After an impressive 32-6 win over Notre Dame in the first week of the high school football season, Northwestern returns this week for its first road game of the season, a trek to Bangor High School for a game against the Slaters. Bangor downed Catasauqua 31-18 in its opener last week.

If Northwestern coach Josh Snyder and his assistants had a tough time coming up with a game plan for Notre Dame, because they didn't have much film to scout from, they might have an equally tough job this week with Bangor. It's not that they don't have film to study, but it's what they saw on that film that could cause some headaches.

The Slaters are the only team on Northwestern's schedule that runs the single-wing offense, so there's nothing familiar for the Tigers coaching staff to show players. Instead, they'll have to put in a game plan that will be very specific to just one game this season.

"They present a challenge because they run that single-wing offense, which you don't see," said Snyder. "Pen Argyl used to run that, but they've moved away from it, so you're preparing for something that you'll likely only see once. It's also difficult to replicate in practice, but our coaches have drawn up some ways to combat what we're going to see."

It will be an interesting challenge for the Northwestern defense, which was dominating against Notre Dame and figures to be one of the best in the Colonial League this season.

When the Tigers have the ball, they'll be facing primarily a 4-3 defense.

"They show some movement on defense and they like to blitz a number of their linebackers in some spots, but we think we can come up with some ways of working away from that," said Snyder.

The biggest issue for Northwestern is going to be fixing some shortcomings that for its season opener against Notre Dame. With some holes that needed to be patched on the offensive line, Snyder was happy with how the repair work went in week one.

"When we looked at the offense, the problem wasn't with our line, it was mistakes at our skill positions," said Snyder. "We got a good push from our line and they did a good job of winning the battle at the line of scrimmage. A lot of our miscues happened to come on first down, so we were putting ourselves in first and more than 10 and we need to fix that. We need to be stronger on first down."

Snyder believes that improving communication will help the offense and get it into a better groove against Bangor. Even with the miscues, Northwestern had 280 yards of total offense, while allowing just 121 yards for Notre Dame.