There are a lot of worthy candidates for the national coach of the year award and after this week things only got that much tougher in trying to determine.
Some Notre Dame fans will say it should go to Brian Kelly yet again for finally getting over the hump and knocking off a truly elite team but the argument against that would simply be how high expectations were for the Irish entering 2020.
If I had a vote for any coach of the year award though I’d probably be giving it to the head coach of another unbeaten Midwestern team, one located roughly 90 miles west of Notre Dame.
Nobody outside of Evanston expected Northwestern to be much of anything in 2020 as the Wildcats went just 3-9 a season ago and an embarrassing 1-8 in the Big Ten.
Five games into the unique 2020 season there are few stories better than that of Northwestern however as Pat Fitzgerald has helped to turn the Wildcats around as they sit 5-0 after upsetting No. 10 Wisconsin on Saturday.
Wisconsin entered Saturday as a national darling after embarrassing Michigan in primetime a week ago but Northwestern’s defense was beyond impressive, forcing three Graham Mertz interceptions, forcing and recovering a pair of fumbles, and holding the Badgers to just seven points.
For the year the Wildcats are allowing only 12.3 points per game
Northwestern has just three games remaining this regular season and we’d expect them to be a somewhat sizeable favorite in all three as 1-3 Michigan State, 2-3 Minnesota and 2-3 Illinois remain before a likely trip to the Big Ten Championship Game for what would be the second time in three seasons.
It wasn’t expected entering 2020 that Northwestern would be much of a threat in the Big Ten West after their disappointing 2019 showing, but with just three regular-season games to go the only thing that would be disappointing at this point for the Wildcats is if they aren’t 8-0 and Indianapolis bound in Mid-December.