one snide comment then, I hope, more substantive comment
Northwestern, whose recent success was predicated on strong defense, is coming off of one of its worst defensive season of Fitzgerald’s 16-year tenure.
FIFY. I looked it up, the closest seasons in PPG were 06 and 07 where we finished 88th both years, strangely, whereas last year we were 89th. Even the 2010 collapse which featured all of those points allowed in the last three games only dropped us to 77th.
Oddly enough, our 2021 offense was essentially as bad as our historically bad 2019 offense in PPG, but most people focused on the defensive collapse. Not sure why, but perhaps the 2019 offense seemed worse because we got huge chunks of yards and points v UMass and ILL, and nothing the rest of the year.