I know that there is no transitive property in football.
Still, outcomes on the field should be indicative of relative strength to some extent.
This past week, Stanford beat then #6 USC 41-31. They lost to NU 16-6 in week 1.
This past week, NU beat Duke 19-10. One of Northwestern's TD's was on a Kickoff return.
So, first of all it seems that NU's O is probably not great. Only scoring 16 against the Stanford D that allowed 31 vs USC. The fact that Duke's D held NU's O to fewer points on more drives than Stanford's D may be indicative of the strength of Duke's D. However, it may just be that NU's O is bad.
However, NU's D looks pretty good. The fact that Duke's O scored as many times as Stanford's O against them suggests they may be pretty good given what Stanford's O did to USC.
In other words, there's not enough data to form a good opinion, so I'm just going to have to guess.
I'm going to say we're back on track but Duke's D still holds us to ~3pts/drive while we hold them to ~2.4.
GT 30 to 24.