How so? Northwestern is out-recruiting nearly half of the Big Ten so far this season and still play in the same conference with Illinois and Indiana. Not to mention that they're playing with a 1st year head coach, 1st year offensive coordinator, a linebacker coach new to the team, and young WR, OL, and RB coaches new to their positions. The only QB with any exerpience on the team is recovering from a broken leg. We also have at least 8 players starting this year with one or no years of experience (including a center who hasn't played in over a year) and several others seeing playing time out of necessity quite often on the 3-3-5 defense. Hopefully they'll get better and healthy. Bacher, Heinz, Thompson, Matthews, and others still have yet to get healthy. This may be a long season, but the program is in better shape than those of at least several other Big Ten schools. And right now their biggest problem is that they're shooting themselves in the foot. If they can't put a few games together where they play smart football, they have the talent to win two or three Big Ten games.