Northwestern’s players watched TV during the week and they heard the biting comments of ESPN talking head Trev Alberts.
“He called me slow,” running back Jason Wright remembered Friday night.
“We talked about it,” 335-pound right tackle Zach Strief said. “To hear somebody say something like that about your running back, as an offensive lineman, you might as well call me fat on national television. It’s a personal attack on us, it’s a personal attack on him and we were determined to explain to Mr. Alberts that none of that stuff is true. He’s a great back.”
Wright proved that conclusively in the Motor City Bowl when he ripped through Bowling Green to a number of records. His 237 net rushing yards was a Motor City and Northwestern bowl-game record as was his 11.3 yards per carry. His 336 all-purpose yards set Motor City and Northwestern bowl-game records and his 88-yard kickoff return in the fourth quarter was one more Motor City record.
It was a brilliant way for the senior to end his college career and it earned him a share of the game’s most valuable player award. But in the end he was trumped by Falcons quarterback Josh Harris, who shared that award after leading Bowling Green to a 28-24 victory at Ford Field.
Harris simply sliced up the Northwestern secondary with the deftness of a skilled surgeon and left it helpless in the face of his thrusts and parries. He completed 38-of-50 passes for 386 yards and three touchdowns. But his best work, his most meaningful work, came in a second half of near perfection.
The Wildcats were leading 10-7 at halftime and expanded that on Wright’s 77-yard touchdown run on the second play of the third quarter.
“That was kind of ideal,” Wright said, smiling and thinking again of Alberts’ slight. “The offensive line did a great job, they hit a big hole on the right side, and it was open field from there. I was just saying, `Don’t get caught. Don’t get caught.'”
He didn’t, but then Harris went to work. The Wildcats had intercepted him twice in the first half and contained him with blitzes from three formations. But in quick succession he threw completions of 9, 7, 5, 3 and 8 yards.
This was the way he would go after Northwestern in the last 30 minutes, when Harris threw all three of his touchdown passes while going 23-of-27 for 211 yards.
“They were trying to block us head up in the first half and couldn’t,” Wildcats linebacker Pat Durr explained.
“But then they made adjustments and started sliding their protection to where we were blitzing from. We tried to make our adjustments . . . but unfortunately we couldn’t get any pressure and a quarterback like Harris, when he gets five seconds to throw, he’s going to tear you apart. That’s what he did.”
The Falcons grabbed a 21-17 lead early in the fourth quarter, but Wright responded with his long kickoff return.
That set up a Noah Herron touchdown run that put the Wildcats back up 24-21 with 10 minutes remaining, but again Harris answered, leading the Falcons on an 11-play, 67-yard drive that ended with their winning touchdown at 4 minutes 6 seconds.
This time Northwestern (6-7) had no counter, quickly going three-and-out, and two minutes later Harris took a final knee and had his victory.
“They beat Purdue early in the season and Purdue’s a great team. So we knew they were very talented coming in and we had a lot of respect for them,” Wright said of the Falcons (11-3).
“But at the same time we felt we didn’t have a lot of respect coming into this game and that was one of our goals, to silence a lot of the critics. To put peoples’ feet in their mouths about us not deserving to be in a bowl game. I think we accomplished that.
“We didn’t have the result we wanted. But we showed Northwestern did belong in a bowl game.”
