For Northwestern coach Josh Snyder, these days are somewhat like a Dickens novel. They are the best of times and they are the worst of times.

Snyder and his wife Lacey recently welcomed their third child, a little girl to go along with two boys. Snyder admits to running more on adrenaline than on sleep these days, but says it’s all worth it and knows these are great times.

Then, there’s his football team.

“We’re still getting there,” he said. “When we broke down the film, it was easy to see what went wrong [in a 34-27 loss to Palisades]. Missed assignments, bad tackling, guys overlooking simple things that we just shouldn’t have happening.”

A normally disciplined team that is traditionally one of the toughest in the Colonial League is being hampered by penalties and a defense that continues to commit penalties at key times and make bad plays resulting in opponents rushing for an average of 161 yards per game.

This week, Northwestern hosts Wilson (0-3) in an interesting match-up against a team that somewhat mirrors what Northwestern tries to do on the football field.

“It’s a very similar offense, two backs, tight ends, power football and not much throwing it around,” said Snyder of the Warriors. “They have good blocking and a pretty good running back [Job Goodman] who’s a junior.”They’ve played some pretty good teams this season and I’m sure they’re going to be licking their chops with how Palisades was able to run inside and outside against us.”

Wilson’s first three opponents – Pen Argyl, Palisades and Salisbury - are all 2-1 on the season. The Warriors held Palisades, who beat Northwestern 34-27 last week, to just 14 points, dropping a 14-13 decision in week two. Last week, they lost to Salisbury 31-21.

Goodman has rushed for 255 yards and three touchdowns this season, adding another touchdown and 88 yards receiving. Quarterback Cameron Clark has completed 47 percent of his passes and has Ethan Aquino (10 catches, 144 yards) as his favorite target.

Northwestern senior Tyler Foster has done a nice job out of the backfield, rushing for 255 yards, averaging 6.2 yards per carry. Foster has also done well defensively, with 10 tackles and a big week two interception against Salisbury.

Snyder has preached to his players that if they continued to make the same mistakes week-after-week, it was going to catch up to them and Palisades proved that point. Snyder hopes that the lesson was well learned by his players and that they’ll come together this week and play a much more fundamentally sound game, with good results against Wilson.

“My style has always been to control the things that you can control,” said Snyder. “And those are the things that we haven’t been doing very well and that’s where it gets frustrating, when those things start going down hill.”

One difference in the defense that came out loud and clear when the team watched game film is how the it isn’t swarming to the ball. Instead, Snyder sees a lot of one-on-one tackles and not enough intensity.

“We see guys kind of giving up on a play and just assuming that the first guy to get there is going to make the play,” said Snyder. “I want to see an effort where every play has guys wanting to get in on the tackle. It’s easy to let the other guy look to make the play, but that’s not what we pride ourselves on. That’s not how we play defense at Northwestern.”

The good news is that the Tigers have come through the first three games of the season healthy, so that won’t add to the problems that Northwestern has to deal with against Wilson.