Were the Gophers Coasting in the non-conference?

Which Team are the Gophers?

  • Team that Struggled against Weak Non-conference

    Votes: 4 6.1%

  • Young team that needed first 4 games to mature

    Votes: 49 74.2%

  • Dominant team that nearly blew it by looking ahead

    Votes: 6 9.1%

  • Lucky team with a soft schedule

    Votes: 7 10.6%
  • Total voters
    66
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Otis

Otis

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The Gophers survived against south Dakota State, Fresno State and Georgia Southern with come from behind wins where the games were all decided exceptionally late.

Since then we have gone 3-0 in conference in the following ways:

Purdue (rated above us in pre-season) - We held a commanding lead going into the fourth quarter before two touchdowns made it appear closer than it was.

Illinois - We dominated them like we were expected to.

Nebraska (media projected B1G West Champs!) - We dominated like no other game in recent history, rolling to a 34-0 score with over 300 yards rushing!

So, are we the team that struggled against the non-conference schedule?

Are we a young team that needed those first 4 games to mature into our potential?

Are we a team that should of been dominate all season long and was looking ahead to the B1G schedule?

Or, are we just a lucky team with a soft schedule?

I'm going with number 2!

Go Gophers!
 

Baffling. Need more data to formulate an opinion. I'm in the Penn State will show us something crowd.
 

I think its part of strategy as far as game planning goes.

Did coaches want/expect the non-conference to be as close as they were? No.

But I believe the coaching staff (and Kill/Claeys era as well) thinking was to not show more than you had to in non-conference so that you have more ammo to fire in the B1G season.

The constant inside zone as the only running play in non-conf is an example. Suddenly we've gotten into B1G play and now we have inside zone, outside zone, stretch plays and even WR jet sweep plays.

Its a longterm view strategy and you can get burned on it. But coaching staff believed we had enough talent to win with a vanilla scheme and that giving yourself best chance in B1G play was the play.
 

Coasting sort of implies they were over confidant.

The mistakes and bad play on the OL and DL weren't what I think of as something an overconfident team does. More so early season rust / real problems.
 

I went with "Lucky Team with soft schedule", but that's probably too harsh. I would guess they were trying to be conservative, based on what I saw, but ended up struggling more than they expected in the pre-conference. They have benefited from a soft schedule, but are coming into shape and should continue to be a decent team.

Excited about what this season can be in spite of my selection.
 


I voted for the maturing option, but it was really the first 3 games that were ugly. The Purdue game was handled easily, and we let them get within one score during garbage time.
 

Didn't the Jackrabbits have a new offense? The Gophers D not having any tape on the Jackrabbits new system probably contributed to some of the Jackrabbits offensive success.
 

80% of the time players are Sophomores and Freshmen every time.
 

I think it was more a case of doing enough to win in non-conf while showing future opponents as little as possible.

Also - let's not discount Smith and Brooks still recovering from off-season injuries, plus Ibrahim hampered by injury. The Nebraska game was the first time in 2 years that all three were healthy and available in the same game. I think there is still some up-side for the running game. I will predict at least one 400-yard team rushing performance before the end of the season - maybe this week against Rutgers.
 



We are the second or third youngest team in the country. It's normal not to come out of the gates blowing teams out.
 

Lots of reasons we were not wowing people in non conference games...including as I said at the time...we had trouble being 100 pounds bigger on the oline per guy because the n/c opponents were light and quick. We are built for pushing bigger bodies we can hit and move. And the bigger defensive lines are not all as good laterally...which we exploited vs Nebraska.
 

short ornery norwegian said:
Also - let's not discount Smith and Brooks still recovering from off-season injuries, plus Ibrahim hampered by injury. The Nebraska game was the first time in 2 years that all three were healthy and available in the same game.
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Yup. Both Smith and Ibrahim were battling injuries and didn't look nearly as explosive or elusive in those 3 games. Plus no Brooks...

Young OL with multiple guys at new positions struggled in both the running and passing games. There's no way the DLs faced by MN in the non-con were as good as those faced recently...and yet Morgan is getting hit far less and the running game is gashing people. Lots of growth up front.

On D, you had at least 3 guys playing significant minutes on DL for the first time, so there was some growth needed. You also had Martin missing multiple games and at 2 LBs playing significant minutes for the first time. Combined with the progression of some younger/newer guys like Howden and St. Juste, I think it took a few games for the D to click. Plus it's a lot easier to play D when your O is rolling, as evident the past 3 weeks.

So yeah, I'm sure scheme and "vanilla-ness" had something to do with it, but I honestly think the coaches were just running the plays they thought the team could run well at that point. Probably too conservative, but as the OL, DL, and LB have stabilized, things have opened up and improved. And I think barring injuries, they'll continue to improve.
 

Looking at our NC

SDSU-Opening game that SDSU was super hyped for. They came to play. I think MN may have looked a little past them, and this was one of those where MN was determined to only run inside zone it felt. Defense, they just stunk and were thrown off with all misdirection SDSU ran

Fresno-Late game on west coast in a hostile environment. Take out the self inflicted wounds and they probably win by 2-3 scores. You can't take those out obviously, but this game bothers me the least

GSU- Where to begin. Coaching blunders, missed opportunities, and two fumbles returned for TD. This game felt fluke loss MN is alway capable of. Offensively they again just wanted to run same inside zone over and over.

I think it was mix of young team needing time to gel and probably little over confident
 



WinLoseOrTy said:
I think its part of strategy as far as game planning goes.

Did coaches want/expect the non-conference to be as close as they were? No.

But I believe the coaching staff (and Kill/Claeys era as well) thinking was to not show more than you had to in non-conference so that you have more ammo to fire in the B1G season.

The constant inside zone as the only running play in non-conf is an example. Suddenly we've gotten into B1G play and now we have inside zone, outside zone, stretch plays and even WR jet sweep plays.

Its a longterm view strategy and you can get burned on it. But coaching staff believed we had enough talent to win with a vanilla scheme and that giving yourself best chance in B1G play was the play.
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I think that's only part of it. Kill didn't care if he won by 1 or 50. He wanted to shorten the game with as few plays as possible to avoid injury. Reminded me of Tressell a bit. OSU had some head-scratchingly close noncon games before dominating league play. I think Fleck is a little like that. RPO eats up a lot of clock, and we generally exhaust the play clock every play. This shortens the games and reduces the number of plays. A quick google search says we rank 67th in plays per game, over 100th during league play. I don't think it's pure luck that we've remained relatively healthy so far this year.
 

The O-line and TE's are always going to take some time to gel and develop some chemistry. That was the case last year and it is the case this year as well and it is the biggest reason why we are playing better than at the beginning of the year.
 

SDSU was aided by inexperience for the Gophers at linebacker. Kamal Martin did not play in that game (disciplined I believe) and his double digit tackles would have made a big difference on those wide plays that were so successful for the Jackrabbits. They were lucky against Fresno State, getting the tying score on 4th and 19 by a good inch and one half in bounds catch. Some might say perfection, I'm sticking with lucky. GSU was just weird man.

Bottom line they ended the preseason 3 - 0 and that's as good as they could have done. The big ten season has been abundant with key players on the opposition hurt and not playing but that hasn't included offensive and defensive linemen. I'm thinking the Gophers have dominated the line of scrimmage in the past three games with improvement at the margins as they progressed.

Go Gophers.
 

Running our inside zone uses a sophisticated blocking scheme that requires blockers to work together and clear out the linebackers. We struggled with this early, and it took a few games to refine.
 

For poll purposes I went with #2. Here is my take on how the season has gone so far.

SDSU - First games are always tricky, SDSU gave us all we could handle but we managed to come out on top. And the Jackrabbits are a very good team. Since playing us they have gone 5-0 with an average margin of victory of 25.4 points.

Fresno State - I know the game went to OT but there was some serious blow out potential in that game that we missed out on because of self inflicted wounds.

GSU - Self inflicted wounds again, 2 somewhat flukey scores late allowed them to take the lead in a game where our defense contained their offense. Definitely think there was some overconfidence heading into that one as well, thankfully the offense pulled it out.

Purdue - 21 point lead on the road in the 4th quarter.

Illinois - Blowout

Nebraska - Blowout

The team that finished last year has been there all along and we are finally seeing it on display again. We couldn't get out of our own way in those first few games, once we stopped making stupid mistakes things took a drastic turn for the better. Youth has definitely played a roll and I don't think this team is quite ready for prime time yet, although with that said, these past two weeks have started to shift my thinking on that a little. Gut instinct is that we are still a year away from really taking off.

Will be interesting to see how the second half shakes out. We absolutely should be 8-0 going into that Penn State game if we play anywhere close to the way we have been playing recently. Can't take anyone for granted or get over confident but our best against Rutgers and Maryland is good enough for a victory in both games.
 

This team has cleaned things up with each week and the OL is the catalyst for the improvement. So far the one week at a time mentality is working. Fleck said that guys are focused on playing hard and with an edge now that they are fully trusting and understanding assignments.
 

Multiple reasons and I think people have nailed them pretty well. PJ emphasized how during the bye week they were going to concentrate on self-scouting. They did a heck of a job doing it! It's like they flipped a switch especially with the OL. The backs might have been rusty and coming off of injuries but there also were very few holes. Against Nebraska, especially, there were some huge holes for the backs.

Hard to believe it's the same guys, but then last year many of us had the same thought with the change in the way the defense all of a sudden started playing.
 

John Michael Schmitz made a huge impact. They should keep him at center permanently.

The development and maturation took the first four games to finally come to fruition. Adding Panagos to coach the Defensive Line and Harasymiak to coach the Defensive Backs and Safeties has made a huge impact.

I like the detail with which PJ Fleck and staff build up the team the last two recruiting cycles.

We cannot take anyone for granted. An 8-0 going into PSU is not guaranteed. Maryland is a very dangerous team.
 

Maryland had their butt handed to them by Purdue. PSU thrashed them. They are not a dangerous team.
 

Plato said:
Maryland had their butt handed to them by Purdue. PSU thrashed them. They are not a dangerous team.
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Quiet.
You don't know what you are talking about.

Maryland is a very fast and talented team. Dangerous.




Purdue must have caught them on an off-day or something.
 

I think the line needed to gel and we needed to get our running backs to 100%. Rodney and Shannon needed some reps and Mo need to heal his ankle. They make us better every down by being healthy and on the field.
 

short ornery norwegian said:
I think it was more a case of doing enough to win in non-conf while showing future opponents as little as possible.

Also - let's not discount Smith and Brooks still recovering from off-season injuries, plus Ibrahim hampered by injury. The Nebraska game was the first time in 2 years that all three were healthy and available in the same game. I think there is still some up-side for the running game. I will predict at least one 400-yard team rushing performance before the end of the season - maybe this week against Rutgers.
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SON, I'm usually in your camp, but I attended the 1st 2 games and they cut it way too close to have been worried about showing as little as possible to future opponents. They struggled in both games, plenty. At least to me, your second paragraph is much more likely to be causative of the Gopher's play. I think that improvement in the O line has been critical to our success, Go Gophers!
 

Seems as though there two seasons were at work. The coaching season where learning occurred, and the playing season where the players know what to do.
 

Those first three games were crazy. I was expecting and maybe the coaches and players were too, that the Oline based on their finish last year would just blow the non conference schedule away. Every single game took either a fortunate turnover late or a miracle drive to win. Very happy the team came out with wins as we could just as easily be talking about if only we could have won that game (any of the three).
 

MNVCGUY said:
For poll purposes I went with #2. Here is my take on how the season has gone so far.

SDSU - First games are always tricky, SDSU gave us all we could handle but we managed to come out on top. And the Jackrabbits are a very good team. Since playing us they have gone 5-0 with an average margin of victory of 25.4 points.

Fresno State - I know the game went to OT but there was some serious blow out potential in that game that we missed out on because of self inflicted wounds.

GSU - Self inflicted wounds again, 2 somewhat flukey scores late allowed them to take the lead in a game where our defense contained their offense. Definitely think there was some overconfidence heading into that one as well, thankfully the offense pulled it out.

Purdue - 21 point lead on the road in the 4th quarter.

Illinois - Blowout

Nebraska - Blowout

The team that finished last year has been there all along and we are finally seeing it on display again. We couldn't get out of our own way in those first few games, once we stopped making stupid mistakes things took a drastic turn for the better. Youth has definitely played a roll and I don't think this team is quite ready for prime time yet, although with that said, these past two weeks have started to shift my thinking on that a little. Gut instinct is that we are still a year away from really taking off.

Will be interesting to see how the second half shakes out. We absolutely should be 8-0 going into that Penn State game if we play anywhere close to the way we have been playing recently. Can't take anyone for granted or get over confident but our best against Rutgers and Maryland is good enough for a victory in both games.
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Excellent post mortem of the first half of the season. The stars were aligned for the Gophers playing the right schedule at the right time in the Gophers' maturation process as a team. There is no doubt a combination of excellent coaching, luck of execution, and injuries on the opponents' side factor into going 6-0.

I thought that the Nebraska game hallmarked a game with a near flawless execution. Nebraska knew what the Gophers were going to do. They just couldn't stop them.

The real season begins in the second half. They have to go through Rutgers and Maryland unscathed (injuries, upsets) first. The last four games will determine truly how far this program have come.
 

O-Line troubles held them back. This team will go as far as that group takes them.


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They need to acquire three OTs each recruiting cycle in both scholie and PWO (ala Axel Ruschmeyer). It is evident when you look around the Big Ten, teams with good/great Offensive Lines are in the elite group.

The Gophers improved OL play is steering their boat in the right direction so far. They need to avoid going off the proverbial waterfall.

PJ Fleck regularly awarding scholies to PWOs with fanfare seem to attract quality walk-ons. This is critical to any team wanting to build real team depth. He is savvy at marketing the Gopher Brand to the players and the Gopher public.
 
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