Football gets a lot easier when you shorten the field for your offense.

That’s exactly the situation that the Northwestern special teams unit handed over to their offense after two key plays in the first half, leading to a pair of scores and a 14-0 Tigers win over Bangor.

A blocked punt by Umer Javed with 9:58 to play in the first quarter gave the Tigers the ball at the Bangor 47 and eight plays and 3:28 later, Justin Rodda came around the left end and sprinted into the front corner of the end zone for the first score of the night.

At just about the same time of the second quarter, Garrett DeBoer muffed a Hunter Miller punt and the Tigers recovered at the Slaters 23-yard line. On the first play of the ensuing drive, Phil Dangello threw to Caleb Clymer, who ran down the right side and into the end zone to make it 14-0 Northwestern.

“In the past two or three years, that’s propelled us to many, many wins,” said Dangello about the special teams play.

“That was a huge turning point and gave us our second touchdown and put us up 14-0 and that was when we really put them away.”

Northwestern had another short-field opportunity later in the game when DeBoer again muffed a Miller punt and Northwestern recovered the ball at the Bangor 33-yard line. The Bangor defense pushed the Tigers backward on that drive and Miller was unable to pin the Slaters with a deep punt, when the ball bounded into the end zone.

Bangor had spurts of momentum in the second half, but the Tigers defense came up big to stop drives and frustrate Bangor’s offense.

Bangor’s last three drives stalled at the Northwestern 17 and twice at the Tigers 21-yard line. On two of the drives, they turned the ball over on downs and Bollinger derailed the other with an interception.

“Our defense hasn’t had a shutout until now this season and Bangor is a pretty gritty team and they grind you. They fought and we were up to the challenge,” said Northwestern head coach Josh Snyder.

YOU CAN’T DO THAT. OR THAT! ... Bangor started to show their frustration in the fourth quarter when they were called for two dead-ball penalties on the same play. They were flagged for a late hit on Dangello out of bounds and before that penalty could even be marked off, they picked up an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty to give Northwestern an extra 30 yards after an 11-yard run by Dangello. “They showed a little emotion and it got a little testy there and I’m fine with that. As long as we’re on the right side of it and stay level-headed and do the right thing, and we did that. It was nice to see,” said Snyder.

GROUND AND POUND ... Late in the game, Northwestern moved Dangello to quarterback and put Bollinger out wide-left. The plan wasn’t for Bollinger to really run any big routes, but for Dangello to carry the ball and eat some time off the clock; it worked perfectly. Dangello gained 54 of his 88 yards rushing on the night from that set. “It was a nice wrinkle and it’s something that we like to do in short yardage and goal line situations. That’s our four-minute offense to grind out a game. The last time that we were able to do that was against Wilson,” said Snyder.

THE NUMBERS GAME ... Looking at the stats, you might have thought Bangor won the game. They collected twice as many first downs, twice as many total offensive yards and punted the ball just three times compared to the eight punts by Northwestern.