ESPN: Season report card: Minnesota (Off: B-, Def: B, Coaching: A, Overall: A-)

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BleedGopher

BleedGopher

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per ESPN:

Overall: A-minus

Minnesota went 8-4 in the regular season, with three of those losses coming to eventual champion Ohio State (by seven points), on the road to a TCU team that was no worse than one of the three best teams in the country, and at Camp Randall Stadium against Wisconsin. The Gophers also hammered Michigan and Iowa, and beat Nebraska on the road. Their only bad loss was a head-scratcher at Illinois. It was a tremendous regular season that culminated with the program's first New Year's Day bowl appearance since the JFK administration. Minnesota couldn't quite close the deal, though, as it blew a 14-point first-half lead at Wisconsin with a Big Ten title game appearance at stake, and it collapsed in the second half versus a very beatable Missouri team in the Buffalo Wild Wing Citrus Bowl. Winning a postseason game remains on the to-do list for Kill and his program. But all in all, there was very little to complain about in the 2014 campaign.

http://espn.go.com/blog/bigten/post/_/id/114890/season-report-card-minnesota-4

Go Gophers!!
 

Pretty fair grades all around I would say. Of course they had to mention again they think Urban Meyer should've been coach of the year though.
 

jaymil said:
Pretty fair grades all around I would say. Of course they had to mention again they think Urban Meyer should've been coach of the year though.
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In fairness to Meyer he did just coach a team that went undefeated in the Big Ten with their backup QB and won the National Championship with their third string guy. Sure he has the built in advantage of coaching at Ohio State but he deserves a good deal of the credit for what they managed to pull off this year under circumstances that would have crippled a lot of other teams.
 

Good to see commenters can't figure out that expectations for the preseason #10 team aren't different than for the preseason #1 and 2
 

MNVCGUY said:
In fairness to Meyer he did just coach a team that went undefeated in the Big Ten with their backup QB and won the National Championship with their third string guy. Sure he has the built in advantage of coaching at Ohio State but he deserves a good deal of the credit for what they managed to pull off this year under circumstances that would have crippled a lot of other teams.
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no doubt he would've swept the awards after the bowl season. In all honesty, I'd rather they waited until after the bowls to hand out hardware. Seems like it gets lost in the shuffle when it's done where it is. Plus some guys become heroes for their teams in bowl season and deserve honors for that.
 


MNVCGUY said:
In fairness to Meyer he did just coach a team that went undefeated in the Big Ten with their backup QB and won the National Championship with their third string guy. Sure he has the built in advantage of coaching at Ohio State but he deserves a good deal of the credit for what they managed to pull off this year under circumstances that would have crippled a lot of other teams.
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The coach of the year is for the regular season only. Regardless, I'm not denying how good of a coach he is or what a great job he did this year. The ESPN guys already wrote an entire blog post on how they thought Meyer got robbed of the award (despite the media AND coaches voting for Kill) so I find it unnecessary to keep bringing it up whenever they can.
 

MNVCGUY said:
In fairness to Meyer he did just coach a team that went undefeated in the Big Ten with their backup QB and won the National Championship with their third string guy. Sure he has the built in advantage of coaching at Ohio State but he deserves a good deal of the credit for what they managed to pull off this year under circumstances that would have crippled a lot of other teams.
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Can we stop with the 3rd string references? The kid was not a typical 3rd string, clipboard holding schlump who got on the team cuz his great uncle knew the coach- by reports he was the #12 ranked football player, not #12 QB, coming out of HS that year.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

jaymil said:
The coach of the year is for the regular season only. Regardless, I'm not denying how good of a coach he is or what a great job he did this year. The ESPN guys already wrote an entire blog post on how they thought Meyer got robbed of the award (despite the media AND coaches voting for Kill) so I find it unnecessary to keep bringing it up whenever they can.
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It was a single line in what was a very fair writeup by Bennett, so it really shouldn't be fixated on (even though we know it will be).
 

upnorthkid said:
Good to see commenters can't figure out that expectations for the preseason #10 team aren't different than for the preseason #1 and 2
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I agree. Good progress was made this season, but the overall grade is a B at best. An A or A- is winning the West or the B1G.
 




Oregon Gopher said:
Can we stop with the 3rd string references? The kid was not a typical 3rd string, clipboard holding schlump who got on the team cuz his great uncle knew the coach- by reports he was the #12 ranked football player, not #12 QB, coming out of HS that year.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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dpodoll68 said:
As rated by whom?
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On 247 he was the #6 ranked prep school player in the county, not the #6 ranked high school player in the country. He was a high 3/low 4 star as a HS recruit.
 

Oregon Gopher said:
Can we stop with the 3rd string references? The kid was not a typical 3rd string, clipboard holding schlump who got on the team cuz his great uncle knew the coach- by reports he was the #12 ranked football player, not #12 QB, coming out of HS that year.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

He was still a guy who had been beaten out for the job by two different guys on his team. Furthermore, he was taking his first substantial and meaningful snaps in the conference title game and the college football playoffs. We had plenty of guys saying to be patient with Leidner because he was young and inexperienced as a red shirt sophomore with a season of platooning in meaningful minutes with Nelson for a year. What the third stringer did was impressive as heck.
 

Amazing how perception changes things. Michigan St got a B+. :p
 



I would not give coaching an A because of the TCU, Wisconsin and Missouri games. Our players gave it all, but I think the coaches let us down on preparation for those games.
 

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