Palmerton comes into Tiger Stadium with a 1-4 record, which is a bit deceiving. The Blue Bombers have had a difficult stretch of games to open the season. After an opening week demolishing of Palisades in a 47-6 win, Palmerton had to face Southern Lehigh (5-0), Saucon Valley (4-1) and Notre Dame of Green Pond (3-2) on consecutive weeks. The result was losing all three by a combined score of 112-40.

Last week, Palmerton hosted Pen Argyl and fell 28-21 with the Blue Bombers falling into a familiar trap that has cost them in the past – turnovers.

“They’re not a bad team,” said Northwestern coach Josh Snyder. “They were down 28-0 last week and they battled back and made it 28-21. They’ve been in some games, but for whatever reason, they haven’t been able to win them. I know it would make their early season if they were able to come in here and knock us off at our homecoming.”

In addition to key turnovers, depth has been a big issue for the Bombers as they started with a smaller roster than most teams and, like every team, have lost some players to injuries. They’re also not helped by the fact that they have just four seniors on their roster, but the good news is that they’re all talented players.

“They’ve got some really nice skill players, but I think I heard that they were down to 18 or 19 kids, so that really hurts them depth-wise,” said Snyder. “The Sabo kid [Andrew Sabo, RB/DE], the Nelson kid [Jordan Nelson, WR/LB] and the Buck kid [Owen Buck, WR/DE] are all pretty good and they’ve been around a while.

“We know they spread people out and we haven’t been good against the spread, so we’re just trying to tie some loose ends up and practice hard against that.”

Where the depth and experience will greatly benefit the Tigers is at the line of scrimmage, where Northwestern has a bigger and more experienced group of players and can draw from depth if they need to during the game. Much of the attention has been on the skill players for Northwestern, but the success has come primarily from the experience of the line on both sides of the ball.

“We were loaded with skill and everybody was talking about that, but we knew as coaches that we had a lot of experience coming back as far as interior linemen on both sides of the ball,” said Snyder. “We’re anchored with Connor Snyder, who has had a terrific year on both sides, and Derek Hebelka at center and Robbie Goldberg and Joey Shorts at the tackle spots.

“They’re all seniors and have played a lot of football for us and we can do a lot more things than when we had younger lines. We’ve been able to put in a lot of different blocking schemes and they can handle that. They take pride in opening holes for the backs and protecting the quarterback and they deserve a lot of credit for that.”

The Tigers depth is going to be as strong as it has been all season this week thanks to some players who were injured early getting back into the lineup. Many of the injuries came along the offensive and defensive lines, but again, the depth covered those gaps for the past few weeks.

“We’re about as good as we’ve been since early camp,” Josh Snyder said. “We’re getting guys back that got dinged up early. Ryan Masters and Mike Marrazzo [both senior linemen] were banged up early and we’re getting them back, so our depth is pretty good right now. Dom Harding [senior TE/LB] is back this week. He was a full go at practice, so I think we’re going to be OK health-wise.”