Take a moment and try to remember all the big offensive plays Northwestern had last season.
Done? Yeah, that didn’t take long. Plays of 30 yards or more were few and far between for Northwestern’s stagnant offense. You probably do not need an advanced statistic to realize this fact, but for the record Northwestern was 112th in opponent adjusted IsoPPP+ (a metric which measures offensive explosiveness).
Other than a few Clayton Thorson scrambles, Justin Jackson runs and throws to Austin Carr, Northwestern could not reliably create big plays downfield. The reasons for this failure have been discussed at length.