It’s a lot more than just pass vs. run. But if we’re going to look at it that simplistically, the pass/run ratio was 18%/72% yesterday. That works against a JV team like Northwestern, but won’t against IA or WI. The point I’m making is AK has very little in-game reps. Playing NU is a great time to practice the things you’ll ultimately need him to do later in the year/next year. Playing a team like that is like playing with your training wheels on. You practice riding your bike with your training wheels on like you were riding without them, so when you take them off, you are already adept at it.
Those plays you reference were also before the safeties were crowding the line of scrimmage. I was watching the safeties pre-snap a good chunk of the game, and they were not playing the pass at all after the first few drives. They could have at least attempted some middle to deep passes, and gotten very favorable coverages, which in turn increases the chances of completed passes.
There are things that they did with him against Nebby that for some reason were largely absent this week- designed runs (the vast majority of his runs were designed passes), bootlegs to get him out of the pocket, screens/jet sweeps, etc. Do any of these things help you put up more than the 31 points against NU that they did yesterday? Maybe not. But there’s nothing wrong with giving your young QB real game reps doing these things, either.
