Chicken Shlt Offensive lost this Game

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alchemy2u

alchemy2u

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Afraid to try and score at the end of 1st half, only 1 pass to Maxx, running up the middle when you are down 10 with just over 3 minutes.

The offensive play calling is this teams worst enemy!
 

Did you watch when we tried to throw down the field?
 


Besides the Cobb/Leidner fumble and the phantom Tommy Olson penalty they played fine. Probably took off 10 points off the board. Secondary and D-lines lack of pass rush lost us the game with those completions to Erickson. He had 160 receiving yards. That was the difference. Play calling was fine.
 

die hard gopher said:
Besides the Cobb/Leidner fumble and the phantom Tommy Olson penalty they played fine. Probably took off 10 points off the board. Secondary and D-lines lack of pass rush lost us the game with those completions to Erickson. He had 160 receiving yards. That was the difference. Play calling was fine.
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The play calling acted as if those things never happened. Thats the problem...
 


Whatever, dude. This offense got us to 8-3 and playing for the division title, and it scored 24 against Wisconsin, a very good defense. You dance with the one that brought you.

As for the defensive front, it'll get better. Richardson, Elmore, and Stelter all played as true freshmen this year, and all will be better next year.

For now I'm going to focus on bowl bids rather than how much better the team would be playing if I called the plays.
 

everybody knows my name said:
Whatever, dude. This offense got us to 8-3 and playing for the division title, and it scored 24 against Wisconsin, a very good defense. You dance with the one that brought you.

As for the defensive front, it'll get better. Richardson, Elmore, and Stelter all played as true freshmen this year, and all will be better next year.

For now I'm going to focus on bowl bids rather than how much better the team would be playing if I called the plays.
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Sounds good. Hopefully your focus gets us a better bowl bid. It's totally legit to question our play calling or ability to run a more diverse offense when it's needed. If someone stops your first move do you just keep forcing the issue or do you adjust? We had no answers in the second half.

Defense is fine when it's not on the field all day. No one should be expected to stop that running attack.
 

everybody knows my name said:
Whatever, dude. This offense got us to 8-3 and playing for the division title, and it scored 24 against Wisconsin, a very good defense. You dance with the one that brought you.

As for the defensive front, it'll get better. Richardson, Elmore, and Stelter all played as true freshmen this year, and all will be better next year.

For now I'm going to focus on bowl bids rather than how much better the team would be playing if I called the plays.
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24 points doesn't win many college football games against good opposition. Those 24 points include 7 that were set up by a fumbled punt, they weren't exactly earned the hard way. We needed the offense to drive for a TD in the third quarter, and they didn't do it. The offense didn't get us to 8-3 as much as the defense and special teams did.
 

The play calling is not the issue.

Plain and simple.
 



There were many plays that were the right call that weren't executed properly. I love Leidnder, but he isn't consistent enough, to maximize this offense. He's a redshirt sophomore so there's still time for him to develop but he's not an ideal QB for this system.
 

Adjustments by Wisconsin our poor defense were the difference.
 


As a coach, I can understand Kill and Limegrover's mindset. They obviously don't want to run the ball into a 9-man box, but they also know that they don't have receivers that can get open or a QB that can make that big throw on a consistent basis. It's tough as a play caller in that situation. I do wish that they would have run some jet sweeps to Maye to widen the defensive front, but we just don't have a receiver that can spin a DB around like the Wisconsin recievers did to our DBs today. If you watched the overhead of their passing TD, the receiver spun stemmed to the outside and gave an outside move getting our DB to turn his hips and at that point without safety help in the middle, he was dead.

Now you can argue that it's on them to develop a QB and receivers that can make plays in the passing game, but that's not something you do in-game or even week to week. This is something that has to happen in the off-season. Heck, even NFL coaches have a difficult time fixing accuracy issues with their QBs.
 



Play calling very dull and predictable. We desperately need a short passing game - screens, slants, etc. - using Maxx, recievers and running backs. The long ball is fine once in awhile, but it is low percentage.
 

alchemy2u said:
Afraid to try and score at the end of 1st half, only 1 pass to Maxx, running up the middle when you are down 10 with just over 3 minutes.

The offensive play calling is this teams worst enemy!
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Disagree completely. To me this game was lost on defense for the first time this year. Our inability to get off the field and shut down the passing game cost us big. Wisconsin was as good as us running but better passing. The turnover by Leidner at the end of the first half was very costly as well, but our defense wasn't good enough today.
 

For everyone who thinks we still don't have big issues on both sides of the ball, quit the kool-aid drinking for a little while...
 

Spot on Great Plains Gopher. Can afford to throw deep when you are close or winning. It became really apparent what one of our majors issues was when we either had to pass over the middle, or come from behind late. We couldnt do either. Running gut plays all night long is great but eventually you need to keep the LB's and Safetys at home. You dont always have to do it by throwing over the top of them - as bad as ML has played at times, sometimes we could help the situation by throwing some short stuff for him to get his confidence. I believe his first completion was to Maye on something short. Where was that the rest of the night?
 

Busky said:
For everyone who thinks we still don't have big issues on both sides of the ball, quit the kool-aid drinking for a little while...
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We are who we are. The season was worth watching and it had highs and lows, like every season. We appear to be improving each year, so that sells hope until we get stuck in the 8-4 seasons like we may be. We'll likely have an even harder time getting to 8 wins next year with the schedule getting harder again, but hey. That's the challenge.
 

Winasota Gopher said:
Sounds good. Hopefully your focus gets us a better bowl bid. It's totally legit to question our play calling or ability to run a more diverse offense when it's needed. If someone stops your first move do you just keep forcing the issue or do you adjust? We had no answers in the second half.

Defense is fine when it's not on the field all day. No one should be expected to stop that running attack.
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Coaches had us in position to win when we got the last touchdown. Defense was not fine since they couldn't stop the Badgers then. By the way, they had a chance to catch their wind then. Worse game our defensive backs have played as a group for a long time. Did you happen to notice the difference between their QB passing and ours? Did you happen to notice how many times there was absolutely no separation by our ends? I admire the hell out of Cobb, but do you think Badger fans held their breath every other time Cobb carried the ball like we did when that damn Gordon ran it?

Chicken**** call on Olson cost us 4 points probably. Richardson was held on the TD pass to Gordon. The lateral was there for Campbell (?) to fall on but he didn't. Those 3 plays go our way and we would have stolen one from the friction' Badgers on the road--a team we still don't match in talent level and then the frontrunners here would have been all smug and happy.

The bunch of fans who start bitching after a game like this on GH think they know so damn much but don't have a clue about what they're watching. Still can't get that you start letting Mitch sling it around and open it up, we're not going to even get a whiff of winning in a game like this. But go ahead and keep bitching.
 

Mulligan said:
Coaches had us in position to win when we got the last touchdown. Defense was not fine since they couldn't stop the Badgers then. By the way, they had a chance to catch their wind then. Worse game our defensive backs have played as a group for a long time. Did you happen to notice the difference between their QB passing and ours? Did you happen to notice how many times there was absolutely no separation by our ends? I admire the hell out of Cobb, but do you think Badger fans held their breath every other time Cobb carried the ball like we did when that damn Gordon ran it?

Chicken**** call on Olson cost us 4 points probably. Richardson was held on the TD pass to Gordon. The lateral was there for Campbell (?) to fall on but he didn't. Those 3 plays go our way and we would have stolen one from the friction' Badgers on the road--a team we still don't match in talent level and then the frontrunners here would have been all smug and happy.

The bunch of fans who start bitching after a game like this on GH think they know so damn much but don't have a clue about what they're watching. Still can't get that you start letting Mitch sling it around and open it up, we're not going to even get a whiff of winning in a game like this. But go ahead and keep bitching.
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BBC had his worst game by far that I can recall. Terrible coverage and really awful tackling all day long. He saved us many times this year (many amazing plays), but he was overmatched today.
 

They call the plays they can with the personnel. It isn't always the plays they wish they could call either. The same folks that want to hang ML7 are mad we don't throw more down field.
 

offense definitely has challenges but we sold out for the run, not sure we can say we stopped them on that anyway, but stave hurt us with the pass with so many committed to the run and the piss poor pass rush
 

alchemy2u said:
Afraid to try and score at the end of 1st half, only 1 pass to Maxx, running up the middle when you are down 10 with just over 3 minutes.

The offensive play calling is this teams worst enemy!
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Thank you for touching on several complicated issues. Keep up the good work.
 


Sparlimb said:
Disagree completely. To me this game was lost on defense for the first time this year. Our inability to get off the field and shut down the passing game cost us big. Wisconsin was as good as us running but better passing. The turnover by Leidner at the end of the first half was very costly as well, but our defense wasn't good enough today.
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Honestly 2 cripplers to me were inability to rush the passer and the fumble by Mitch. We didn't touch stave more than 3 times all night and the book on him is to rush and get him rattled early and he crumbles (same as Iowa, which we did incredibly well). That was the death toll. You can't expect dbs to Cover for 5 seconds and be in good position when the guy can step into every throw. The fumble was a 6 point swing and we would've actually led for the majority of the 2nd half without that happening
 

Mulligan said:
Coaches had us in position to win when we got the last touchdown. Defense was not fine since they couldn't stop the Badgers then. By the way, they had a chance to catch their wind then. Worse game our defensive backs have played as a group for a long time. Did you happen to notice the difference between their QB passing and ours? Did you happen to notice how many times there was absolutely no separation by our ends? I admire the hell out of Cobb, but do you think Badger fans held their breath every other time Cobb carried the ball like we did when that damn Gordon ran it?

Chicken**** call on Olson cost us 4 points probably. Richardson was held on the TD pass to Gordon. The lateral was there for Campbell (?) to fall on but he didn't. Those 3 plays go our way and we would have stolen one from the friction' Badgers on the road--a team we still don't match in talent level and then the frontrunners here would have been all smug and happy.

The bunch of fans who start bitching after a game like this on GH think they know so damn much but don't have a clue about what they're watching. Still can't get that you start letting Mitch sling it around and open it up, we're not going to even get a whiff of winning in a game like this. But go ahead and keep bitching.
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Wisc made adjustments to open up our defense by just throwing to the WR on the line of scrimmage. Very easy throws that help build up their confidence. Our coaches are afraid to throw the ball and all the players know it. We only throw when we are 3rd and 7+ and then it is down the field along the sidelines into double coverage. Not much chance of building confidence with those plays. The coaching staff needs to build up a passing rhythm with short low risk passes that will keep the defensive honest. It seems like the QB's get worse at passing as they get more coaching.

The defense was not the problem, we had way too many short drives that stalled. Why not try that crossing route to Maxx at least one more time? The play calling is way too predictable.

Sorry, none of us have your great football mind. It has been pointed out by several of the game announcing crews (even Mason) about the very conservative play calling.
 

Offense actually scored 8 points more than Wiscy's D allowed on average coming into the season. Our D only held them to two points below their season average. As I said before besides the Tommy O penalty and the fumble the O played fine. Those two plays costed us 7. Anyways I would have thought that we lost to an FCS team the way some of you have been acting. Not like it was a top 15 team on the road that has the #1 D and #3 O in the conference. We lost to a better team fair and square plain and simple.
 

As I recall, most if not all of us were hoping we'd go 2-2 in the last 4 games. I believe most predictions were 1-3.

We went 8-4, other than the TCU game ( and Illinois), we played every team tough. Quit the whining, and enjoy the build up to the bowl game
 

akgo4 said:
Spot on Great Plains Gopher. Can afford to throw deep when you are close or winning. It became really apparent what one of our majors issues was when we either had to pass over the middle, or come from behind late. We couldnt do either. Running gut plays all night long is great but eventually you need to keep the LB's and Safetys at home. You dont always have to do it by throwing over the top of them - as bad as ML has played at times, sometimes we could help the situation by throwing some short stuff for him to get his confidence. I believe his first completion was to Maye on something short. Where was that the rest of the night?
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Makes plenty of sense. Have asked for the addition of this to the offensive scheme often in the past, myself; and noticed the lack of it again last night.
 

upnorthkid said:
Honestly 2 cripplers to me were inability to rush the passer and the fumble by Mitch. We didn't touch stave more than 3 times all night and the book on him is to rush and get him rattled early and he crumbles (same as Iowa, which we did incredibly well). That was the death toll. You can't expect dbs to Cover for 5 seconds and be in good position when the guy can step into every throw. The fumble was a 6 point swing and we would've actually led for the majority of the 2nd half without that happening
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These. Except for the 70-yard completion (fault of which was clearly on the confusion in the secondary), the main problem with the pass defense last night was the lack of a pass rush. Stave really never got hit all night, and casually/confidently waited and stepped up into the pocket. Even his first TD throw to Gordon was allowed by lack of pass rush - he stepped forward, when he did Wilson had to come forward to prevent him running into the EZ, and he just passed right over the charging Wilson.

Perhaps Claeys decided to hold players in certain lanes to guard against Gordon; however, I didn't notice much blitzing last night, and perhaps that's one thing that could have rattled Stave. In the end, the Gophers chose their poison and it was to force Stave to beat them. He did.

As for that fumble with 18 seconds left in the half, that was probably set up by rushing the play. Why was the team rushing the play? Because time management was pretty awful, and precious seconds were ticking away. The offense had had the ball for a couple minutes with time winding down on the clock, and still wasn't in very good FG position. If the team gives a little more urgency to calling plays quickly to prevent so much time from wasting between plays, then more patience and focus can be given to the plays themselves. The over-conservatism in play calling ended up costing them several times this season prior to close of the half. And I don't recall any of those situations ending up positively for the Gophers this year. I'd suggest they rethink their two-minute game strategies, and this game was arguably lost due to the momentum the turnover+FG gave Wisconsin.
 

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