Indiana Football: IU WR’s ranked amongst best deep threats in Big Ten

College football is right around the corner and a recent stat showed that Indiana football’s wide receivers are amongst the best deep ball threats in the conference.

The Big Ten has some of the best teams in the country but also some of the best skill players as well. While Michigan, Ohio State, and Penn State may come to mind, the Indiana football program will roll out with a great deal of skill this season, especially at the wide receiver position.

A stat by Pro Football Focus was released that showed the best deep ball threat wide-outs in the Big Ten and it included two Indiana football players, Nick Westbrook and Donavan Hale.

Westbrook is the clear runaway leader in the category of best quarterback passer rating for passes on 20+ yards, while Hale comes in at fifth on the list. The other three players on the list include KJ Hamler of Penn State, and then Nico Collins and Donovan Peoples-Jones both of whom play for Michigan.

For Westbrook, in his last two seasons, he has an average of 16.2 yards per catch including his longest of 72 yards. In his career, he has seven games in which he has higher than a 20 yard per reception average.

As for Hale, last season was his coming out party and had eight games with at least a 10 yard per catch average. Whereas Westbrook is more of the lethal deep threat, Hale spends his time in the first two levels of the defense, usually less than 20 yards downfield, but has shown his ability to stretch the defense as well.

With Kalen DeBoer looking to open up the offense to bigger plays downfield, which I’m sure fans like to hear, I would expect both to put up big numbers and continue to stretch their yard per catch average.