season, amid decades of one and two win seasons in the 70s and 80s. At first glance, this speaks to how much Pat Fitzgerald has elevated Northwestern football.
With perhaps the conference’s best quarterback and running back combo in QB Clayton Thorson and RB Justin Jackson, along with a talented defensive secondary, 8-4 seems like a baseline standard and it will be hard to call 2017 a success without winning the Big Ten West division. And why not? Thorson and Jackson are likely to go down as the premier duo in school history. A senior, Jackson has three seasons with 1,000 yard rushing, and with even a pedestrian season, he will walk away as only the ninth player in FBS history with four 1,000 yard rushing seasons and become Northwestern’s all-time leading rusher. And I believe that Thorson will follow former Wildcat Trevor Seimian in becoming a starting NFL QB.
Even after Thorson and Jackson leave, NU fans have to feel good about the direction of the program. Fitzgerald--just 41 and the winningest coach in school history-- is responsible for two of the school’s three ten-win seasons. Fitzgerald has overcome the naysayers questioning if he was the man for the job (admittedly, I wondered myself) during the challenging 2013 and 2014 seasons, and he is becoming an institution in Evanston. The 10-3 2015 team proved that the 2012 Gator Bowl team (first bowl win in school history was not a fluke). Last year, in spite of a terrible start, Northwestern won six of its last nine games, beating Pitt in the Pinstripe Bowl (Northwestern was the proverbial national champion in 2016, beating Pittsburgh, who handed national champion Clemson its only loss).
For the past few years, I have been cautiously optimistic about Northwestern football, but not this year. Northwestern will win the Big Ten West in 2017, beating Wisconsin, but falling to Penn State and Nebraska, finishing the regular season 10-2. With a loss in the Big Ten Championship game and a bowl win, Northwestern will finish 11-3, setting a school record for wins in a season.
