Ranking the College Football Week 3 upsets: Arizona State, Northwestern and Kansas State stunned

No. 2 Southern Illinois at Northwestern (-13.5)

It’s been an up-and-down season for Northwestern football and we’ve only played three games. During the first week for the Wildcats (Week 0), they won as double-digit underdogs against Nebraska in Dublin.

Then, after a week off, Northwestern laid an egg as a 10-point favorite against Duke. That seemed to send expectations back to earth. The loss to Duke was disappointing but the Blue Devils are at least a Power-5 opponent.

On Saturday, Northwestern became the first Power-5 team to lose to an FCS opponent this season and it was a bad loss. The Wildcats were favored by 13 points and one reason is that Southern Illinois was winless in its first two games. Hell, it was blown out by Incarnate Word.

Ryan Hilinksi hasn’t re-captured the magic of Week 0 and that’s probably because as we have seen the past two weeks, Nebraska is absolutely terrible on defense. The Salukis sacked him three times and picked him off twice.

Northwestern turned the ball over four times and what’s even worse, the Wildcats never led for a single second. They even trailed 31-17 at the 5:09 mark.

With Michigan State and Nebraska suffering well-publicized defeats and Northwestern also dropping to SIU, it wasn’t a great day for the Big Ten. Then again, Michigan, Ohio State, and Penn State all look legit.

Northwestern doesn’t and if things don’t change soon, Pat Fitzgerald might not be untouchable anymore.