5 college football takeaways, including a game Northwestern ‘should have won’ and Jeremiah Smith’s brilliance

A missed opportunity for Northwestern. A blowout loss to one of the nation’s best for Illinois. Another easy step in a march toward bigger games for Notre Dame.

Those were the results of the Week 4 road tests for area college football teams. Here are five takeaways from the weekend’s games.

1. Northwestern coach David Braun said his team should have beaten Indiana.

Northwestern tested defending national champion Indiana until the end Friday night at Memorial Stadium but ultimately came up short in a 29-23 Hoosiers victory. Braun said the Wildcats “couldn’t have played a worse half of football” in the first half, when they totaled just 51 yards of offense and went into halftime down 12-0. Braun said he thought nerves or the environment contributed to the Wildcats playing “awful.”

But Northwestern outgained No. 5 Indiana 274-229 in the second half and came up just a few plays short of the upset.

Braun told reporters afterward that he was frustrated for his players because he believed “we should have won this football game.”

“This isn’t bulletin board material — that’s a great football team — but we have a great football team in that locker room, too, and we beat ourselves,” Braun said. “It wasn’t clean. Too many penalties. … We beat ourselves, and also there’s this acknowledgment that if you don’t believe that we can’t play with anyone in the country — not just play with, but beat anyone in the country — you’re not looking at the same game.

“What an incredible opportunity for us to acknowledge that and know, now it’s on us to get things cleaned up and put ourselves in a position to consistently execute and win on the road in these types of environments.”

Northwestern players will be kicking themselves for a couple of missed opportunities that could have put the Wildcats in control of the game.

Early in the fourth quarter, Indiana had the ball ahead 15-13. Northwestern looked to have a stop on third-and-19, but linebacker Matthew Smith was called for a facemask penalty, and the Hoosiers went on to score to go ahead 22-13.

After Northwestern and Indiana traded touchdowns on the next two drives, Jackson Kleather made a 42-yard field goal to pull the Wildcats within 29-23 with 58 seconds to play. Northwestern came oh-so-close to recovering the onside kick, but ultimately Indiana fell on the football and held on for the win.

Braun said he told his team that if the Wildcats had beaten Indiana it didn’t mean they definitely would have a magical season. Likewise, the loss didn’t mean their season was over.

Northwestern (2-1, 0-1 Big Ten) has a pretty good rebound opportunity ahead Friday: The Wildcats host No. 13 Penn State in the new Ryan Field opener.

2. At least Illinois doesn’t have to play Jeremiah Smith again.

After No. 7 Ohio State blew out Illinois 42-19, Smith was handed the giant wooden turtle that is known as the Illibuck Trophy, and he carried it out to his teammates on the field. Illinois hasn’t taken control of the trophy with a win against Ohio State since 2007, and Smith was a massive reason Ohio State retained it Saturday at Ohio Stadium.

The junior wide receiver had career highs with 12 catches for 217 yards and four touchdowns, which tied a school record.

Each of Smith’s scores had its own impressive flair. He caught a 7-yarder with Juice Clarke trying to pull him down. He finished off a 72-yarder by beating Mac Resetich for the catch and then zipping back and forth around him to the end zone.

He made an insane, leaping, toe-tapping catch over Tywan Cox for his third touchdown. And he juked Clarke on his way to an easy 26-yard touchdown catch.

Illinois (2-2, 0-1 Big Ten) entered the game with lingering questions about its defense under new coordinator Bobby Hauck, and playing the Buckeyes, led by two Heisman Trophy candidates in quarterback Julian Sayin and Smith, was always going to be a big obstacle. But Smith helped it get out of hand.

“He hurt us more actually on early downs, first downs,” Illinois coach Bret Bielema told reporters after the game. “They got us into coverage and worked us over to that side. So I think we’ve got to work specifically to make sure that we’re not tipping some things. They were checking some things at the line scrimmage that created some big, big plays for them. Two touchdowns that, in my opinion, I think they knew what we were in and were able to execute and change the call.”

Bielema told reporters after the game that Smith plays big and physical and is dominant after the catch. But he didn’t put it all on the Illinois secondary, which had several veteran players return this season. Illinois didn’t have any sacks Saturday, and Bielema demonstrated the miscommunications by saying the Illini defense at one point only had nine players on the field.

“Everybody always wants to point to coverage, but a lot of times big-pass opportunities are really because of the rush,” Bielema said. “And I say it all the time: It’s not the coverage, it’s the rush, and we’ve just got to make sure that we coordinate that better, and obviously apply pressure to the quarterback and keep him in the pocket.”

Smith is now 10 catches and two touchdowns away from breaking those Ohio State career records.

The good news for the Illini defense is it gets a step down in competition next week. The Illini host Purdue for homecoming at Gies Memorial Stadium on Saturday. The Boilermakers scored just 10 points against Notre Dame on Saturday — seven on a last-minute touchdown in a blowout loss.

3. Notre Dame and coach Marcus Freeman got out of September without a loss.

Freeman and the Irish heard plenty of questions in the preseason about how they planned to get off to a better start this season. From 2022-25, the Irish lost six games in August and September — at least one each season — with Freeman as their coach. That included a loss to Northern Illinois in 2024 and losses to Miami and Texas A&M in 2025 that knocked the Irish out of the playoff.

Freeman reviewed all of his preseason processes in the offseason in an effort to avoid another such misstep.

Well, with a 49-10 beating of Purdue on Saturday, No. 3 Notre Dame will enter Oct. 4-0. That record of course was helped with a soft September schedule against Wisconsin, Rice, Michigan State and the Boilermakers.

There wasn’t a ton to learn about the Irish in their road game Saturday. Notre Dame led 35-0 at halftime behind quarterback CJ Carr, who threw for 237 yards and three touchdowns. Carr did throw his first interception of the season in the third quarter.

The Irish rushed for 177 yards and two touchdowns — including 80 yards and a touchdown from Aneyas Williams — and even the defense got in on the action on linebacker Drayk Bowen’s scoop-and-score on a strip-sack.

Freeman noted that the coaches pushed their players hard in the lead-up to the game, even though Purdue entered 1-2.

“You have to respect your opponent,” Freeman said at his postgame news conference. “I don’t care what you see on film. You respect your opponent. If you do that, you’ll be prepared and you’ll come out the right way.”

4. Northwestern’s offense showed promise in the second half behind quarterback Aidan Chiles and tight end Luke Dehnicke.

Chiles told reporters that he needed to calm down for Northwestern to begin to operate its offense as needed in the second half. The Wildcats’ night started with a safety after Chiles fumbled and was sacked in the end zone. There were other rough moments in the first half, including when he took a 21-yard loss on a sack after being called for intentional grounding.

But Northwestern came alive after halftime, and Chiles finished 22-for-29 for 293 yards and two touchdowns and also rushed for a score.

“I was too excited,” Chiles said “I knew this game was winnable, and it’s a great opportunity coming in against the defending national champion and coming out and showing that we could beat them.

“Also the score being 12-0 at the half, it’s like, we know we have this. Like we can do this. We can score two more touchdowns. Defense can get stops. We’re good. So we came out. We relaxed a little bit, and we talked to each other, communicated better, and we fixed up what we needed to fix, came out and executed.”

Dehnicke emerged as a key target for Chiles, making seven catches for 140 yards. He transferred this offseason from Division II Minnesota Duluth, where he had 1,119 receiving yards and 14 touchdowns last season.

Braun said he thought Chiles showed “resiliency, composure, belief, confidence, belief in his teammates.”

“As frustrated as everyone in the locker room was at halftime, I think one thing that we know for sure is we’ve got a resilient, tough, together football team, and Aiden led the charge on that,” Braun said. “He kept battling, and in a lot of ways, with a lot of support around him, at times kind of willed himself and put us in situations to not only be back in the game, but in a position to win it.

“The thing that he’ll have to be really mindful of is we don’t need him to be Superman. We just need him to be himself. But I was proud of the way that he battled the night. Truly a competitor.”

5. Northern Illinois under interim coach Rob Harley has had a rough time.

The Huskies dropped to 0-4 with a 35-14 loss to Georgia State on Saturday. They also have lost to Iowa, in-state FCS rival Illinois State and Arizona.

NIU quarterback Taron Dickens threw for 320 yards and a touchdown Saturday, but he also lost a fumble in the fourth quarter.

The Huskies have a week off and then start their first season of Mountain West play Oct. 10 against Air Force. Harley has yet to win a game since taking over as interim coach when Thomas Hammock left for the NFL in February.