The nerves hit Griffin Wilde before his first Northwestern game at Tulane.
Sure, Wilde has had success on the football field everywhere he has been. He was a state champion at his South Dakota high school and a Football Championship Subdivision national champion at South Dakota State. He was coming off a 1,000-yard receiving season with the Jackrabbits, for which he was named a second-team FCS All-American.
But he was getting ready to start against programs he had watched on TV as a kid. He wouldn’t be playing just against Tulane but also against Oregon and at Nebraska and at Penn State, where he always dreamed of attending a White Out game.
Imposter syndrome can even permeate football pads.
“Do I really belong?” Wilde said, recalling his pregame thoughts. “Like, am I good enough to do this?
“I would say that didn’t last too long.”
Once he made the first couple of plays in his six-catch, 64-yard game against Tulane, Wilde’s confidence began to spread again that he could achieve his purpose for moving to Evanston.
The 6-foot-2, 200-pound junior loved SDSU and thought he would stay there all four seasons. But he dreams of playing in the NFL, and the next step in his mind is to show he can compete at the FBS and Big Ten levels.
Northwestern coach David Braun said Wilde (pronounced Will-dee) wears the unproven label like “a badge of honor,” adamant he will put in the work to show he’s capable of thriving on the bigger stage. Entering Saturday’s game against UCLA (0-3) at Northwestern’s Martin Stadium (2:30 p.m., BTN), Wilde leads the Wildcats (1-2) with 15 catches for 213 yards.
And he hopes to keep getting better to help the offense get on track under new quarterback Preston Stone.
“To make plays and put myself in position to help the team, that’s a big factor and a motivation of mine,” Wilde said. “First, obviously, to help the team as much as I can, and second, to be grateful for these opportunities that I’m playing against these big-time players, these big-time names.
“And hopefully I will be able to make a name for myself as well.”
On the move
Wilde was on the phone eight or nine hours a day trying to figure out what was next.
The band at SDSU that had so much success was breaking up. Coach Jimmy Rogers left to be the head coach at Washington State. Wilde’s good friend, quarterback Mark Gronowski, a Neuqua Valley graduate, headed to Iowa to be the starter.
And Wilde, after totaling 70 catches for 1,147 yards and 12 touchdowns as a sophomore, entered the transfer portal in late December.
Wilde said he was humbled by the many teams interested in him as he spent hours exploring his options, but he felt some relief when Northwestern offensive coordinator Zach Lujan called. They had a familiarity that felt comfortable.
Lujan has known the Wilde family since Griffin was a skinny high school freshman in Sioux Falls, S.D. A former SDSU quarterback, Lujan joined the Jackrabbits coaching staff in 2017. Wilde’s high school team went to SDSU’s camp, and Wilde had traits that made an impression even then.
“Just how fluid he was and really good ball skills was the thing that flashed right away,” Lujan said. “And then, for being a young buck, he was always really competitive, especially with an older group. He loved attacking the competition.”
SDSU was the first program to offer Wilde a scholarship.
While he was a two-time all-state player, Wilde didn’t receive an FBS offer — though he had some walk-on opportunities. He had grown up going to SDSU games, tailgating with his dad, uncle and their friends. So going to the school an hour from home made sense.
With Lujan as the offensive coordinator in 2023, Wilde had 20 catches for 399 yards and six touchdowns, including the winning 35-yarder in a nailbiter against Montana State in which he leaped away from a tackle near the line of scrimmage and raced to the end zone.
Lujan left to join Braun at Northwestern after that championship season, but he watched from afar as Wilde followed with a breakout sophomore season at SDSU. He enjoyed seeing the maturation of Wilde’s game.
“(He’s) becoming more of a leader,” Lujan said. “And becoming kind of an alpha-type personality, where when the game’s on the line, he’s the one who wants the ball — no ifs, ands or buts about it. And that’s been cool to see.”
The opportunity to play in the Big Ten lured Wilde away from what he called “a great place” at SDSU, and he joined Lujan with the Wildcats, whose offense needed a huge boost after finishing 130th in the FBS in total offense in 2024.
Wilde immediately became a top target in an inexperienced receivers room, and Braun liked what he saw in camp in the transfer’s route running, tracking skills and competitive nature.
“Griffin is one of those guys that lets his play do the talking,” Braun said in August. “One thing I’ve really appreciated about him, if it’s third-and-11 in a critical situation, that dude somewhere, somehow, is going to find a way to make a play. His consistency, his competitiveness are all things that really stand out to me.”
Even with the familiarity with Lujan, there was an adjustment for Wilde in Evanston. Off the field, that meant learning names, building relationships and earning his stripes in a receivers room he said was very welcoming. Lujan said Wilde’s dry sense of humor likely helped him fit in.
On the field, it was getting used to a new level of play.
A step up
Wilde had Stone’s third-and-7 pass in his hands late in the third quarter against Oregon on Sept. 13.
He streaked toward the left sideline, and though Oregon defensive back Jadon Canady was stuck to him, Wilde was able to turn and pull the ball in. But as he and Canady tumbled to the ground, with Canady’s hand between his arms, the football came loose for an incompletion.
The broadcasters posited that Canady could have been called for pass interference, given the way he pulled on the front of Wilde’s shirt and how his hand contacted Wilde’s face before the receiver had the ball.
But it’s still a play Wilde wanted back after Oregon’s 34-14 victory.
“That’s something I’ve always prided myself on,” Wilde said, “like, hey, if the ball is thrown my way, I’m going to come down with it or no one is going to come down with it. I let the DB get his hands in there, and he broke it up. That’s a big-time catch, a big-time play that should be made. I expect myself to make that.”
When Wilde first stepped onto the field for spring practice at Northwestern, he had the realization: “OK, this is a bit of an adjustment.”
The game was moving a little faster than he was used to. He needed to think faster, to move faster.
Wilde knows almost every Big Ten player is going to be bigger, faster and stronger than what he was used to at SDSU. Lujan laid out three areas where the margin for error becomes slimmer at this level: winning at the line of scrimmage, winning at the top of the route and winning at the catch point.
“I’ve seen him make some unbelievable catches,” Lujan said. “He’s left a few opportunities on the table in that regard.”
The contested catches, like the one against Canady, is an area Wilde zeroes in on as needing work.
Making a few more of those would help Stone, who struggled in his two FBS matchups against Tulane and Oregon, throwing for 296 yards with no touchdowns and six interceptions. After Northwestern’s win over Western Illinois, Stone called Wilde “a safety valve” who can make plays on throws that aren’t perfect.
Wilde said Wildcats wide receivers are focused on helping Stone build trust by not dropping catchable balls.
“The biggest difference is the DBs and how they play the ball,” Wilde said. “When you’re going to catch it and how they’re punching for the ball and always trying to attack the ball. … They’re a little more assignment sound, and overall things like that just make it a little bit tougher.”
Despite the step up in competition, Wilde carried a lot of helpful knowledge with him from SDSU.
He can count on one hand the number of losses he experienced over the three years before he arrived at Northwestern. Sioux Falls Jefferson was an undefeated state champion his senior year of high school, and SDSU went undefeated on the way to the FCS national championship in 2023. The Jackrabbits lost three games last year, including in an FCS semifinal.
Wilde knows what a winning program looks like, even if it was at a lower level.
“It all starts with the culture that you’re building,” he said. “That starts with little things, like are you picking up your locker? Are you finishing your lifts or skipping reps? Little things that don’t seem so big at the moment but overall will slip into the game. As a receiver, am I lining up 1 yard outside of where I should be? Am I 1 yard shorter than I should be and is that causing the play to slip up?
“Holding yourself to a standard — and then also just playing with a level of confidence that you’re here for a reason is definitely something that has translated too. Like you wouldn’t be here if you weren’t good enough to play.”
There’s an opportunity to build on that confidence Saturday against a UCLA defense that gave up 431 yards per game in its first three games. The Bruins fired coach DeShaun Foster and parted with defensive coordinator Ikaika Malloe last week.
Northwestern coaches know they’ll see Wilde motivated to show more of what he can do.
“I wouldn’t even say it’s a desire to prove he wants to play at this level,” Lujan said. “He has a desire to prove he’s the best. And that’s always been the case going back to when he was an underrecruited kid from South Dakota. I’m excited to see how that continues to carry on through the duration of his career.”