The Auspicious Birth Of The Bajakian Imperial Age
Let’s get all of the qualifiers out of the way first.
First, Maryland appears to be a horrible no good, very bad football team. They do nothing well and many things poorly. Taulia Tagovailoa is the overcompressed Instagram memes that have been reshared so many times that they are now 180p and have “captured from Unregistered HyperCam 2” in the corner for some reason version of his brother Tua. I am a starting nose tackle for the Terrapins and I did not turn in my best effort last night.
Second, sample sizes matter. Remember when Maryland hung like 120 points in the first 8 quarters of its season last year before turning back into a pumpkin?
With those niggling issues out of the way, we can now turn our eyes to Big Ten West favorite Northwestern, fresh off a 43-3 win that was never in doubt.
In my long-winded and generally directionless preview of Northwestern, I submitted that the offense is probably bad, filled with bad skill position players and a system QB who can’t do much beyond make smart decisions. I also submitted that Mike Bajakian would probably be an average offensive coordinator and the combination of those factors meant that Northwestern would probably loaf around the middle-to-bottom of the conference as a deeply middling and unexciting team.
One of those analyses must be wrong, because there was Northwestern, marching the ball up and down the field, scheming wide receivers open, and designing run schemes that were opening truck-sized holes.
In my earlier days as a blogger when I would chart out each play in a giant word document and then go back to rewatch the game to see what exactly was working or wasn’t working, I would probably have a section here investigating what exactly Mike Bajakian was able to unlock. I don’t do that anymore though, so, instead may I submit that Mike Bajakian has unlocked the secret chamber deep beneath Ryan Field, built in 2000 the week before the Wildcats beat Michigan 54-51 and hidden away with The Old Magic by one Mick McCall, and brought forth Offense to Evanston.
It’s hard to explain to a regular person how disorienting it is watching Northwestern run pass plays where the primary target is both well beyond the line of scrimmage and wide open. I can count on one hand the number of such plays I have seen in the past three seasons. Yet Bajakian has discovered that such football plays are not only legal, but encouraged.
This quote, from none other than the head coach of Northwestern, best describes the strangeness of the sensation.
This is saying the quiet part out loud at a degree that is mind-boggling. This is a head coach of a successful football program complimenting his offensive coordinator on his new strategy of “giving good players the ball where they are good at having the ball” and voicing no small amount of shock at the fact that such a concept exists. Pat Fitzgerald, who has won his 100th game at Northwestern, is acting like a baby who hasn’t developed the concept of object permanence playing “Peekaboo” because his offensive coordinator has invented “getting people open.”
Bajakian didn’t do anything groundbreaking. Northwestern didn’t have any individual performances that jumped out at you. No receiver had more than 53 yards, Drake Anderson technically went over 100 thanks to some long runs, Ramsey was a respectable 23/30 for 212. The word of the day was competency, and for a team that for all of last year and most of the decade prior didn’t look like one that knew what that entails for an offense, it was a complete revelation.
Bajakian doesn’t look like a world-beater, but that isn’t what he will be asked to be. Nor is it what I think Fitzgerald would even want. I don’t think Fitzgerald’s Master Plan® is to have a team that can score at will from anywhere on the field. All things being equal, I think he’d prefer an offense that scores between 25-35 points per game through long, grind out drives that leaves his defense plenty of time to rest on the sidelines. I don’t think this is smart football, but this is Fitzgerald’s team and he wants them in his own image. All Northwestern needs out of its offense is a team that can not get in the defense’s way. That the experiment appears to be so far along despite a skill position group that still strikes me as overwhelmingly mediocre can only be described as a great success.
It is in times like these that I like to partake in my favorite pastime: looking back at the Northwestern Sickos who, when Mick McCall was made to walk the plank in front of a jeering crew of scurvy-ridden Northwestern fans, felt the need to be Respectful to All That He Did For The University And Program online.
This is, of course, peak Northwestern Derangement Syndrome. Mick McCall earned, I would wager, around $500,000 United States Dollars a year for his decade-plus tenure at Northwestern University. That is probably more money than you, reader, made at any point in the past decade and you, reader, are probably fine at your job.
Mick McCall, meanwhile, was, is, and will be forever hopelessly terrible at coaching football.
This year will only continue to prove that point over and over again. Ramsey is far more capable than what was rolled out at quarterback last year, but nothing else is changed. And yet, look at the pieces! Malik Washington can cook! Drake Anderson can be a home run threat! Crossing routes! Chiaokhiao-Bowman!
It is a miscarriage of justice that Northwestern fans were not allowed to hurl rotten fruit at Mick McCall before he left Cook County. It’s reprehensible for someone to collect as big a paycheck from an academic institution that has had to freeze and cut salaries because of “budget shortfalls” while being so clearly incompetent for such a long period of time as noticed by former players, pundits, bloggers, and fans. As much fun as the Bajakian Imperial Age (may it last 10,000 years) is, there will, for at least a few years, be that thought in the back of every Northwestern fan’s head of holy shit, imagine how good we’d be if we had a real offensive coach for those lost twelve years.
There isn’t much reason why Northwestern couldn’t be Wisconsin But Purple already if they had replaced Adam Cushing and Mick McCall when they should have (roughly two minutes after they were hired). Cushing’s replacement Kurt Anderson has made Rashawn Slater a gazillion dollars by turning him into a first-round draft pick and has a true freshman left tackle who just dominated his first ever college football game. Mike Bajakian scored 40+ in his first game without even having an offseason to prepare his team.
Imagine what the 2015, 2017, and 2018 teams look like with that kind of coaching. It isn’t insane to say that they could have been rock solid top ten teams. Instead, they were agony-inducing slogs who frustrated and disgusted the greater college football world by accidentally winning 8-10 games against a lousy division each year (okay, and there was one admittedly somewhat memorable Big Ten West title, but again, just one).
I would love to dunk Mick McCall’s head in a toilet. Fortunately, Mike Bajakian (may his reign last 10,000 years) is doing that and more every week. Bajakian’s Week One rout of the lowly and loathsome Terrapins was college football’s version of the Bolsheviks killing the Tsar and the entire Romanov extended family to make sure they wouldn’t come back.
(Editor’s Note: I more charitably compared Bajakian’s ascension to the incapacitated/epileptic Austrian Emperor Ferdinand I being replaced by the non-impaired Franz Joseph I.)
I hope that Mick McCall will watch the highlights from his new home in Ames, Iowa. I hope it upsets him. I hope Mike Bajakian calls his personal cell phone and laughs at him until McCall hangs up. Northwestern in 2020 has the opportunity to be equal parts delirious joy over the concept of Yards and righteous anger over being deprived of The Yards for so many years. At the very least, it gives fans hope that Northwestern can stomp the definitely racist and onerous Iowa Football Program/Ferentz Kingdom into the dirt next week.
The Bajakian Imperial Age has arrived. May it last 10,000 years.
