Breaking News! Gophers Aren't as Bad as They Looked!

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Otis

Otis

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The Gophers played bad.

The Gophers are not a bad team.

They gave away upwards of 30 points to a very good team due to turnovers, bad coverage, bad decisions and poor execution. 21 first quarter points! That's a hell of a hole to dig for yourself! Most people just say fold up your tent and go home. The Gophers did keep trying a failed to mount a miracle come-back. No big surprise that they could not. But they did do some good things.

Mo played well.
They scored 24 and it should have been more against a very good defense.
They were without their starting kicker, punter and punt returner. (not that Michigan had to punt)

but more than anything....

They learned they have to play their BEST AT ALL TIMES to beat the best.

Bet they don't let their pants fall down like that again.

FULL BANANA
 

The offense played pretty well. The defense will improve however I don't know how much. We may need to score 30+ to win some games which I think we can do against other opponents.
 

I think the offense adapted marvelously for what they were facing.

Defense needs some work but I think most of us saw that coming.
 

Otis said:
The Gophers played bad.

The Gophers are not a bad team.

They gave away upwards of 30 points to a very good team due to turnovers, bad coverage, bad decisions and poor execution. 21 first quarter points! That's a hell of a hole to dig for yourself! Most people just say fold up your tent and go home. The Gophers did keep trying a failed to mount a miracle come-back. No big surprise that they could not. But they did do some good things.

Mo played well.
They scored 24 and it should have been more against a very good defense.
They were without their starting kicker, punter and punt returner. (not that Michigan had to punt)

but more than anything....

They learned they have to play their BEST AT ALL TIMES to beat the best.

Bet they don't let their pants fall down like that again.

FULL BANANA
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I thought the most positive thing about the game was the unis. They looked sharp, thank goodness no banana in sight.
 

Ope3 said:
I thought the most positive thing about the game was the unis. They looked sharp, thank goodness no banana in sight.
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Why is there no Dislike button?
 


Otis said:
Why is there no Dislike button?
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There is. See above. Even my 75 mother loved the gold/mirror helmets, though. She also thought PJ needed to wear some sort of a hat on his bald dome.
 

The chrome helmets with M on both sides are the best part of any uniform the Gophers have
 

There are certainly encouraging signs. TOP favored the Gophers by 10 minutes. Other than the blocked punt, each of our scoring drives were 70+ yards and 5+ minutes. Conversely, Michigan didn't have any scoring drive over 5 minutes. That's the same game plan as always -- control the TOP with our talented offense & limit the defense's exposure risk. Obviously & unfortunately, Michigan benefitted from some massive explosive plays that took us out of our game plan -- and of course the kicking. Get our kickers back and find a way to return to our bend don't break defense, and hopefully we'll be alright.
 




Fleck said that they usually know in game 1 about 60% of what the other team will do. He said it was opposite and Michigan ran about 60% of what they didn't expect. Yes, it's an excuse, but mixed with a lot of inexperienced players in their first starting action it makes some sense. They will have film going forward on each team and players should be able to adjust. Our offense should make the defense better going forward against lessor opponents.
 

Parts of the game doesn't surprised me due to the lack of games prior to the Big 10. I look for a much better game this Friday night.
 


the thing is, after last year, a lot of people thought the Gophers were past the point where, after a disappointing loss, the fans are reduced to saying "well, it wasn't as bad as it looked."

How was this game any different than some of the bad losses in the Mason era, the Brewster era, the Kill era, or the Claeys era (if one season can be called an era)?

we may not learn much the next two weeks, but this makes the Iowa game really important. A win over Iowa puts the ship back in the right direction. a loss - especially a non-competitive loss - would not bode well for the immediate future.
 



Defensive concerns aside, we were essentially down 5 projected starters. 2 OL in Faalele and Dunlap (which definitely showed, as that right side was a weak point), and missing our Kickoff and FG Kickers, plus the punter (and backup punter?) meant Michigan almost always had good field position.

All those things piled on top of an inexperienced defense that was playing against a very talented Michigan team who seem to have found their QB. To be honest, I'm surprised the final score wasn't worse.
 

short ornery norwegian said:
the thing is, after last year, a lot of people thought the Gophers were past the point where, after a disappointing loss, the fans are reduced to saying "well, it wasn't as bad as it looked."

How was this game any different than some of the bad losses in the Mason era, the Brewster era, the Kill era, or the Claeys era (if one season can be called an era)?

we may not learn much the next two weeks, but this makes the Iowa game really important. A win over Iowa puts the ship back in the right direction. a loss - especially a non-competitive loss - would not bode well for the immediate future.
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Well to speak to the difference over the Mason era we weren't up by like 3 touchdowns in the 4th quarter and lose...so we have that at least.
 

Taji34 said:
Defensive concerns aside, we were essentially down 5 projected starters. 2 OL in Faalele and Dunlap (which definitely showed, as that right side was a weak point), and missing our Kickoff and FG Kickers, plus the punter (and backup punter?) meant Michigan almost always had good field position.

All those things piled on top of an inexperienced defense that was playing against a very talented Michigan team who seem to have found their QB. To be honest, I'm surprised the final score wasn't worse.
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It could have been way worse...they missed 3 field goals and should have scored on that opening drive when they were jamming it down our throats and that FB had that stupid penalty. Without that penalty they probably go score and we don't block the punt and get decent field position for our TD.
 

short ornery norwegian said:
the thing is, after last year, a lot of people thought the Gophers were past the point where, after a disappointing loss, the fans are reduced to saying "well, it wasn't as bad as it looked."

How was this game any different than some of the bad losses in the Mason era, the Brewster era, the Kill era, or the Claeys era (if one season can be called an era)?

we may not learn much the next two weeks, but this makes the Iowa game really important. A win over Iowa puts the ship back in the right direction. a loss - especially a non-competitive loss - would not bode well for the immediate future.
Click to expand...

I'm going to go with a couple obvious ones.

- COVID - kick punter fiasco - 14-21 points possibly
- no non-conference games
- Substantial loss of defensive starters - This is the weakest argument, but with the combination of no non-conference and starting off against a team that is probably good, it might be substantial when we look at Michigan 9 weeks from now. If Michigan is good, we don't feel as bad about our defense. If Michigan can't score 14 against Ohio State, then we should have been better.
 

I wasn't expecting a perfect season, but if they don't fix some things quick and we see even just a couple more games like last week, it could start to affect recruiting momentum (regards if Fleck believes in that or not).
 

In this odd 2020 season, talent will beat hard work every week.
 

short ornery norwegian said:
the thing is, after last year, a lot of people thought the Gophers were past the point where, after a disappointing loss, the fans are reduced to saying "well, it wasn't as bad as it looked."

How was this game any different than some of the bad losses in the Mason era, the Brewster era, the Kill era, or the Claeys era (if one season can be called an era)?

we may not learn much the next two weeks, but this makes the Iowa game really important. A win over Iowa puts the ship back in the right direction. a loss - especially a non-competitive loss - would not bode well for the immediate future.
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In the past, those bad losses came to bad teams. Michigan looks legit and is probably the #2 team in the East. I agree; the Iowa game is huge. Wisconsin plays at Michigan that week. That weekend could certainly set the tone in the West.
 

MaxyJR1 said:
Fleck said that they usually know in game 1 about 60% of what the other team will do. He said it was opposite and Michigan ran about 60% of what they didn't expect. Yes, it's an excuse, but mixed with a lot of inexperienced players in their first starting action it makes some sense. They will have film going forward on each team and players should be able to adjust. Our offense should make the defense better going forward against lessor opponents.
Click to expand...

In this case I think it's a fair excuse. Michigan with Harbaugh haven't had a dual threat like qb like Milton, and Michigan really put together a great game plan to utilize his athleticism and kept him from having to make many difficult plays down field with his arm. I'm guessing Michigan has never run a lot of the stuff they were doing since they never had a qb that could execute those types of plays.
 

Spaulding!No! said:
In this odd 2020 season, talent will beat hard work every week.
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I think there's a lot of truth to this and was thinking the same thing watching the game. Fleck's teams play best when they've had time to gel and can overcome talent gaps.
 

It isn't really getting mentioned but the fact that people are this disappointed in a loss to Michigan shows just how far the program has come, and I mean that in a good way.

There was a time not long ago where losing like this to Michigan wouldn't have even caused people to bat an eye. Now they are upset and expecting more from the team. Means we are heading in the right direction as a program and a fanbase.

Perfect storm of a lot of issues on Saturday night. Covid decimated kickers, missing starters on the line, ranked opponent, Morgan not up to his usual standards, new starters on D. Frustrating to say the least but we are going to have games like this. The trick is how the team responds over the remainder of the season.
 

short ornery norwegian said:
the thing is, after last year, a lot of people thought the Gophers were past the point where, after a disappointing loss, the fans are reduced to saying "well, it wasn't as bad as it looked."

How was this game any different than some of the bad losses in the Mason era, the Brewster era, the Kill era, or the Claeys era (if one season can be called an era)?

we may not learn much the next two weeks, but this makes the Iowa game really important. A win over Iowa puts the ship back in the right direction. a loss - especially a non-competitive loss - would not bode well for the immediate future.
Click to expand...

I don't remember ever saying it wasn't as bad as it looked in the past. The Mason collapses were as bad as they looked, the Kill/Claeys collapses vs PSU and Michigan were as bad they looked to me. The disappointing Fleck losses to me have come when we didn't play as well as we could have basically from the start. The other regimes the disappointing losses were where we came out looking like Rose Bowl contenders and then choked and made me think we played over our heads then the true colors were shown.
 

LakevilleBro said:
What bothered me were the two Michigan touchdown runs, up the middle, and the runners were never touched.
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Shades of late 2017 early 2018. They will see their mistakes in gap coverage and over pursuing in the rush. Several plays where they hit the gap but ran themselves past the runner. Very fixable. Same with not setting the edges...bad technique. Fixable.
 

btowngopher said:
I don't remember ever saying it wasn't as bad as it looked in the past. The Mason collapses were as bad as they looked, the Kill/Claeys collapses vs PSU and Michigan were as bad they looked to me. The disappointing Fleck losses to me have come when we didn't play as well as we could have basically from the start. The other regimes the disappointing losses were where we came out looking like Rose Bowl contenders and then choked and made me think we played over our heads then the true colors were shown.
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The two shutouts...
 

MNVCGUY said:
It isn't really getting mentioned but the fact that people are this disappointed in a loss to Michigan shows just how far the program has come, and I mean that in a good way.

There was a time not long ago where losing like this to Michigan wouldn't have even caused people to bat an eye. Now they are upset and expecting more from the team. Means we are heading in the right direction as a program and a fanbase.

Perfect storm of a lot of issues on Saturday night. Covid decimated kickers, missing starters on the line, ranked opponent, Morgan not up to his usual standards, new starters on D. Frustrating to say the least but we are going to have games like this. The trick is how the team responds over the remainder of the season.
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Should be 2-2 against them in the last 4 tries. yes we did pad them with missing players and inexperience. Still it is the same old thing, we cannot beat them but once in a decade or more.
 


Their defense IS as bad as it looked.

Call it what you want, but you can't give up 49 points to anyone. Not a single team. Not the National Champion if you want to be taken seriously. The defense is borderline terrible and needs a ton of work.

That said, I agree that overall, this team is not bad. They are a good team, but being embarrassed like that shouldn't happen to a team that says they want to win the BT West.
 

Go Gophs said:
Their defense IS as bad as it looked.

Call it what you want, but you can't give up 49 points to anyone. Not a single team. Not the National Champion if you want to be taken seriously. The defense is borderline terrible and needs a ton of work.

That said, I agree that overall, this team is not bad. They are a good team, but being embarrassed like that shouldn't happen to a team that says they want to win the BT West.
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See post # 25. Disappointing? Yes. Fixable? Yes.
 

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