"It's early." That's been the refrain among Northwestern fans and folks in the media since the 2025 football season began.

Preston Stone throws four picks against Tulane? "That was terrible, but it's early." Northwestern handles an FCS team at home? "Nice win, but we can't draw much from that. It's also still too early." 'Cats get manhandled by Oregon? "To be expected. Stone didn't look great, but it's still pretty early."

Enough.

Now, Northwestern sits at 1-2 heading into its fourth game of the season against UCLA. When it's over, the 'Cats  will officially be a full third of the way through their schedule. It isn't early anymore, and it's time for Stone and this team to show us what they're made of.

This UCLA game, while an afterthought on the Saturday slate for most, is a crucial game for Northwestern. It's finally an opportunity to play against a somewhat comparable opponent.

Yes, the Bruins have been brutal to start the year, sitting at 0-3 with a head coach sized hole on their team after DeShaun Foster was fired midseason. Theoretically, Northwestern should be better. But this is a game against a beatable Big Ten opponent, not a far-fetched dream against Oregon or an expected win against Western Illinois.

This is when we finally learn something.

The way I see it, there's two potential outcomes for Northwestern based on what we've seen so far. One is very grim. It could be that Preston Stone, after a year of not playing football and trying to make the jump to the Big Ten, simply cannot hold on to the football enough to win games.

If that's the case against UCLA, then it will be an embarrassing loss and the season will be teetering on the edge of ruined. With games against opponents like Penn State, Michigan and USC still to come, the losses start piling up, and the confidence that the 'Cats can even beat the Purdue's and the Minnesota's of the world diminishes.

But if Stone looks better -- if he looks like a player who has settled in after a bye week -- and Northwestern takes care of business at home against a reeling UCLA team, then it might be in business.

It's still likely that the 'Cats will go 2-1 in their non conference schedule with a game against UL Monroe coming up in October. That means they'd need four conference wins to make a bowl game.

Far-fetched? Maybe. It certainly is if Stone and the offense look how they've looked so far this Saturday. Impossible? I don't think so. There are winnable games on this schedule if Northwestern is a competitive football team.

Regardless, if you tuned out for Western Illinois and Oregon expecting exactly what happened to occur, then congratulations on not being a college football sicko. But you should probably sit down this week at 2:30 p.m. CT. This is when we start to learn meaningful information. This is when "it's early" becomes "it's getting late early." Heed Yogi Berra's words.

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