I finally got a chance to view the entire game on a Youtube video. My overall impression is that it was a good win and encouraging for the rest of the season.
While I know this reads as being on the verge of nuts, I feel as good about that offensive performance as is possible for an offense scoring 10 points. Obviously there were plenty of mistakes: holding penalties, false starts, dropped passes, etc., but those things are more fixable than simply being bad/slow/weak/without a plan.
Costello played well.
Line protected and created reasonable running lanes; there were very few losses on running plays (only one Scarlett run for -2 yards if I remember correctly - not sure one should count the fumbled exchanges in this category but there were two of those).
Stanford only had a single drive without a first down (happened a lot last year), and ended 8 drives on the Northwestern half of the field.
Mills wasn't great, but one can see the potential. Made some great throws along with a couple of poor ones and at least one he shouldn't have thrown.
Health is, of course, the biggest issue at the moment.
There wasn't much more one could expect out of the defense; at 210 total yds, 3.5 per play, and 7 points that's among a handful of best defensive statistical games in the Shaw era.
The nervous fan in me does fear that much of what we saw was an incompetent Northwestern offense and QB. The twp droves with TJ Green as QB went for 41 and 66 yds, more than half Northwestern's total for the game though no points.
While I know this reads as being on the verge of nuts, I feel as good about that offensive performance as is possible for an offense scoring 10 points. Obviously there were plenty of mistakes: holding penalties, false starts, dropped passes, etc., but those things are more fixable than simply being bad/slow/weak/without a plan.
Costello played well.
Line protected and created reasonable running lanes; there were very few losses on running plays (only one Scarlett run for -2 yards if I remember correctly - not sure one should count the fumbled exchanges in this category but there were two of those).
Stanford only had a single drive without a first down (happened a lot last year), and ended 8 drives on the Northwestern half of the field.
Mills wasn't great, but one can see the potential. Made some great throws along with a couple of poor ones and at least one he shouldn't have thrown.
Health is, of course, the biggest issue at the moment.
There wasn't much more one could expect out of the defense; at 210 total yds, 3.5 per play, and 7 points that's among a handful of best defensive statistical games in the Shaw era.
The nervous fan in me does fear that much of what we saw was an incompetent Northwestern offense and QB. The twp droves with TJ Green as QB went for 41 and 66 yds, more than half Northwestern's total for the game though no points.