stpaulcat said:

Oh, that's right Husky Stadium is almost on a lake. Wisconsin is almost on a lake. NU temporary stadium IS on a lake, almost in the lake.

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AdamOnFirst said:

Means there is plenty of space to win a bunch of games against closely matchups up teams.

Much rides on our offensive line.

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SF_Wildcat said:

Torvik's official 2025 projections are now live. Northwestern is ranked #48 overall.

Seems promising until you realize that it's only good for 14th of 18 in the Big Ten. It's shaping up to be a blood bath this year with no real elite tier projected.

15 of the 18 B1G teams are projected between 16 and 51.

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hdhntr1 said:

QB is a tougher position to evaluate since in general only one usually plays. For example Alviti was a solid recruit but an untimely injury derailed his career. There was more recruiting success than just two (not a lot more as we had some empty classes and guys that did not work out) under him and reasonable development of a number of guys as well. In the end, he was pretty much done in by the guy out of Colorado. I don't think Sullivan was even his recruit but rather Jakes as he 2021 recruiting class

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Gladeskat said:

Depends on the fraternity the humpee belongs to.

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PURPLE Book Cat said:

In that Brian James interview from the other thread, at about 25:35 he mentioned that Brooks Barnhizer will be the primary ballhandler this year. Not necessarily something that I would have expected. That's a pretty big revelation I think.

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phatcat said:

And development. A lot of that is on him. During his tenure, NU recruited 2 QBs (3 when I include Colter) that turned into anything. Colter might have been recruited before him, ICR.

The next best? Brendan Sullivan. That's the drop off.

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CappyNU said:

Except games aren't won and lost on ypg. In his 12 seasons he got "near" 400 ypg 7 of 12 times - 2009-2013 and 2016-17.

2009-2013 were pre-B1G West; the yards/play and scoring ranks in those seasons were bottom half of the conference in 2009, 2010 and 2013. 2011 had a 4th-ranked ypp and 5th-ranked scoring, while 2012 (prime Colter/Siemian/Mark) had bottom half ypp and was the only season where we scored >30ppg, which was also the only time we finished top-3 in conference under McCall.

2016-17 were the prime Thorson/Jackson years, and even then in 2016 we were bottom half in ypp and scoring, while 2017 had us 6th in ypp and 4th in scoring at 29ppg. Perhaps if Thorson doesn't blow his ACL in 2017, 2018 also reaches these heights as well, but that's not what happened.

Outside of those two years in the B1G West, McCall's other 4 offenses (2014-15, 2018-19) finished in the bottom 25% in ypp and scoring each year. I also doubt it's a coincidence that Fitz deciding to move away from the spread to a more "traditional" offense when the new divisions were created resulted in this offensive futility.

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hdhntr1 said:

QB recruiting

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Just Gary said:

I want to apologize to the board for my rant on graduation rate.

Edit: I removed the rest of my original post here because I felt is was not appropriate.i know people don’t change their minds even when presented with data, so I’ll just end the conversation.

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EvanstonCat said:

You mean Ramsey?

And much better? We were still below average on offense and I believe even bottom quartile. I suppose that’s better than near dead last.

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rogerkim said:

Not terribly surprising, imho. Outside of Boo, Brooks probably brought the ball up the court the most last season. Perhaps surprising only in that we don't really think of Brooks as a guard because of his strength inside, but as far as dependability and experience in ball-handling, this is somewhat predictable.

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AdamOnFirst said:

“Here are the rules, which don’t include several hours a day of activities they all do daily.”

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Just Gary said:

So you’re saying the wins were only produced by the players and the loses were all the fault of the coaches? I would give some credit to the coaches for the two ten win seasons. They did develop those players. We are handicapped by our admission policies and it is not easy getting players. Failure to find the right QB candidates led to an issue after Thorson. We were relying on Hunter to be the man and he turned out to be the deer in the headlights. I fault the coaches for not having a good plan B when it became obvious that Hunter was gun shy. But just like any team, you need a competent QB to win. Ramsey and Bryant were not 5-star studs but they knew what they were doing. Hopefully Braun and Lujan can get that out of Wright while developing the QBs that they recruited.

I think we are getting a bit carried away by trying to make the coaching sound like a complete failure. You need players and coaches to have competency to win 10 games twice. I agree that McCall lost his way as well as a bad job by the entire staff in recruiting but there were some good years in there.

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