I went with a "C". A couple points before I begin my critique of what I didn't like. 1. I felt like we'd lose some games like this before I knew that we'd play the entire B1G slate without Rodney Smith and Antoine Winfield Jr- games where we were right in it but out inexperienced/bad QB play would be a major issue 2. There have been a lot of teams in this streak of Northwestern winning 13 of 14 (or whatever it's up to now) B1G games that have felt like "what the F? we should have won that game" including an Iowa fan base just last week...many of them didn't have multiple huge self inflicted wounds to point to losing to an "inferior" team, they just got worked.
My biggest issue with PJ in this game was the short yardage decisions and the use of timeouts. Down just 7-0 in the first half he chose to go for it on 4th and 1 from the 26. I am fine with this approach. I hated having to use a timeout before going for it on 4th and 1 and I hated even more trotting out the wildcat as the choice of plays after said timeout. They ran ball on 3rd and 5 the play before which says to me that they had an idea they would go for it if the run got close to the sticks. Get up to the line and take them by surprise. Failing that, get up to the line and try to draw them offsides. Failing that if you must use the wildcat, bring it out without using a timeout and run it without letting Northwestern give their kids a reminder about their keys for it on the sideline before you run it. To end up down a timeout here and running such a vanilla play to failure was really disappointing. The other big one was in the 3rd quarter trailing 13-7, the Gophers had a 2nd and 3 at the Northwestern 21. They ran on 2nd down and set up a 3rd and 1 from the 19. The third down run call seemed so generic and Northwestern was all over it. Now you decide to kick a fg from the same field position you went for it from in the first quarter? None of the logic makes sense to me here. If you are going to kick the fg if you fail to convert in this are now, then why aren't you running some sort of play action or at least some sort of exotic run on 2nd or 3rd down?
I'd also ding Fleck for sticking Morgan in this game, but I don't know how healthy Annexstad truly is or how many reps he's getting in practice. Morgan didn't look right to me and was floating a lot of passes. Maybe they just didn't have a healthy QB option?
One thing that was instructive to me was how badly I thought Jeff Brohm mangled the Wisconsin game. His defense was clearly gassed and was simply done tackling Taylor. Despite this, he didn't go for 2 in the 2nd OT with a chance to win. He also kicked a FG from like the 2 yard line in the 4th quarter with his team up 11 to go up 14. Against that Wisconsin team, a TD there ends the game and forcing them to start from 2 drains a ton of clock. The point is a lot of these coaches make decisions that you think are really bad. I don't like PJ's philosophy with timeouts, but it seems like every coach not named Belichick has significant issues with clock management, timeout management, and statistically "correct" decision making.