CHICAGO — Northwestern coach David Braun doesn’t try to gloss over his team’s disappointing showing in 2024, when the Wildcats beat only Miami (Ohio), Eastern Illinois, Maryland and Purdue.
“You can’t spray perfume on a 4-8 season,” the third-year coach said. “It just stinks.”
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But Braun and the Wildcats have tried to use the discontent they felt last season as the impetus to create change within the program.
With quarterback Preston Stone leading a group of key transfers, Northwestern looks to rediscover some of its success in Braun’s first year, when it went 8-5 and he was named 2023 Big Ten Coach of the Year. As the Wildcats prepare to open the season Saturday at Tulane, here are five questions for their season:
1. Will Braun’s reset turn things around?
Braun knows his natural inclination is to be a people pleaser. And he knows that trait isn’t always conducive to running a football program.
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In the wake of last season’s struggles, he did a thorough evaluation of himself and his team. He knew he needed to set firmer standards, open clearer lines of communication and demand greater accountability.
“My natural personality is to motivate and lift up and pat people on the back and tell them they’re doing a great job,” Braun said. “But if that’s not the truth, that’s not serving our team well. I think I’ve done a much better job of holding the entire program accountable.
“If we want to talk about winning Big Ten championships, if we want to talk about playing in the CFP, we have to evaluate daily if the way that we’re operating aligns with that. And when it doesn’t, there needs to be accountability.”
On the field, players said, that sometimes looks like more intense competition during practice. Off the field, it’s being more detail-oriented with a focus on player-led accountability.
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“There may be a couple (chosen) leaders on the team, but everyone is a leader, whether you’re a freshman or sixth or seventh year,” offensive lineman Caleb Tiernan said of the new mindset. “That’s something we focused on the entire winter and entire spring. With everybody playing a role in leadership, it raised our accountability throughout the entire spring.”
2. Will Preston Stone revive his career in Evanston?
Stone transferred to Northwestern this winter after SMU benched him three games into the 2024 season. He threw for 3,197 yards and 28 touchdowns as a sophomore but had to watch as his replacement, Kevin Jennings, led the Mustangs to the College Football Playoff last year.
Now the Wildcats are counting on Stone to help reboot their offense.
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Braun touted Stone’s high-level processing, understanding of the game, deep-ball accuracy and sound decision making on the move. And he raved about Stone’s ability to form relationships with his teammates within a few months of arriving on campus.
The Wildcats need that as a largely unproven group of wide receivers looks to establish itself. Ricky Ahumaraeze said Stone frequently throws to him during their downtime to establish chemistry and also is in his ear about what’s happening on the field.
“With Preston, he knows ball,” Ahumaraeze said. “After plays, he’ll tell me what he’s looking at, what he’s reading. He helps me put myself in a position to get the ball from him.”
3. Which transfers will make an impact?
The Wildcats had one of the worst offenses in the country last season, averaging 284.4 yards (130th among 134 FBS teams) and 17.8 points (128th) under former quarterback Jack Lausch, who left to focus on baseball.
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They need more than just Stone to step up in order to fix it this year. Braun and his staff brought in 15 transfers, including nine on offense, to try to help.
Griffin Wilde (pronounced Will-Dee) is one standout candidate after transferring from South Dakota State, where he was an FCS Football Central second-team All-American in 2024. As a sophomore, he had 71 catches for 1,147 yards and 12 touchdowns.
Braun called Wilde an “incredible” route runner and playmaker who can track the ball well and come down with 50-50 balls. He joins a wide receiver room that Braun said is hungry to prove itself.
“One thing I’ve really appreciated about him, if it’s third-and-11 in a critical situation, that dude some way, somehow is going to find a way to make a play,” Braun said. “His consistency, his competitiveness, all things that really stand out to me.
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“We have a wide receiver room that is unproven. And he kind of wears that as a badge of honor, like, ‘I’m going to go to work and I’m going to prove that not only can I play at this level, but I can absolutely thrive at this level.’”
The Wildcats hope an influx of depth on the offensive line will help to go with returnees Tiernan (left tackle), Ezomo Oratokhai (left guard) and Jackson Carsello (center). That includes another South Dakota State transfer in right guard Evan Beerntsen and Martes Lewis (Minnesota) and Xavior Gray (Liberty) as competitors at right tackle.
Cornerback Fred Davis II (Jacksonville State) and linebackers Yannis Karlaftis (Purdue) and Jack Sadowsky V (Iowa State) are among the defensive additions.
4. Will Anto Saka make a splash on defense?
Saka is the big name on the Wildcats defense, a 6-foot-4, 255-pound end who recently made Bruce Feldman’s annual Freaks List for The Athletic. Feldman called Saka “one of the best-kept secrets in the Big Ten.”
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Some analysts expect the secret to be let out, projecting him as a first-round draft pick in 2026.
In two seasons in Evanston, Saka has 28 tackles, 10 tackles for a loss and nine sacks, and Braun has seen improvement that the Wildcats hope could make him even more dangerous this season as an every-down player.
“The expectations Anto has for himself is to be one of the best defensive ends in the country, and I would say the same,” Braun said. “The way that he has worked and operated and been willing to take constructive criticism and respond to that aligns with someone that’s primed to have that type of season. He’s put on weight, he’s gotten stronger, he’s still moving just as well as he was prior to putting on that weight.
“He knows that he needed to make progress in his first-down and second-down play, consistently playing the run in the Big Ten. We’ve seen that show up in practice in spring and in the fall.”
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5. Can Northwestern overcome one of the toughest schedules in the country?
ESPN ranked the Wildcats’ schedule as the 19th-most difficult in the country and fifth-most difficult among Big Ten teams.
The Wildcats open on the road against a Tulane team that received votes in the Associated Press preseason poll. But it’s the Big Ten schedule that looks brutal: home games against No. 7 Oregon, No. 14 Michigan and UCLA and road games against No. 2 Penn State, No. 12 Illinois and USC.
The Wildcats again will be playing most of their home games at their temporary lakefront stadium and two at Wrigley Field during the construction of the new Ryan Field.
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Braun’s response to talk about the strength of schedule: “Good.”
“Something we’ll lean into here is the underdog mentality and chip on our shoulder, and you’re going to have to outwork people,” Braun said. “We’ve made this offseason, this spring ball, summer and fall camp the most challenging it’s ever been, making sure that we’re preparing this group for that strength of schedule.
“I think it’s something that this group embraces with an attitude of humility but also an attitude of, ‘Bring on the competition.’”
His players echoed those thoughts.
“If we want to compete for a national championship, we’ve got to beat national-championship-caliber teams,” Tiernan said. “We can’t play lower schools and somehow expect to become a national champion. Getting the schedule, some on the outside might think, ‘Oh, that’s not good for them.’ We love it. We love the challenge.”
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