We’re halfway through the season, and Northwestern Wildcats football has found their focal point. You could call him their talisman even- wide receiver and transfer portal pickup Griffin Wilde. In the preseason, it had been thought that the high impact transfer was set to be quarterback Preston Stone.
However, the former SMU signal caller has had a pretty rough start to the 2025 campaign.
Meanwhile Stone’s go-to guy in the receiving corps, Wilde, has 22 grabs for 311 yards, on a very impressive 14.1 yards per catch. The Wildcats are now 2-2, and strongly favored to move to 3-2 on Saturday. The Cats are -11 favorites to defeat the University of Louisiana-Monroe Warhawks this weekend.
Northwestern has a decent one-two punch at the running back position. Caleb Komolafe is the quasi-feature back, with Joseph Himon II the change of pace back.
Losing Cam Porter for the season (and with it, his college career is now over) hurts, obviously, and ever since he went down in week one, the Cats have had a more pass-focused approach.
They’ll need run-pass balance regardless, but the South Dakota St. transfer (by that we obviously mean Griffin Wilde) is the guy that the offense will go through for the second half of the season.
It looks like NU will be above .500 overall in October, and that it not something that a lot of people predicted.
If they win this, and then split the next two after Saturday (at Penn State, the final home game at Northwestern Medicine Field before shifting to Wrigley Field, versus Purdue on October 18), they’ll have a winning record in mid-to-late October.
If that scenario plays out, then we’ll start seeing Northwestern in bowl projections.
And as for Griffin Wilde, it is thought that he could be a NFL Draft prospect sleeper. Depending on how this season finishes out for him, and then obviously the pre-draft evaluation process, he could become a late round sleeper.
Paul M. Banks is the Founding Editor of The Sports Bank. He’s also the author of “Transatlantic Passage: How the English Premier League Redefined Soccer in America,” and “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry.”
He currently contributes to USA Today’s NFL Wires Network. His past bylines include the New York Daily News, Sports Illustrated and the Chicago Tribune. His work has been featured in numerous outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, the Washington Post and ESPN. You can follow him on Linked In and Twitter