Northwestern football’s 2025 rollercoaster season still took them bowling

Football season’s closure is upon us. No. 1 Indiana claimed the season’s Big Ten Football Championship on Dec. 6, and now we’re in College Football Playoff mode. While Northwestern football did not participate in either, the Wildcats are yet to put their helmets away for the year.

That’s right. The Wildcats are going bowling for the first time since 2023.

Whether we are completely confident in the team’s ability to end the season on a good note, a rollercoaster calendar surely didn’t make us think the team would end up in this position to begin with. In the spirit of a bowl game, let’s take a look at how the Wildcats fared — what was in their favor and what was, inevitably, against.

Pre-season feels

On paper, there were no expectations for the Wildcats in early August.

According to several Big Ten preseason rankings, experts predicted Northwestern to finish among the bottom three teams, signaling poor performance this season. After concluding the 2024 season with a 4-8 record, winning only two conference games, these rankings were bound to reflect that.

But this time around, ending the regular season 6-6 has made heads turn and kept the Wildcats’ hopes on the line. They ended as 11th in the Big Ten standings, a major shift from those early projections, and after a promising winter transfer portal, there were upsets and surprising results that really made us reconsider the team’s consistent momentum through late November.

Let’s talk quarterback

Something that kept Northwestern afloat was the quick impression graduate quarterback Preston Stone made on the team. With Jack Lausch choosing the baseball route and Mike Wright’s departure after having only played three games in the 2024 season, the SMU transfer put the Wildcat formula to the test.

Stone’s singular season with Northwestern showed his intention to go long and create offensive plays, but at the same time, he lacked control and encountered loose-ball errors against opponents. In the Big Ten standings, Stone was the quarterback with the most interceptions this season, landing at 12. These slip-ups occurred in some of the team’s roughest defeats, such as against Illinois on Nov. 29 (3 interceptions) and against Nebraska on Oct. 25 and Oregon on Sept. 16 (2 interceptions for each).

But beyond the slip-ups, Preston Stone showed his prime in the six wins the Wildcats managed to secure. Without his capability to extend plays and versatility in dodging defensive players, who knows how many games the Wildcats would have won, especially with a stacked Big Ten calendar? Stone’s numbers among passing yards, completions and completion percentages peaked at certain times during the season, and that was definitive in showcasing to what extent he could lead the Wildcats to victory.

“I think you’re seeing a young man that’s starting to find his rhythm, right?” head coach David Braun said during the ULM postgame press conference on Oct. 4. “Truly understands the most valuable statistic any quarterback has is his win-loss record.”

And he didn’t do it alone. Stone was able to connect with offensive pairs who managed to make strides in key moments.

Caleb Komolafe was a name tossed around in some of Northwestern’s best performances. The red-shirt second-year running back played an important role in rushing and getting to the rival’s half of the field. He finished seventh in Big Ten rushing yards, tallying a whopping 886 yards, and produced 10 rushing touchdowns, with his longest rush being 56 yards against Nebraska. Averaging 80.55 rushing yards per game, Komolafe was a robust starter, only missing out on rivalry weekend against Illinois.

On the receiving end, Northwestern and Stone could count on Griffin Wilde. In his first year at Northwestern, the third-year wide receiver has always been on the watch. He finished eighth in Big Ten receiving yards, standing at 783 yards and producing six receiving touchdowns. Just against Minnesota on Nov. 22, he had a season high of 111 reception yards.

Both players will be crucial for Stone, and Braun, on bowl day.

The catalyzer games

If you had asked an average Northwestern football fan at the beginning of the season how high their expectations were for Big Ten battles, most would have said not too high. That is, until the team started winning the Big Ten battles.

From my perspective, there were three games that settled it to catapult Northwestern to a decent finish: UCLA, Penn State and Minnesota.

On Sept. 27, the Wildcats welcomed UCLA into Evanston. The Bruins had not won a single game yet, and the Wildcats were looking for their first Big Ten win after losing to Oregon two weeks prior. All of Northwestern’s points came in the first half, with a touchdown each from Komolafe and Wilde. Although UCLA brought things to the wire, only a field goal behind, Northwestern managed to get away from the Bruins with a 17-14 home win.

With this win, the Wildcats would start their longest winning streak of the season, winning four straight games — one of them against the Penn State Nittany Lions.

Two weeks before facing Northwestern, Penn State ranked No. 7 in the AP Top 25 College Football Poll. During pre-season, sports outlets predicted them to be in the Top 3 of the Big Ten. But none of that mattered in a 22-21 blow against the visiting Wildcats on Oct. 11. With Komolafe and Wilde showing up again with a touchdown each, and some reliance on field goals, maintaining control of the ball in the final minutes kept the Wildcats on their feet. After Penn State failed to score, Northwestern kept possession in the last three minutes of the game. The upset was the talk of the weekend, among other Nittany Lion news, and we began to believe in the momentum this team was creating, going 4-2 on the season.

More than a month later, it was Minnesota at Wrigley Field. At this point, Northwestern had gone back to old ways, losing three games straight — two against ranked Big Ten opponents. In a game with a combined nine touchdowns made, it all came down to the last ball possession to claim a victor. Northwestern had been trailing the Gophers 13-28 toward the middle of the third quarter, but a change in stamina led to back-to-back touchdowns and a sealing field goal in what turned out to be an exhilarating 38-35 win for the Wildcats.

Field goal precision was important in these games, especially when Northwestern struggled to go beyond midfield. Graduate kicker Jack Olsen was the best-suited player for the job. In the regular season, he only missed two field goal attempts out of 21, averaging a 90.5 field goal completion percentage. This positioned him as third-best in the Big Ten.

These games will surely go on to characterize the Wildcat’s 2025 season and bowl eligibility journey — for what was believed to happen on paper and what ended up happening on the field.

“One of the goals that we do talk about is dominating in the postseason,” Braun said in the Minnesota postgame press conference. “We got to carry this momentum and make sure that we finish what we started with this group.”

Take a ‘bowl,’ Wildcats

We can either focus on everything that went wrong towards the end of the regular season, such as falling into flaws that cost them the hat against Illinois for rivalry weekend, or we can keep in mind that the Wildcats are still in it for a bowl game.

“This time last year, we were looking down the barrel of the offseason,” Braun said after the Illinois loss. “Right now, we’re looking down the barrel of a few more weeks together with this group, and we got to go finish it off the right way.”

In Braun’s three seasons with the team, he has led it to two bowl games, and that should tell us something about his intention to keep the program running. Going back to winning days isn’t easy, but there is a lot the Wildcats can take away from this season, the good and the bad.

Northwestern will face Central Michigan on Dec. 26 in the GameAbove Sports Bowl. They won their last bowl game in 2023, and (maybe) holding onto that piece of hope can do them justice.