“We’ve got our weapons back now,” said Northwestern football Head Coach Pat Fitzgerald, in reference to wide receivers Christian Jones and Miles Shuler.
Fitzgerald said this following NU’s stunning upset of #21 Stanford, in which the Wildcats dominated the Cardinal in a manner not reflected by the 16-6 final score. We don’t know if Stanford football is that bad, or if Northwestern football is that good, but lots of experts predicted the Cardinal to be a contender in the Pac 12 North.
If I were a Stanford fan, I would be legitimately concerned right now. NU beat them up badly on both sides of the ball and owned the line of scrimmage. Even with a good, experienced senior quarterback in Kevin Hogan, the Cardinal offense accomplished next to nothing aside from the game’s opening drive.
“It was probably one of the best performances I’ve seen our D play top to bottom against a ranked team maybe in my time,” Fitzgerald said.
The Wildcats, 13-point underdogs, picked up their first win over the Cardinal since 1958. They achieved their first season opening win over a ranked opponent at home since 1967. The main NU story line in this game was their stout defense. You also saw redshirt freshman QB Clayton Thorson get a big win over a ranked opponent on national television in his first action ever. Wildcats running back Justin Jackson went over 100 yards again.
One really important, but very overlooked, story line is senior receiver Christian Jones. This past spring Jones underwent surgery to repair torn cartilage in his left knee (the same knee where he tore his ACL in August 2014). So he missed all of last season and spring ball this year.
Saturday he finally returned.
“It was weird,” Jones said about getting back after such a long absence.
“I really don’t know how to explain it, at one point in the game I zoned out and didn’t really realize I was in the game, so it was a new feeling, but it’s just like riding a bike.”
“After a couple plays you get back into it and start to feel a lot better about what’s going on.”
Christian Jones caught 5 balls for 52 yards; not eye-popping numbers, but he had a fantastic game in that he did exactly what was expected of him. Northwestern ran the ball 54 times and passed just 25 times. We expected this Northwestern football team to be ground-oriented this year, especially so in the first game breaking in a new QB.
Jones is precisely what Northwestern football needs this year: a go-to guy on 3rd down, and perhaps even fourth down. Especially now with an inexperienced signal caller. Four of Jones’ five catches went for first downs. The last time Northwestern had a “move-the-chains” type of playmaker like this it was Zeke Markshausen.
Christian Jones praised the debut performance of his quarterback.
“He’s got a lot of talent that Fitz wouldn’t tell anybody because he wanted to keep it a secret,” said Jones.
“But now, the cat’s out of the bag. Clayton’s a great quarterback. And even with him playing such a good game, he feels like he can do much better, which is a really good sign.”
Christian Jones is a huge fan of global football too. His club is Tottenham Hotspur of the English Premier League. You’ll want to hear the podcast where Jones and I talk Spurs. That was during spring football practice. Later, at Big Ten Media Day, we talked summer transfer window and I asked Jones for his Premier League predictions. You can hear those at this link.
Paul M. Banks owns, operates and writes The Sports Bank.net, which is part of the FOX Sports Engage Network. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, currently contributes to the Chicago Tribune RedEye edition. He also appears regularly on numerous talk radio stations all across the country. Catch him Tuesdays on KOZN 1620 the Zone.
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