quick screen to Mark Philmore and he takes off untouched, burning defenders for a 52-yard gain. A hand off to Terrell Jordan and he bursts outside for 38 yards and a first down on the opening play of the drive. A bootleg by Brett Basanez and he lugs a defender on his back and dives into the end zone for the go-ahead touchdown.
And all of that happened for Northwestern’s offense in just one half of play against Kansas.
“They run one of those spread offenses that gives you fits,” Minnesota coach Glen Mason said. “They’re big up front. They are a big, physical team. They are much bigger than we are. They’re offensive line is about as good as they come, and they’ve got big-play guys on offense that you have to watch.”
Three games into the season, NU has just one win. But word on the offense is out: The Cats are a multi-threat team.
“They have one of those types of attacks,” Mason said. “You don’t stop it, you try to contain it.”
Last year the Cats gave the ball to running back Jason Wright 42 times against Illinois because they didn’t want to risk putting the ball in the air with the 103rd-ranked passing offense in the nation. This year the Cats have developed into the 10th-ranked passing team in the country after three weeks.
And after gaining 513 yards in the air in their first game of the season at TCU, the Cats came back to Evanston and ran for 269 yards against Arizona State.
Five players have at least seven catches. Two players have rushed for more than 125 yards. And Basanez has the fifth-most passing yards in the country.
After a three-year hiatus, the Cats’ offense is back to a multi-threat, shotgun-compatible, spread-the-field system that’s difficult to defend.
“Two years ago we weren’t good at anything,” coach Randy Walker said. “Last year we got to rush the ball more effectively and play more consistently. Finally, this year, I think we’ve got a greater blend. If we can stay healthy, we have a chance to be pretty productive as an offense.”
Mr. Maturity
NU came into its game with TCU wanting and planning to run. It came out with the top passer, leading wide receiver and number-one passing offense in the nation.
“Everyone knows our motto,” Walker said. “We want to run the football, and we’re going to try to run the football. But while they were loading the box up in the first series of the game, I told the offensive coordinator, Mike Dunbar, ‘We need to throw it every down.’ I love running the ball. That’s what I do. But we had to throw the ball every down.”
So the game fell into the hands of Basanez, a freshman standout who bottomed out as a sophomore in 2003, throwing four touchdowns and 12 interceptions.
A high school star once described as cocky, Basanez had to be humbled by his 1,916-yard sophomore performance.
“He was criticized heavily by the media,” Walker said. “You couldn’t go on the Internet without watching him get his butt whipped by people who don’t even know what football is. That’s hard. When you’re 20 years old and you take that, it’s hard on a kid.”
But Basanez was a changed man in the loss to TCU. He put up an NU-record 548 total yards while working well out of the shotgun, completing passes to seven different players and equaling his touchdown total from last year with four.
He said the improvement was due to work he did in the offseason, putting on 20 pounds in the weight room and studying films of former Purdue quarterback Drew Brees.
“To be the best you have to watch the best,” Basanez said. “I’ve been watching Drew Brees since I was in high school, so I just keep watching his films over and over.”
But those close to Basanez have also noticed a change in the way he handles himself.
“This year he follows up a bad day in practice with something productive,” said Kristin Ambrose, Basanez’s girlfriend and a former NU basketball player. “He’ll go watch film or talk to Coach Dunbar. Last year when he had a bad day, he was frustrated and he didn’t know what to do.
“He’s much more mature, and he’s more excited about the game. He looks at last year as something to get off his back. He only has room to improve, and it can’t get much worse from his perspective.”
In just three games, Basanez has thrown for 933 yards, almost half of his total from 2003. And his 72 yards on the ground this year make him the third-leading rusher on the team. He’s on pace to total 4,020 offensive yards this season, which would shatter quarterback Zak Kustok’s 2001 NU record of 3,272 yards.
“He has worked tirelessly on every aspect of his game, from being stronger to being a more complete player,” Walker said. “He never made excuses, and that’s why I’m really proud of him.”
Baz’s Boys
When Basanez struggled last season, Walker made very clear how he felt about quarterback performance: Quarterbacks are blamed too much for their failures, and they are praised too much for their success.
Basanez, who spent more time on his back than in the pocket last year, now has time to throw behind a highly-touted offensive line made up of five returning starters.
“Everything we do starts up there,” Basanez said. “If they don’t play well, we don’t win. If they play well, we have a good chance.”
Basanez also has an overachieving group of wide receivers, a diverse bunch with the ability to make plays out of short, quick throws. In their first three games, they have 11 pass plays of more than 20 yards.
After graduating their two leading receivers, the Cats have put together a receiving corps faster and more productive than last year’s group.
“We had a lot of guys in this offseason that just wanted to put the work in and be that good,” Basanez said. “Shaun Herbert is a good example. He played a little bit last year. This year he has really come into his own and he’s one of our top receivers. Ashton (Aikens) is back. Mark (Philmore) is having a phenomenal year. Jonathan Fields is another guy who kind of came out of nowhere. Brandon Horn played last year, and he has stepped into a starting role. I can go on. We have handfuls.”
Philmore, a 5-10 junior who missed four games last year with a knee injury, now leads the team with 335 yards, including two 100-yard performances. He’s small but fast, able to catch the slants, screens and hitches that Basanez feels comfortable throwing.
By contrast, Aikens is the big guy responsible for fades and crossing routes. The 6-2 senior missed seven games last year with a knee injury, but he’s put up 123 yards this season.
The Cats have two other 100-yard receivers: Herbert, a sophomore, and Fields, a junior who didn’t play at all last year but led the country in receiving after the first week of college football this year with 202 yards against TCU.
“Sometimes we put pressure on ourselves because people are doubting us,” Fields said. “People were saying that we were terrible, and we just had to put pressure on ourselves to do better.”
“The coaches said they wanted to be more balanced this year,” Philmore said. “We just took it upon ourselves to work a little bit harder in the offseason.”
NU has continued its running ways this season, totaling 538 yards on the ground in three games with senior Noah Herron, a power back, and junior Terrell Jordan, a speed back.
But with Basanez and a wealth of receivers — even tight end Taylor Jones has two catches — Walker said his team has the most offensive options since 2000, when Kustok entered the national spotlight, running back Damien Anderson was a preseason Heisman candidate and NU won a Big Ten title.
And the Cats again are running an offense similar to that of 2000.
“We haven’t changed a whole lot about what we’re doing with our running game,” Walker said. “There are subtle differences. In a four-year period you evolve.”
From Big Ten champs to Big Ten chumps to … well, there are still a lot of games to play.
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