At this time last year, the Northwestern Tigers were 2-2 with a defense that had allowed 48 points to its opponents. This season, a 41-3 win over Wilson last Friday has them at 4-0 and their defense has allowed just 15 points, pointing to a big reason for the improved record.

"Defensively, we just go into the game saying that we're going to play to the best of our ability," said senior George Haddad, a who plays on both the offensive and defensive lines. "It's not like we're thinking that we have to do the same thing, we just play hard on every play, 110 percent, and we don't waste any reps."

Through four games, the Tiger defense has allowed just 474 yards of total offense, while the Northwestern offense has gained over 1,200 yards on the season. Haddad and his buddies on the lines have played a huge part in the team's success this season, which has been exactly what coach Josh Snyder hoped for coming in.

Everybody knew the defense was going to be good, but the offensive line was left with a couple of holes after graduation, but things have come together nicely.

"We hung out during the off-season," said Haddad. "So we just jelled and I think it helped because we all got varsity experience last year, at some point in time during the season, so it definitely helped that we had experience."

Special teams also came up big in the win over Wilson, with two blocked punts and a whole lot of pressure that forced a bad snap on another punt and low, line drive kicks on the others. The end result was good field position for the Tigers' offense to take advantage of.

"Obviously, we stress the three phases and they had some trouble with the snap,," said Snyder. "But we got after the first one with a clean block and our two deep guys did a nice job picking it up and nice job picking it up and not losing yardage.

"Any time that you don't have to drive it 80 yards and you can settle for a 40- or 50-yard drive, you can go after certain plays that you like a little bit more, because you know you've got the field position. If you make a mistake, you know you're not in a bad spot, so we're a little bit more aggressive when we get good field position. The down side is that we missed a ton of guys down the field."

The win sets up a showdown of the only two undefeated teams in the Colonial League in week five and it's at home, in the jungle, which is exactly where Tigers and Panthers should be meeting. Saucon Valley has been impressive early on and, like Northwestern has a one-game lead in their division and a 4-0 record.

"Wilson brought the house almost every play," said Snyder. "We've got to look at some protection things, because we missed guys going deep because of pressure and we can expect more of that going forward and that's something that we're definitely going to work on."

Snyder and his coaches have drilled playing each game as though it's the most important of the season and there hasn't been any let up against teams with weaker records. Haddad and the rest of the players used that philosophy against Wilson (0-4) and weren't even thinking about Saucon Valley.

"We've just focused on one week at a time and that's what we try to do," said Haddad. "It's worked every game so far, so we won't be changing that approach."