I am surprised that you have this take. The offense is not good, we know that. But let's look at it in the proper context.
First of all, you can't just have an average offense in a vacuum. Other teams play defense too, and being since we are a flawed team (I will get into that later) we can't do much about the physical mismatches. It is exactly what we do to other teams, including Wisconsin yesterday that most would say had an average offense and we held them to 6 points. PSU this year, Illinois, OSU, Minnesota (even though we won), Michigan and ISU had not just above average defenses but spectacular ones. Nebraska was an anamoly but keep things in context, they knocked out Cooper and Petras and was able to take advantage of a freshmen corner with their one mismatch. They loaded up the box against us and dared Padilla to beat them. Throw in the controversial play by Bruce and they were able to take advantage. That is how we lost those games.
No stat can tell you if you have a complete football team or unit. USC this year is probably still regarded as having an elite offense yet they got blown out and only scored 20 points, a laughable number these days and below Brian's standard. To a 2 loss team no less. It happens when you are flawed like most teams.
Now why are we flawed? First of all it starts with the o line. We all know that. But also know that great o lines are not built overnight. There is a lot of time and investment there and development is key. Sure there are a couple players here and there that are ready out of high school, but they are very very rare. And if you do get a guy like a Wirfs, or even Jackson, it can hurt you in the long run.
How? In a perfect world you would love to bring in a bunch of athletic tight ends out if high school, red shirt them, bulk them up then in year 4 and 5 they are ready to go. And you would hope they all have the same talent. But, when you bring in a stud that starts in year 1 or 2, it totally alters that schedule. It's hard to bring in players when they know they have to play behind a superstar. Then when those guys leave there is a talent void that is usually filled by players that are not ready. This has happened on the oline since 2020 as well as the receiver room too. We all need to thank our lucky stars that Jay Higgins stuck around for his shot because most of the time a loss of a great player like Campbell would mean starting a freshmen the next season. The numbers game all supports this because a team can't even recruit enough players to make a complete team every year, so when you have a miss here and there due to not being any good, transfer or injury, it moves up that cycle. We have seen all of that in spades on offense. Like next year, we were more than likely going to lose Lachey, All and Stilianos anyway due to draft or graduation, so there was going to be a major drop off in tight end play any way you look at it. Now it is here in front of us.
That leads into something everyone deals with, how good are your two's? The two's everywhere are worse as a whole because of the transfer portal. For us the one position group we depend on two's more than any other, at a detriment to scholarships available for the offense and especially the line, is the d line. This was a major shift in philosophy after seeing our lack of depth hurting us late in games and in the season because they were wore down. That start 10-12 years ago.
Sorry for the long response, but my point is that right now we are on a backup QB, our 4th, 5th, and 6th string tight ends and we don't have a receiver that would be on any 2 deep on any team in the P5. For everyone else they would get a pass. I think with the way that the o line is progressing that if we had a healthy Cade, Luke and All that we could have a punchers chance against those teams in the East. And if they all lose their 3 best players I would love to line up with them.
Context. It is all an out context.
