I was reading an article on Mike Frank's site about Wolke, and it got me to thinking that this time last year Quinn was in the sameI was reading an article on Mike Frank's site about Wolke, and it got me to thinking that this time last year Quinn was in the same position -- meeting his teammates, working out at the college level for the first time, trying to understand the playbook, etc.

Except that Quinn, it turned out, was only a little over a month from seeing his first action and about 2 months from becoming the entrenched starter. It's not a huge surprise that under those circumstances an offense (esp. one with a completely new offensive line) would really, really struggle.

It's also not a huge surprise that the offense would improve in the second half of the year as Quinn started to feel his way a little bit and the offensive line improved (making Harris RT and Stevenson RG yielded visible improvement). The schedule in the second half of the year was softer (our first half opponents had a cumulative record in non-N.D. games of 53-19 (.736) and our second half opponents had a cumulative non-N.D. record of 37-31 (.544)), but the second half also included losses to B.C., F.S.U. and Syracuse. Unless a bunch of the teams we play this year are better than expected, this season's schedule will be closer to the difficulty of the second half.

In the second half of the year, Quinn completed 50.3 % of his passes and averaged about 6.1 per passing attempt and 199 yards per game. He had 6 TD's against 9 interceptions. He suffered only 5 sacks. These aren't great numbers, but they are respectable. In the first half of the year, N.D. quarterbacks (this is Quinn and Holiday combined) threw for 4 TD's against 10 int's and only averaged about 158 yards per game and about 4.3 per pass attempt (easily the worst in the nation at that point). N.D. QB's suffered 21 sacks and completed only 45% of their passes in the first half of the season.

Here are some other breakdowns as per first and second half of the season:

Points per game:

First half: 14.7
Second half: 25.7
Season average: 20.2

Yards per game:

First half: 297
Second half: 375
Season average: 336

Yards per play:

First half: 3.7
Second half: 5.5
Season average: 4.6

While the second half numbers aren't those of an offensive juggernaut, they are decent -- in fact, they look a lot like Purdue's offensive statistics for the entire year.

If N.D.'s offense continues on its improvement curve of last year, N.D. should be a good offensive team.