A Look at the 2009 Wildcats' Offense

The 'Cats offense was very up-and-down last season. Overall, they were a fairly solid 34th in the country in total offense (4th in the Big 10) in terms of yards, but when looking at points, the Wildcats were a much weaker 71st  (7th in the Big 10). Why, then, did the Wildcats fail to turn their yards into points? One possible answer is the breakdown of those yards. Northwestern threw for a very solid 3725 yards last year, good for 12th in the country, and 1st in the Big 10. However, for all the yards Northwestern picked up through the air, they had a disappointing number of touchdowns, with 20 (50th/4th). I must admit I'm somewhat at a loss as to why this phenomenon occurred, but I have a couple possible explanations. First, Northwestern's offense is a spread. For those who do not know, this is essentially an offense that spreads wide receivers all the way across the field in an attempt to create space. When a team is in the red zone (and thus in a good position to potentially score a touchdown), there is less space to open up, thereby making the spread less effective. This theory is supported by the fact that Northwestern ranked only 94th in the country in red zone offense last year (a dreadful 10th out of 11 in the Big 10).
 Another possible explanation for the lack of passing TDs and total points is that the 'Cats ran the ball more in red zone situations, a less than ideal situation when looking at the running last year's running game. Oh, the dreadful, woeful running game. Where do I even begin? We finished 89th (9th) in rush yards last year while averaging only 3.0 yrds/carry (111th!/10th). The latter fact is even more embarrassing when considering we ran the ball 34th most (3rd) last year. While I'm throwing out embarrassing statistics, let me point out our longest rush went for 25 yards, the worst longest rush of any team in the FBS. All of these statistics simply must improve for next season, since Wildcat offenses are typically built around the running game. When a team throws the ball 78 times in a game, as NU did in the Outback Bowl, it says something about the running game, and what it says isn't pretty.
Of course, I've been fairly negative in this post. There was a lot to like about the Northwestern offense at times. The passing game, for instance, was often very sharp. And the running game showed some improvement throughout the year. Obviously, for a team to finish 8-4 in the regular season, something about the offense must be good. However, the problems were frequently much more obvious, and hopefully, they will be fixed for the upcoming season.
For my next post I will be examining the 2010 offense and trying to answer whether it will be an improvement over the 2009 offense.