The Spartans had a bit of trouble against Northwestern. Dan Persa and the Wildcats moved the ball pretty well and the Northwestern defense kept the Spartan offense relatively bottled up. But in the end, the Spartans are a championship team and Northwestern is a 6 - 6 team. If these teams had played 10 games, the Spartans would have won 9 of them.
The Spartan defense looked pretty solid. They had some trouble with Northwestern's option attack and Dan Persa's resilience. But they only gave up 17 points. That's pretty good against Northwestern's offense. I really like how quick the Spartans looked on defense. The linebackers in particular were fast enough to slow down much of Northwestern's option attack. And of course, the D-line was able to dominate the line of scrimmage and get after Persa.
The Spartan offense was not as explosive as I expected, but they clearly did enough. Except for the interception, Kirk Cousins had another solid game. He showed good accuracy and made mostly good decisions, including tucking the ball and running for a few first downs. Congratulations to Cousins for breaking the Spartan touchdown record. The receivers also looked solid. The tight ends made clutch catches, and of course, so did Cunningham and Martin. The running game also looked pretty solid. The line opened up some nice holes and LeVeon Bell ran with great authority.
The upshot is that the Spartans are playing their best football right now. Is their best going to be good enough to take down Wisconsin in the Big Ten Championship Game? I don't know. But as the Spartans enter the most important game for the program in many years, all you can ask is that they play their best. Three weeks in a row they have played like a championship team. That should make us confident that they will bring their best. This has been a glorious season for Spartan football!
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