Northwestern matches up with Auburn very well. So well in fact that an outright upset for the Wildcats over the Tigers in today's Outback Bowl would not be a surprise.
Perhaps it is fitting that a little “Auld Lang Syne” sets this one up, because backing Pat Fitzgerald in this role has certainly been a friend to us the last couple of years. But the markets continue to not adjust properly, and that leaves the door open again.
After taking over the Northwestern program at an awkward time following the tragic death of Randy Walker, Fitzgerald got off to the predictable slow start, but take a look at the current run – how about a crisp 17-7 ATS in his last 24 appearance in an underdog role.
But it is much more than that, with the Wildcats winning the game outright 12 times in that run, and losing another in Overtime. So how do you do that and still remain an underdog so often? Largely because Northwestern wins without a lot of sex appeal.
The Wildcats are a mirror image of their coach, who was a hard-nosed LB wearing the school purple not all that long ago. They compete hard and play smart, which keeps them in the hunt against opponents with superior talent, and the tactical abilities of Fitzgerald and his staff turn many of those close games into victories. They are “upsets” to most of the marketplace, but not to us.
We see more of the same in this game, a rare case of an underdog of more than a TD not matching up badly at all. Auburn Tigers adapted well to the Gus Malzahn playbook this season, and Malzahn is a master at taking aggressive defensive schemes and exploiting them for big plays, with the Tigers having 12 offensive TD’s of 40 yards or more.
But the Northwestern Wildcats schemes are all about containment and stopping those kind of plays, forcing the opposition to have to execute cleanly to traverse the field. We have seen the Auburn attack get frustrated by such alignments this season, since it puts a premium on execution for a team still in the first year of a new playbook.
The Wildcat defense will not shut the Tigers down, but they will slow them down, and that works for our purposes.
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The Northwestern offense works as well. There was nothing special about an Auburn defense that finished 51st in Total Defense and 73rd in Scoring, and having lost three starters in the secondary from the beginning of the season they struggle against short-passing attacks that want to control the ball.
That is what the Wildcats do best under mobile QB Mike Kafka, who threw for 2,898 yards at a 65.7 percent clip, and note that one of the rare recent Wildcat failures in an underdog role came when Kafka got hurt vs. Penn State this season, a game they were still even at 13-13 in the fourth quarter before falling 34-13. If he was not hurt that afternoon they almost assuredly would have been in the money, and it is not out of the question that they could have won the game.
We put them right in this one all the way, and no surprise if Fitzgerald grabs yet another outright underdog win.
Free NCAAF Pick: Northwestern +8 (-110)