Northwestern was riding high coming into Eugene after crushing Rutgers, ripping out the heart of Pat Fitzgerald’s Michigan State team, and flaunting its ridiculous Chip Kelly offense over the largely ugly and inept offenses of the Big Ten. Last season, Northwestern was fighting for a bowl game for weeks. The bowl-eligible ‘Cats came into this game with unimaginable possibilities in the conference and maybe even dreams of the playoff. And for a half, it seemed like it was actually happening.
Northwestern started the game on fire on offense. Aidan Chiles was doing everything with his arm and his legs. The Oregon offense, which had continued its pattern of juddering mediocrity, kept stalling out. Kelly was once again cooking, sending out a new insane formation that was like an offset I-formation with receivers that I’ve never seen that so bamboozled the Oregon defense that they let Griffin Wilde sneak through completely alone for a 64-yard touchdown. The camera cut to sad Oregon fans watching a season that they started with national championship aspirations move from indignity to indignity, in this case getting demolished by a team they’ve never imagined losing to beating them with an insane, fever-dream offense designed by the coach who is significantly responsible for making Oregon into a national power while they are dressed like bananas and power rangers. With a minute remaining in the second half, the ‘Cats were up 20-6.
Your worst nightmare if you are linebacker who likes formations you have ever seen before
Then, disaster. Dylan Railoa launched a bomb to Evan Stewart to set up a touchdown in the dying minutes of the first half to get the Ducks within a touchdown. And in the second half, they absolutely clobbered the ‘Cats. Oregon’s hulking defensive line took over the game, shutting down Northwestern’s running game and then, as the Northwestern lead dissolved, clobbering Chiles. On offense, Raiola suddenly turned into the star quarterback he had been when he was recruited to Nebraska and got more attention for attempting to will himself into becoming Patrick Mahomes by trying to look as much like him as possible and instead coming across like the ineffectual Hockey Pad Batman. After a lousy first half, it was as if someone had said a code word and activated his programming from all of those Manning Passing Academy minicamps and he was doing moves you would not believe by throwing to receivers getting open against Northwestern’s injury-riddled secondary.
Peyton Manning activates the "Eli Protocols" by using the codewords "Yes I'll Do That Commercial"
The second half was a dispiriting slog. The ‘Cats managed two field goals as the offense winnowed down to hoping Chiles could drag them up and down the field singlehandedly. The Oregon line squeezed him like a vice as the game went on while the Ducks offense gobbled up yards in big, thirsty gulps. The big blow came on a 75 yard touchdown pass in the fourth quarter. The Ducks were only up by eight, but Chiles and the offense could not bring back the last-second Michigan State heroics as the Oregon line turned him into the whac-a-mole game's titular mole.
The loss was frustrating; it is never fun to blow a large lead against a team in the midst of an angst-spiral that has just fired a coordinator and has already blown the chance to go to the playoff. And while the loss shatters a lot of the Wildcats' momentum and got them stripped of their national ranking, there’s still an opportunity to have an incredible season.
It is unclear what successful football seasons look like anymore for teams like Northwestern. For big programs like Oregon, there is an expectation to make the playoff and go deep and anything short of that seems like a failure. For Northwestern, the goal was always to make a bowl game and occasionally tunnel through 500 yards of shit-smelling foulness in the Big Ten West to make it to Indianapolis. But in 2026, teams don’t really care that much about bowl games as players understandably sit out to avoid imperiling a payday in the NFL or the transfer portal, and these games become glorified scrimmages between the ends of various benches that offer at best the opportunity to kill and eat a mascot or baptize a coach in mayonnaise. Some teams like Notre Dame have haughtily decided they will simply not even play in a bowl game if they don't make the playoff, like they are better than participating in a toaster snack cannibalization ritual just because they were really good in the 1920s. But a bowl game is good enough for me; I’m ecstatic for every bowl game the ‘Cats make even if no one else cares about them anymore.
The dream is to make it to a bowl game and then triumphantly hold up a fake newspaper from something called "Ford Field Times" printed on legal sized computer paper
THE SAME FUCKING IOWA TEAM EVERY YEAR
If you are hypothetically writing a blog about Big Ten football, at some point it becomes harder and harder to come up with new and interesting things to say about Iowa football. Iowa is the most constant team in the Big Ten; they play the exact same way every year, they maintain a metronomic level Outback Bowl-caliber excellence, and the only thing that changes is determining the exact level of their disgusting offensive ineptitude, which can only be measured in the finest gradations; experts watch them with a jeweler's loupe to determine exactly how many microns their quarterback taken from the pile of discontinued models is off on his passes. Every season is Kirk Ferentz waking up to Sonny and Cher on a frozen Iowa City morning and living out the same day over and over again except he never learns or grows or takes piano lessons because the Groundhog Day scenario is a dream for him where he never has to do anything different and can just stand on the sidelines and squint while calling for the punting unit and then biting directly into a raw onion.
Scene from Groundhawk Day
The frustrating thing about Iowa is that being this way, being the apex of disgusting punt-based trench football, being the least aesthetically pleasing brand of football ever concocted, is that this does not stop them from being very good. There was a brief period of time when Northwestern had their number and Pat Fitzgerald, huffing the very last fumes of the times Northwestern had a functioning offense with an army of plucky, undersized quarterbacks while the program slowly mutated into a putrid lesser version of Iowa football, was able to regularly frustrate the Hawks by defiantly punting at them. That time has passed. Iowa has kicked the absolute shit out of Northwestern the last few times they played; whatever burgeoning 2010s rivalry had been bubbling between these two programs has fully evaporated on the Iowa side while Northwestern fans desperately want to start beating them again.
This game seemed like it would offer a pretty exciting matchup of Chip Kelly's maniacal science lab offense versus the stoic Iowa defense in a race to 14 points. It promised the possibility of Ferentz staring disgustedly at wide receivers starting in Northwestern's own endzone or army crawling behind the line of scrimmage on TV cables. Iowa would probably be up for the task; we saw what happens last week when a team simply stops Northwestern's running game and eventually closes in on Chiles, but it is also possible that Ferentz would be so offended that he would be unable to contain his emotions and squint slightly harder.
Unfortunately, the dream of this matchup will not be fulfilled. Aidan Chiles, heroically reduced to being the only functioning member of Northwestern's offense by the end of last week's game, is now out with what Northwestern is describing cryptically as an "upper body injury" in a holdout from the Pat Fitzgerald regime's coded Moscow Rules-style injury reports. Northwestern has lost its wizard, the guy who makes the Chip Kelly offense work, and the best quarterback the 'Cats have had in decades. In previous years, quarterback injuries or benchings were not a huge deal because the Northwestern had a variety of quarterbacks who were all skilled and flawed in weird, mismatched ways so it would be interesting to see a running quarterback come in who couldn't pass or a guy who could throw it but had no way of escaping from pressure from dangerous Big Ten defensive lines or a guy who was a baseball player. Chiles is the Wildcats' indispensable player; without him it is difficult to imagine the 'Cats doing much of anything.
Northwestern does have a seasoned backup in Nicco Marichol who started for West Virginia. I have not seen a lot of Marichol, but he does represent a more experienced backup than a typical Northwestern second-stringer. But there is a fear that the Chip Kelly insanity playbook won't work as well without a guy who can run and throw with the accuracy of Chiles. Without its star quarterback, maybe Kelly's goofy shit won't be the solution against Iowa; it may be time to go into the bowels of Northwestern's football facility, recite the Forbidden Words, break the seal, and unlock the darkest arts of the Mick McCall playbook to try to win this game 5-2.
From the beginning of this season, it looked like this part of the schedule would be an impossible gantlet of misery. As it went on, Northwestern looked far better than I expected and these seemingly unstoppable juggernauts had flaws-- Oregon and Ohio State both lost their starting quarterbacks and have looked more vulnerable than they have in years. Beating any of them would be a tall task and any win would be one of greatest triumphs in program history. But all of that hope depended on this offense. Maybe Marichol will turn out to also be good at commanding Kelly's sorcerer's apprentice offense. Without Chiles, though, the rest of the season looks pretty bleak.
FICTION SECTION
Dear Mr. Van Hiss,
This letter is to demand the urgent retraction of your ridiculous and libelous article "Inside Cudge Waynegetter's Controversial Plan To Take The 'Face Off' of College Football." In it, the author Brad Plaid alleges with no evidence that Coach Chadd "Cudge" Waynegetter was planning "an extensive program for high-performing professional athletes to return to the college ranks in disguise using techniques similar to the ones depicted in the 1997 John Woo film Face/Off." This is clearly a lie. No one on the State coaching staff or athletic department has ever proposed lasering off the face of a low depth chart professional football player and letting him play under an assumed name. My client, Coach "Cudge" Waynegetter, is prepared to file suit unless you replace the article with an apology immediately.
Coach "Cudge" Waynegetter is disgusted by the anonymous so-called "sources" in this article described as "sources close to the State football program" and "sources familiar with lasering someone's face off and giving them a new identity." These "sources" could be anyone including, as I would suspect, a long list of disgruntled former staff that Coach "Cudge" Waynegetter had to let go in order to "unclog this goddam toilet offense," many of whom have access to Face/Off through DVD or streaming video technology.
I understand that your scandal-mongering blogger Brad Plaid found some emails between my client Coach "Cudge" Waynegetter and a recently cut tackle from the Tennessee Titans with the subject matter "re: Face Laser." And yes, my client does not dispute that he, assuming the false name Ken "Kludge" McTrain, had talked to several respected plastic surgeons and some of this correspondence mentions the motion picture Face/Off. But as you know under the laws of HIPAA, it would be unethical and extremely illegal for Brad Plaid to get this information. As far as you know, my client (Coach "Cudge" Waynegetter) was talking to these surgeons about himself. For example, he has that mole.
But there is a difference between reaching out for information for face laser surgeries (that are, by the way, are in nascent stages at at least four other teams in the conference) and implementing "a program" as your disgusting rag puts it. You can make inquiries into anything. For example, Coach "Cudge" Waynegetter can muse publicly about purchasing the Big Galoot sandwich at the Mr. Grundo's near the athletic facility but will never do so because he is specifically prohibited from eating that sandwich by Mrs. "Cudge" Waynegetter due to its violent effect on his bowels that as he put it "shake him up from the insides like a concrete mixer" and he's not allowed to eat it even when she's out of town because she would still know from certain lingering stenches. Would your publication (I hesitate to even call it that) publish a story that Coach "Cudge" Waynegetter has "a program" for ordering the Big Galoot?
You have 24 hours to remove Brad Plaid's libelous smear against Coach "Cudge" Waynegetter and the entire university before we file an enormous lawsuit upon you. Coach "Cudge" Waynegetter awaits your decision.
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Dear Commissioner Chulbous,
I am writing on behalf of my client Coach Chadd "Cudge" Waynegetter after your inaccurate and slanderous claims in the press that he and Athletic Director Trent Bosphorous have been involved in "secret talks" to move the football team and all athletic programs to the Mountain West and you are prepared to levy heavy penalties against the school. The involvement of my client in any conference-movement scheme is on the face false, and I demand that you retract these claims immediately or face an imminent lawsuit.
We are now all aware of Trent Bosphorous's negotiations with the Mountain West after his months of secret dealings and intricate manueverings with the Mountain West were revealed when he accidentally pressed "reply all" instead of "forward" on an email filled with the incriminating overtures from the conference including the leasing of a custom Mountain West monster truck for the personal use of Mr. Bosphorous. But there is no evidence for the inclusion of my client Coach "Cudge" Waynegetter in these schemes, and he demands the end to these damaging insinuations.
The fact of the matter is that the coach referenced in many of those emails could have been a coach from any of the fourteen varsity sports affected to by proposed move. For example, when you showed a slide from an email at your press conference featuring the pull quote "Coach says we need to get your ass moving before the portal opens up on his ass and his ass will be out there exposed like a naked ass" could have referred to any of these coaches. Perhaps it has escaped the attention of the Commissioner that other sports have a similar portal window such as the fencing team, which has been enhanced by enormous amounts of transfer talent including the great "Swashbuckling" Mallori Gruek (this is just for illustrative purposes, I am not accusing fencing coach Lucinda Mattbottle of anything).
The inclusion of grainy security footage used to insinuate that Coach "Cudge" Waynegetter was at Frunch Steakhouse where Mr. Bosphorous allegedly met with Mountain West officials is in itself libelous and offensive. The footage clearly shows a man in a large hat with glasses, a bushy mustache, and a big rubbery nose entering and exiting the restaurant with Mr. Bosphorous. Coach "Cudge" Waynegetter never wears large hats, only wears reading glasses when his staff prints out the playsheet in type that is too small even though he has told the GAs four hundred times it needs to be at least eighteen point font and he even put a post-it on the printer about it, does not have a bushy mustache, and his nose is much smaller and not rubbery at all. For you to describe it as a "ludicrous disguise" without evidence other than the large mole that Coach "Cudge" Waynegetter has on his face (a very common type of mole that millions of Americans have by the way) is in itself a textbook libel.
Whatever machinations engaged in by Mr. Bosophorous and the Mountain West have nothing to do with my client Coach "Cudge" Waynegetter, and we urge you to make a public correction immediately. Coach "Cudge" Waynegetter has been a loyal member of the conference in his stints at three different schools here; he was even wearing a conference sweatshirt in the video that was illegally leaked of his arrest for driving under the influence for which he was never convicted after agreeing that he was merely "nogged out" after a holiday party.
Coach "Cudge" Waynegetter has been irreparably harmed by your remarks as this will certainly affect his standing in the college sports community. You have 24 hours to apologize to Coach "Cudge" Waynegetter before we file an enormous lawsuit at you.
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Dear Director Bosphorous,
This letter is to inform you that my client Chadd "Cudge" Waynegetter will be filing a lawsuit to recover the full monies guaranteed to him to buy out his contract. Coach "Cudge" Waynegetter does not believe that running into the offensive coordinator a little bit with the injury cart because he called "an absolute horseshit game" violates the "no hitting clause" in his current contract.
We will see you in court.
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