Inside the Film Room: Gophers vs. South Dakota State

There is no preseason in college football, which means teams must immediately adjust to live action and contact. The first game always provides challenges associated with new schemes, coaches and players. South Dakota State had returning talent, but a new quarterback and coordinator led to small systematic changes. Throughout the night, Minnesota’s coaches had to adjust.

The Gophers also made their own mistakes, including picking up stunts and being out of alignment defensively. They also got inconsistent push up front and didn’t put themselves in favorable down-and-distance situations.

In this piece, I’ve diagnosed and identified the strengths and weaknesses from the Gophers’ first game of the season.

Offense:

The biggest takeaways from Thursday night’s game came in the trenches. Minnesota struggled to get adequate push up front on both sides of the ball. The most glaring issues were in pass protection. South Dakota State schemed well and used stunts to cause headaches for the Gophers’ offensive line. The main purpose of this specific scheme is to confuse offensive linemen. A main key for the guard and tackle is to recognize when a stunt may be occurring. The defensive end will take a few steps up field, hesitate and loop. In this type of stunt, the three-technique will move forward about three steps and force the tackle to pick him up. On Thursday, South Dakota State used this stunt and also looped the three-technique occasionally. On four occasions, Minnesota inadequately picked them up and didn’t execute the proper technique. The vast majority of pressure was the result of South Dakota State incorporating stunts into the scheme. Despite Minnesota having a size advantage, the Jackrabbits recognized they could utilize their speed and leverage.

No matter what type of stunt a team is deploying, there are key things to remember. First, it’s about making sure your guard and tackle are at the same depth to ensure you have adequate time to read the stunt. The most critical thing: the guard and tackle have to remain square and communicate. If one of the players opens their shoulders to chase the defender, you’re basically opening a door for the “looper” to rush the gap. The guard and tackle can also switch too early and should try to be hip-to-hip and square when doing it.

In the Gophers’ instances below, guard Curtis Dunlap Jr. opened his shoulders and it led to pressure. The second play in the sequence was communicated well and passed off, but Blaise Andries didn’t sink his hips and get position. During the third play, the nose tackle stunts to the outside, things get jammed up inside and the looper goes untouched. Finally, in the fourth clip, Blaise Andries allows pressure immediately, opens his shoulders and there is simply no opportunity to pick it up.

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This week, the Gophers will spend plenty of time working on the two-man stunt drill in practice. These lapses can be fixed and will tie up many of the loose ends related to pass protection. Based upon Fresno State’s past tendencies and front-seven structure, we can expect to see stunts, varied fronts and blitz packages.

Without quarterback Tanner Morgan’s ability to escape and extend plays, many drives would have ended on Thursday. Outside of a poor read that led to an interception, Morgan managed the offense well and made a few excellent throws on the run.

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The Gophers’ offensive line did enough on the ground to pull off a victory. However, the running backs averaged just 3.1 yards per carry and 0.8 yards per rush in the third quarter. Minnesota didn’t consistently show the same level of physicality we witnessed at the end of last season. There were certain stretches where the blocking scheme was executed, though. The Gophers benefited from using 12 and 13 personnel to get multiple tight ends on the field. Tight end Jake Paulson was crashing and blocking the edge to help open creases off counter looks. On Minnesota’s 18-play scoring drive, they utilized three tight end packages (13 personnel) six times. They ran power-counter quite a bit throughout the night to help the rushing offense.

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Here’s a look at Minnesota’s personnel grouping usage during Thursday’s game:

11 personnel: 33 (56.9%)
12 personnel: 12 (20.7%)
13 personnel: 7 (12.1%)
10 personnel: 6 (10.3%)

Of the Gophers’ 58 alignments, they used multiple tight ends sets on 32.8% of their total snaps. They had rushing success in those formations and will likely continue using them. Overall, the scheme was rather simple and it is clear Minnesota wanted to set the tone by running the ball. They didn’t get very nuanced with their route concepts, but that will occur as the season progresses. The Gophers also had some trouble with timing and blocking on tunnel screens. Those type of plays were called in spots where they didn’t have the right coverage, deployed the set in a predictable spot, or had poor spacing. Moving forward, I would expect the passing game concepts to evolve. The offensive system is going to strategically begin simple and continue to become more nuanced.

South Dakota State also schemed to take away wide receiver Tyler Johnson, which provided favorable matchups for sophomore Rashod Bateman. The young receiver was dynamic after the catch and flashed his explosiveness in space. He also grabbed a one-handed catch to secure a 42-yard touchdown. Based upon Bateman’s improvements (route running, physical differences, etc.), he has the chance to be a breakout candidate.

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Finally, I think the Gophers can build upon the final six minutes of the game. This was their most consistent stretch on Thursday night. It’s where we saw the offensive line firing off the ball, playing physical and finishing to the whistle. I cut up the film and sequenced it to show the progression over three plays:

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Fresno State has a talented front-seven and will test the Gophers’ offensive line. The Bulldogs will be mixing fronts and coverages the entire night, which will test every single player on offense.

For the complete defensive breakdown, click here.

Thanks!

Both were good reads. Hope to see this get cleaned up for Fresno

Where was the game plan that forced SDS to have to adjust to what we were doing, that's why do don't go into a game with your "vanilla" game plan. Each week should be our super bowl. "Win the day" mantra dosent include games only practices? Fleck says he took SDS seriously, a very good team, but prepared a plan that assumed we would show up and run just our base plays. This played right into SDS' s hand. Poor coaching!

Thanks for putting this together

Desertbobcat said:

Where was the game plan that forced SDS to have to adjust to what we were doing, that's why do don't go into a game with your "vanilla" game plan. Each week should be our super bowl. "Win the day" mantra dosent include games only practices? Fleck says he took SDS seriously, a very good team, but prepared a plan that assumed we would show up and run just our base plays. This played right into SDS' s hand. Poor coaching!

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I don't know about "poor coaching" as I'm not willing to make that call yet, but I have a similar sentiment about SDSU not having to adjust, and letting them stack the box and leaving WRs out there one on one with no help in sight and not making SDSU pay for it / so many passes to the first option guy with tons of coverage around them.

Thanks -- great stuff as usual!

Side note: Man, Schlueter looks...really not good. I've never carefully broken down line play (I'll leave that to Rockford!), but in watching that last sequence (supposedly best of the game), he's consistently our highest pad level off the ball, allows the DE to get into his chest and separate, and attacks with these wide "bearhug" arms around the shoulder pads rather than trying to get inside and latch on to the defender. I'm obviously not a D1 OL or coach, but his technique seems pretty poor just based on those clips. In his defense, it's obviously just 3 plays and he was likely dog tired. Oh, and he did a very nice job passing off and then picking up the loop stunt in the first clip (the one our vaunted IMG boys failed miserably on).

MGGopher said:

Thanks -- great stuff as usual!

Side note: Man, Schlueter looks...really not good. I've never carefully broken down line play (I'll leave that to Rockford!), but in watching that last sequence (supposedly best of the game), he's consistently our highest pad level off the ball, allows the DE to get into his chest and separate, and attacks with these wide "bearhug" arms around the shoulder pads rather than trying to get inside and latch on to the defender. I'm obviously not a D1 OL or coach, but his technique seems pretty poor just based on those clips. In his defense, it's obviously just 3 plays and he was likely dog tired. Oh, and he did a very nice job passing off and then picking up the loop stunt in the first clip (the one our vaunted IMG boys failed miserably on).

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I have this fear in the back of my mind that the improvements at OL and DL seen during the off-season may be because ... they're both not gud. Hard to know after one game... but man.

Outstanding as always, Daniel!

I think we will see marked improvement on both sides of the ball in Fresno. Hope to see more motion and sets on offense from the RPO to help with the blocking and pre-snap reads.

The first few clips showed several nice plays where Morgan escaped pressure and threw an on target pass while on the run. I like that a lot.

Nice write-up. The clips show the offensive line suckage wasn’t just limited to one or two players. They also show that the problems they had are fixable.

And I agree with the poster above. Morgan has good escapability and throws really well on the run. I’m anxiously waiting for them to get both the TE and RB more involved in the passing game to give him more options when things break down and nothing is open downfield. I’d be interested to know what his average depth of target is, and how it compares to the rest of the league. I’m guessing it’s on the higher end in most games.


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Thank you for this analysis. Loved it.

I just watched the full SDSU game on youtube. It was my first time watching the game in its entirety, and I have to say the Gophers didn't look as bad as I expected. I never thought they would run away with the game, since SDSU is an underrated performer. The score was 20-7 at halftime, and I think that's okay. I'm no football expert, but I can see that there are numerous areas for improvement. On the other hand, it's game 1 in a sport with no preseason, and SDSU only substantially outplayed the Gophers for one quarter - the 3rd, when they outscored the Gophers 14-7. Apart from that quarter I find this performance only mildly disappointing.

Desertbobcat said:

Where was the game plan that forced SDS to have to adjust to what we were doing, that's why do don't go into a game with your "vanilla" game plan. Each week should be our super bowl. "Win the day" mantra dosent include games only practices? Fleck says he took SDS seriously, a very good team, but prepared a plan that assumed we would show up and run just our base plays. This played right into SDS' s hand. Poor coaching!

Click to expand...

Last time I checked, we won the game.

*Checks notes again*

Yup, we definitely ended the game with more points than our opponent.