Forgive Badger fans for not looking past this one. The Wildcats have given them fits. Since 2000 Northwestern is 6-5 against Wisconsin. Wisconsin has a winning record during that time against every other Big Ten West foe. The difference is, Northwestern pulls out squeakers, but when Wisconsin wins, they win big. The margin of victory for Northwestern in their 6 wins was 3, 9, 3, 2, 6, 6 (4.8 ppg). The margin of victory for Wisconsin in their 5 wins was 12, 32, 47, 29 and 14 (26.8 ppg). Northwestern may have done what Northwestern has done recently, start slow, and then right the ship. After a sluggish win over a garbage Nevada team, and then getting blown out by Duke, Northwestern rallied to blitz an admittedly terrible Bowling Green team, but one probably not much different than the Nevada team they nearly lost to in Week 1. The composite computer rankings slot Nevada at #122 in the FBS and Bowling Green at #128. Clayton Thorson had statistically his best career game, at 23-30 for 370 yards and 2 TDs. That gave him an adjusted QBR (which accounts for the opponent strength I believe) of 96.2. The previous week he was a 25.0. But more importantly, they got the offensive line on track and got Justin Jackson going. After averaging 63.5 ypg on 3.4 ypc over the first two games, Jackson exploded for 121 yards on nearly 7 ypc in only about a half of action. But it will take more than one game against arguably the worst team in the FBS to fully sway me. Remember last year when Wisconsin was winning, but their run game was uncharacteristically sluggish, and we figured that was an unsustainable formula? That certainly hasn't been the problem to start 2017, with Bucky rolling to a league best 275.3 ypg running it 49 times per game. That's good for #12 in the nation, but when you look at the 11 in front of them it looks even better. You have 4 triple option teams (Georgia Tech, Navy, Army, and Air Force), 4 teams with highly mobile quarterbacks accounting for a lot of yardage(Arizona, Notre Dame, UNLV and South Florida and a Miami team that has only played two games, so their FCS game still weighs heavily. Really, only Alabama and Tulsa are doing what Wisconsin does better than Wisconsin. Northwestern has stopped that attack before, but this Northwestern team hasn't yet proven they can do much against anything other than the dregs of the FBS.
WISCONSIN 34, NORTHWESTERN 17
