Northwestern Drops A Five-Burger

The beginning of the first quarter in Seattle looked like a quintessential welcome to the Big Ten moment for Washington. The Huskies were at home playing a Northwestern team they expected to beat easily and instead had gotten sucked into an unwatchable vortex of punts, the fate of too many Big Ten teams that had signed up to play Northwestern with the intention of playing a football game. Then Washington was able to get their offense going and Northwestern was not and the whole thing fell apart for the Wildcats.

It happened late in the third quarter. Northwestern was down 17-2 after the Wildcat defense scored a safety on a Washington intentional grounding penalty. The 'Cats had recovered a…