It’s been said, countless times that quarterback is the most important position in all of sports. Not just football, but all of sports in general. You can see that, perfectly exemplified, in the ups and downs of Northwestern Wildcats football.
This year’s team finished 4-8, 2-7 in league play, after going 8-5 and winning the Las Vegas Bowl the previous season. Mike Wright was just not the guy.
Although Northwestern Wildcats coach David Braun could have given him more of a chance before deciding to hook him, as the Mississippi State transfer’s statistical sample size was supremely small.
Braun then gave the keys to Jack Lausch (53% completion, 1,714 passing yards, 8 TDs, 7 INTs) who was also, just not the guy; period.
In four games, i.e. 1/3 of the season, NU did not even score a single offensive touchdown.
Ryan Hilinski and Ryan Boe were also granted some playing time and neither one did anything impressive with it.
Brendan Sullivan might have improved the situation in 2024, but we’ll never know as he transferred to Iowa in the spring, Simply put, the Northwestern Wildcats need to hit the transfer portal, and hit it hard, for a new signal caller.
In terms of who that might be, the Wildcats should aim for someone like Drake Maye, because what he has a skill set that would fit in well with Offensive Coordinator Zach Lujan’s system.
Northwestern needs to find a guy who can do for them what Drake Maye (or as comedian Keegan Michael Key said, as his character Substitute Teacher Mr. Garvey,: “D-Rake Mah-yey”) did at North Carolina.
And now, he’s starting to find his footing in the NFL as well.
Maye, in his rookie season with the New England Patriots, currently has a passer rating of 85.4 on the season, throwing for 1,458 yards, 10 TDs against 7 INTs for a completion rate of 65.5%.
“He seems to have great composure about him and when you’re a rookie quarterback that can be hard, because everything is faster,” Patriots passing legend Drew Bledsoe said of Maye in a one-on-one interview with RG. “Being a rookie quarterback in the NFL, it’s a little bit like sticking your head in a popcorn machine with all the popcorn going out there, just falling all over the place.
“And this happens so fast, you’re trying to decide. He seems to have a calmness about him that allows him to perform with the chaos around him.”
So where is Northwestern going to find someone like Maye? Hard to say, but he’s not on the roster now.
It’s definitely not Boe, who put horrific numbers against the Illini, in the 38-28 loss yesterday. “His package was very limited… There was a pattern to [the switching],” Braun said of Boe, after the Northwestern Wildcats fell to 0-5 all-time at Wrigley Field.
Braun was asked after the game whether he thinks he needs to add a QB in the portal this offseason. He responded “I don’t know.”
The Northwestern Wildcats have been hit-or-miss in the portal, finding some good success with Peyton Ramsey (Indiana) and Ben Bryant (Cincinnati). However, Hilinski (South Carolina), Wright (Mississippi State, Vanderbilt) and Hunter Johnson (Clemson) all flopped.
There has not been a good “homegrown” Northwestern Wildcats QB since Clayton Thorson, a four year starter who graduated in 2018.
Former Northwestern Wildcats Coach Pat Fitzgerald loved to repeatedly point out that Thorson was the all-time winningest QB in school history and also “the most underrated Wildcat in history.”
Fitz would also love to say: “The haters hated that guy too.”
While many media, myself included, were quite critical of Thorson, when his play and statistics justified it, I would like to issue my own mea culpa right here, right now.
Now that I’ve seen what the Northwestern Wildcats offense has often been, during the period after Thorson exhausted all his eligibility, I have a lot more respect for him and realize the value that he brought to the program.
It went beyond his QBR or completion percentage.
“That’s a big stat,” Fitzgerald said, back in 2019, of Thorson’s racking up more wins than any other NU signal caller in history.
“Quarterbacks need to lead to win. They need to make the plays that winners make.
“They need to take care of the ball, put the ball in the right spots…it’s just not firing right now and I think when we take a look at the tape there will be some disappointed quarterback room guys, I think they’ll look at some opportunities left out on the field.”
Paul M. Banks is the Founding Editor of The Sports Bank. He’s also the author of “Transatlantic Passage: How the English Premier League Redefined Soccer in America,” and “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry.”
He currently contributes to USA Today’s NFL Wires Network, the Internet Baseball Writers Association of America and RG. His past bylines include the New York Daily News, Sports Illustrated and the Chicago Tribune. His work has been featured in numerous outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, the Washington Post and ESPN. You can follow him on Linked In and Twitter.