In their season-opener, the NIU football team’s air game wouldn’t get a passing grade, but the Huskies aren’t about to pass on their air game.

On the surface it might appear that the Huskies fell short of their goal of diversifying their offense by adding a passing attack.

In Saturday’s 55-7 loss to Fresno State, the statistics show NIU completing one of nine passes—short of head coach Charlie Sadler’s stated goal of about 20 passes per game.

But careful reading of the statistics reveals that the pass attempts, coupled with the five sacks of NIU QB’s, equals 14 passing attempts in 50 offensive plays—about a 3:1 run/pass ratio.

In last year’s 73-18 thumping of Fresno, the Huskies ran the ball at a 14:1 run/pass ratio.

But Sadler does admit to seeing problems in the passing game—in large part because of NIU’s defense.

“The problem was we had the ball so few times,” Sadler said. “Our defense couldn’t get the ball back.”

Fresno’s big early lead also hampered NIU’s aerial attack. “When you get in the situation of having to throw the ball against the kind of defense Fresno has, they’ll line up and tee off on you,” Sadler said.

Flanker William Patrick was an eyewitness to the problems NIU’s air game faced against the aggressive Bulldogs.

“The passing game was not going well because they were blitzing the quarterback,” Patrick said. “Stacey (McKinney) didn’t have time to throw the ball.”

NIU’s lone completion was to receiver Larry Wynn by backup QB Rob Rugai with the Bulldogs ahead 55-7.

But the Huskies’ receiving corps remains optimistic they’ll be more than moving decoys in NIU’s future games.

“We’re going to have to throw the ball deep to get respect from defenses,” Patrick said. “We have confidence in Stacey and Rob. We know that they can get the ball to us. Fresno was just one game—we’re not down.”

Sadler said he is committed to establishing a passing game.

“We’re still going to keep passing in our game plan,” Sadler said. “We’re looking at some new personnel (for Saturday’s home-opener against Arkansas State), but we just have to play harder.”