The Northwestern football team's mantra is to play each game as the most important game of the season. The Tigers don't allow themselves to look ahead to the next week until the play clock hits zero. Because of that, they may not have realized that they were playing an upstart Salisbury team in week six, but they know it now.

The Falcons, after collecting a total of three wins over the past two seasons, have gotten off to a 3-2 start, surprising some of the pundits and fans who follow Colonial League football. Salisbury started 0-2 before picking up wins over Notre Dame, Bangor and Pen Argyl, three teams with a combined 1-14 record.

While that might not seem too impressive, consider that Salisbury was supposed to be in the same category of those three teams, but has pulled itself up a level. Keep in mind, too, that the Falcons' first loss of the season was a 39-36 set back to Saucon Valley, who came into Northwestern last week as an undefeated team before falling to the Tigers 39-14.

"They've got a lot of young kids who are growing up fast and they've got a good system in place. They're a nice group of athletes who are fast and play with a lot of intensity," said Northwestern head coach Josh Snyder. "They swarm to the ball on defense and are playing well."

After winning the battle of the unbeatens last week, Snyder was interested to see how his team would respond this week in practice. Would the win make his players overconfident, or would they return to being the same focused team that has been playing week-to-week all season long?

"Our team has responded well," Snyder said. "We've had a good practice week and everybody is just focused on playing Salisbury. Nobody's still celebrating and nobody's looking ahead. It's just back to what we have to do this week to win."

The offensive line has been a pleasant surprise this season. There were a couple of gaping holes because of graduation, but everybody has stepped up and made the line into a powerful part of the team and Snyder has enjoyed watching them come together as the season has progressed.

"They play as one unit, there isn't any one guy who is better than the others," said Snnyder. "They communicate well with each other and they've been learning each other's steps, so they know what each other is doing and how they can help each other."

That offensive line helped running back Harry Hall to his huge rushing day and also helped Cam Richardson to make Northwestern football history. Richardson became the first Northwestern player to rush for a touchdown, catch a touchdown pass and throw for a touchdown in the same game.

"Cam is an unselfish player and just always makes plays," said Snyder. "I've joked with him that the only two ways that he hasn't scored a touchdown now are on a fumble recovery and on an interception return."

Snyder ran Hall 33 times last week, the most he's carried the ball this season, by far. Ideally, Snyder wants to balance things out a little bit more and get senior wide receiver Taylor Breininger into the mix a little more.

"We just ran him [Hall] because it fit the game plan and what their defense was giving us," said Snyder. "I'd like to get Breininger more involved, because the more we spread things around, the better our offense will be.

"Basically, we just go with what's working for us each week."