The second of ten questions we're asking that will determine Northwestern's season
Northwestern continued to mine the best and brightest of the FCS when it hired Zach Lujan as offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach from South Dakota State. Lujan's success is unimpeachable. He won 29 straight games as the play caller of the Jackrabbit offense, and back-to-back national titles.
He even won two duels with Braun, then the defensive coordinator at North Dakota State, now his head coach at Northwestern, in the 2022 season.
Before taking the reins as play caller in 2022 and 2023, Lujan served as South Dakota State's quarterbacks coach for four years. He recruited Mark Gronowski, the starter in 2020, 2022 and 2023, the winner of both national titles and the 2023 FCS Offensive Player of the Year Award.
Filling in for the injured Gronowski in 2021 was Chris Oladokun. Lujan recruited Oladokun, a grad transfer from Samford, to the Jackrabbits for his final year of eligibility. The former three-star starred, finishing the season with 25 touchdowns and more than 3,000 passing yards. He was drafted in the seventh round by the Steelers, was cut that fall and has since caught on with the Kansas City Chiefs. He has won two Super Bowls as a reserve.
At Northwestern, Lujan has set the tone again as a recruiter. He locked down commitments from his 2025 quarterback, Marcus Romain, and his 2026 quarterback, Johnny O'Brien. The Wildcats recruited Mike Wright out of high school in the Class of 2020, and again out of the transfer portal for 2023, and came up short.
Lujan changed that course, securing Wright's commitment out of the portal from Mississippi State for 2024 in his final year of eligibility. The fleet-footed fifth-year senior will be the prohibitive starter for the Wildcats this season. All of this was done before Lujan coached a single game for the Wildcats.
His ability to connect and bring in players has clearly translated to the next level off the field. The question for Lujan now is how he translates on the field.
What does his system look like against FBS competition?
The stereotype of young play callers is a pass-heavy shot caller, airing the ball out and throwing as often as their head coaches allow. That's not quite Lujan's tempo.
South Dakota State set a bruising tone on their way to their two titles. Gronowski may have finished seventh in FCS passing yards, but it was SDSU's Isaiah Davis who led their league in rushing. Davis went in the fifth round of the 2024 NFL Draft to the Jets, massive guard Mason McCormick went a round earlier to the Steelers.
Their offensive line wasn't a one-hit wonder with the 315-pound McCormick, either. Left tackle Garrett Greenfeld, 6-foot-7, 320 pounds, nearly matches Northwestern's own mountainous blindside blocker, Caleb Tiernan, whose listing is just five pounds heavier.
The Jackrabbits' starting five weighed in at 307 pounds on average, the Wildcats at 311. Now, weight isn't everything, and offensive line is increasingly one of the most complex positions in sports. But it goes to show that, on the road to the fifth-best rushing attack in the FCS in yards and the fourth-most rushing touchdowns, SDSU was outclassing their opponents up front in a way that the Wildcats can't immediately replicate.
Lujan was crucial to electrifying and elevating the program to a championship level, but he started with a sturdy foundation set by legendary coach John Stiegelmeyer. The offense he inherits in Evanston is much more of a mixed bag after four years under his predecessor, Mike Bajakian, featuring talented players but often underperforming on the stat sheet and scoreboard.
One of the ways Lujan set himself apart in the interview process was outlining how he could adapt his offense to Northwestern's roster and competition.
"We challenged and charged him with making sure the system and the concepts he brings in fit our personnel," Braun said on Barstool Chicago's The Mid Show. "You ran the crap out of the football at South Dakota State, had incredible tight ends, but you're walking into a situation where we have a developing offensive line.
"We have Bryce Kirtz, AJ Henning, Joe Himon II, Caleb Komolafe...you have to demonstrate to me that you can mold this to our personnel...I was blown away by his understanding of the game."
The massive Tiernan may be the only player to return in his exact starting role up front as a trio of transfers mix with rising and returning talent to shuffle the deck under new offensive line coach Bill O'Boyle.
At tight end, Northwestern returns key production with Marshall Lang and Thomas Gordon, with plenty of depth down the roster for whatever alignment or skill set Lujan needs. Though, as Braun hinted, the South Dakota State standard, set by NFL players like Dallas Goedert and Tucker Kraft, will be hard to replicate.
Even if they're not going to the league, Lujan will make sure Lang, Gordon and Co. get their reps, and their steps, in. In 2023, a tight end was the third leading receiver for the Jackrabbits. In 2022, tight ends were their third and fourth leading receivers. On top of those pass catching duties, Lujan ballparked that his 2022 team used shift, trade or motion on 70% of their plays. The bulk of that pre-snap work is going to be for the tight ends as a blocker or receiver, even if Lujan can't exactly replicate the dominant run scheme he established the last two seasons.
In the backfield, Braun might not just be paying lip service to the possibility of Komolafe, a redshirt freshman, getting involved with bell cow back Cam Porter and the lightning quick Himon. Even with a future pro in Davis, Lujan distributed carries with about half to a lead back, a quarter to a second back and the last quarter to the quarterback. It's more than feasible the Wildcats cycle through three runners, though Porter should still lead.
At quarterback, Wright brings his own strengths and weaknesses. He nearly leads the team in active rushing stats, walking in with 1,229 yards and 10 touchdowns, just behind Porter's career marks of 1,270 yards and 11 touchdowns. He's one of the fastest players in the NCAA and has broken games open with his legs, including 163 yards in a win at Hawai'i and 126 yards in a win at Kentucky when he started for Vanderbilt in 2022.
Wright's ability to create on designed or improvised runs will be invaluable to buy time for the offense and the line to click. It would fit right in with Lujan's history as Gronowski carried the ball more than 200 times over the past two seasons.
With his arm, Wright will have two veteran targets in sixth-year senior Bryce Kirtz, who put together the best year of his career in 2023, and speedster AJ Henning. However, even if the offensive line gels quickly, Wright still has to break his trend as an inconsistent passer to get them the ball.
Lujan worked wonders with Gronowski, building him from a 57.7% completion rate in 2020 to 65.2% in 2022 and then another bump to 68.1% in 2023. Wright sits at a similar spot to square one with a career clip of 55.5% completed passes with little variance season-to-season.
Lujan has squared everything away off the field in a matter of months. Now it's time to see what he can do on the field with a new roster at the next level.
