Final scores lie all the time, and 34-18 is one of the bigger lies you'll see in Week 1.
Northwestern beat South Dakota State by sixteen on Friday night at the temporary Martin Stadium setup in Evanston, and if you only look at the box score you'd guess it was a comfortable, controlled win for the Big Ten team over an FCS opponent. It was not. South Dakota State, the defending FCS champion, spent three-plus quarters making Northwestern look like a team with no business feeling good about itself, and the game was still very much in doubt in the fourth quarter.
The real story out of this game isn't the final margin so much as the fact that Northwestern needed its defense to bail it out, in exactly the way its own staff seemed to expect it might. Braun's staff spent the week talking about South Dakota State's physicality up front, and that respect turned out to be earned. The Jackrabbits moved the ball for well over 400 yards and had a legitimate shot to tie the game in the fourth quarter behind running back Josiah Johnson, who scored to cut it to a two-point margin. Then Jack Smith's two-point pass attempt failed. That's the play the whole night swung on. Miss that conversion and Northwestern still has to go win the game outright; convert it and this is an entirely different story, one that maybe ends with SDSU pulling off the upset.
Instead, Northwestern's defense did what good defenses do after getting battered for most of a night: it found one more stop when it mattered. South Dakota State quarterback Chase Mason threw for a big chunk of yardage but was strikingly inefficient once his team got close to the end zone, completing a career-low share of his passes overall and getting almost nothing done inside Northwestern's 20. That's a defense bending everywhere else and refusing to break in the one area that decides games. Give credit to Robert Fitzgerald, who led the team in tackles, and to safety Damon Walters, who intercepted a pass and looked like the player he was during his All-Big Ten form before an injury-plagued year. The best story of the night might be Walters, back from what he called a hard year and looking like himself again right away.
Mason wasn't interested in moral victories afterward. He said flatly that he thought his team should have won, and pointed to red-zone execution as the difference. He's right, and it should worry Northwestern more than it comforts them. A team that outgains you and dominates long stretches of a game isn't one you want to face again with the roles reversed.
Give Northwestern's offense its due for one moment, too. On the first snap of the season, new quarterback Aidan Chiles found receiver Griffin Wilde, a former Jackrabbit, wide open down the middle of the field for a massive gain that set up an early touchdown. Somehow South Dakota State didn't have anyone on the receiver who used to be their own teammate. It's the kind of play that looks like a declaration in the moment but turned out to be misleading, since the game that followed was a grind, not a coronation.
The swing play late belonged to Northwestern's Joseph Himon, who broke off an 80-yard run in the final minute after South Dakota State's kicker missed what would have been a fifth field goal on the night. A missed kick immediately followed by a backbreaking long run is what turned a two-possession nailbiter into the final margin everyone will remember. Strip that sequence out and this is a one-score game deep into the fourth quarter against an FCS team.
The game also had a genuinely scary moment that matters more than any of the above. Northwestern's starting center, Jackson Carsello, was taken to a hospital after a neck injury in the third quarter, carted off on a backboard after his head was struck during a block. He had movement in his extremities and gave a thumbs up as he left the field, the best news you can get in that scenario, but it's a reminder that this sport can turn on you in a half-second regardless of the scoreboard.
Don't let the 34-18 final convince you Northwestern strolled through its opener. They survived a legitimately tough, physical FCS champion that outplayed them for long stretches, and needed a missed two-point try and a defensive stand to escape with a win they were supposed to get comfortably. If Northwestern plays a Big Ten opponent with anything close to South Dakota State's physicality up front, this game is a more honest preview of what's coming than the scoreboard suggests.
