His team minutes removed from a 6-3 loss to San Diego State on Saturday, NIU coach Thomas Hammock posed a rhetorical question toward the end of his press conference.

“We have 18 new starters and seven new coaches,” Hammock said. “What are the realistic expectations?”

The glib answer, of course, is to have scored more than three offensive touchdowns in four games this year.

But it’s an interesting question that deserves more than a glib answer. Plus, it would be a repetitive topic at this point.

With a defense as good as the Huskies have been, a conference title should be a realistic expectation. With an offense as bad as the Huskies have been, a three or four-win season would hypothetically seem reasonable.

What are realistic expectations for the Huskies? There’s really no simple answer to the question. But it’s worth trying to answer.

At the start of the season, it seemed that another seven or eight wins and a bowl berth wasn’t an absurd expectation. If things broke right, with the Huskies facing all the projected top teams in their Mid-American Conference farewell tour, being in the picture for a conference title seemed like a legitimate expectation.

And if things broke poorly, a four-win season would have been on the table.

Fast forward four games into the season. The Huskies are 1-3. The offense entered Saturday ranked 133rd out of 134 teams in scoring offense at 12.7 points per game. They are pretty much guaranteed to be 134th next week.

They came out of the gate Saturday with a 62-yard scoring drive to take a 3-0 lead. They managed 117 the rest of the game. They made one more trip into SDSU territory, reaching the 44 but turning it over on downs.

Hammock pulled starting quarterback Josh Holst at one point for true freshman Brady Davidson. After he was intercepted on his second pass attempt, Holst returned to the game.

A reasonable expectation with this offense? Three or four wins.

But the defense gave up two field goals Saturday to a San Diego State team fresh off a 34-0 win against Cal. One on the Aztecs’ first drive of the game, one as time expired in the fourth. And they really stepped it up situationally in the second half.

The Aztecs (3-1) faced a third and 1 on the NIU 42 midway through the third. Quinn Urwiler stood up Christian Washington for a 2-yard loss. Ball back to NIU.

Later in the third, Jay’shon Thomas and Jalonnie Williams stuffed Lucky Sutton on third and 3. Another punt.

Midway through the fourth, Urwiler stopped Washington on third and one. On fourth and one, Jasper Beeler intercepted Jayden Denegal. Then with 3:19 left, Urwiler got Denegal for a loss on third and two. Another punt.

“When it gets to third and short, it’s just all about physicality,” Urwiler said. “You kind of expect what they’re going to do, so it’s kind of going downhill and bringing what you got.”

Urwiler had a monster game with 16 tackles and three for a loss. It was the most tackles in a game for a Huskie since Antonio Jones-Davis recorded 17 against Ball State in 2019.

NIU started on its own 15 with the ball and 2:38 left and couldn’t even take a minute of the clock with a three-and-out, setting the Aztecs up with a short field and 1:44 left.

The Huskies seemed to have a stop on third and 3 which would have forced the field goal with 0:51 left instead of 0:02 left, but an offside call negated the play and gave the Aztecs a first down.

Of course, NIU would have had a full field and no timeouts left to get into field goal range. It would have been a lift, to say the least.

Being disappointed in the defense for giving up one 49-yard drive at an inopportune time is nuts. But it underscores the two very different ways to look at expectations for the Huskies when looking at it through the lens of the offense vs. the lens of the defense.

So many new starters. So many new coaches. A 1-3 start against two Power 4 schools and three Top 20 defenses doesn’t seem unreasonable, even if it is disappointing because the defense played well enough to win at least two of those games.

But even Hammock said earlier in his press conference, the schedule shifts to conference play, in which the Huskies will face teams on equal ground from a resource standpoint. It starts next week against a 1-3 Miami team that shut out Lindenwood this week, but also has allowed 34.33 points per game against FBS schools, the 123rd best in the country.

A realistic expectation would be a lopsided win. A realistic expectation would be a springboard to a win over Eastern Michigan (1-4) the next week. A realistic expectation would be for the Huskies to take a 2-0 record into Ohio, one of the projected favorites in the conference, and make a statement.

It all seems reasonable enough. We’ll find out the reality soon enough.