I feel the bye week hurts us a little bit. We are playing like a well oiled machine and have a lot of momentum. Yeah, penn state has a bye week too, but they’re vulnerable. If Michigan would have played like they did the second half against penn state, they’d have an L.
I actually think this bye week is coming at a perfect time. Gives Martin time to heal and the players a chance to soak in what has happened to this point and then refocus for the home stretch. I feel like Fleck will use the time wisely and have the team ready to give Penn State their best shot on the 9th.
I have been a big fan of Fleck since the hire but I really started to believe in what he was doing when we finished the season so strong last year. Gopher teams usually fade down the stretch but we seemed to just keep getting better last year. The way we are dominating Big Ten teams is really impressive, the only thing missing to this point is beating ranked teams which we will get our shot at over the rest of this season.
A big theme to the early part of this season was self inflicted wounds, we kept on getting in our own way but then somehow finding a way to win. We have cleaned up the mistakes and because of that we have been blowing teams out in a way that is not common around here.
We have proven that we are better then the mid to lower half of the conference. Now we get to go see if we are ready to hang with the big boys.
Penn State will be our toughest test of the season to date but we get them at home and we are as healthy as I can ever remember a Gopher team going into the 9th game of the year. A loss to them won't crush the season but a win would shoot us into the stratosphere because suddenly everyone would believe in this team and what we are doing.
Iowa has a good defense but their offense has been very suspect all year. Kinnick is a tough place to win but I like our chances to score enough points on pretty much everyone to give us a great shot against teams that are not great on offense themselves. Think there is a great opportunity to bring Floyd home.
Northwestern just looks flat out bad at this point. Never a team that you can take lightly, especially on the road, but their offense is really really really bad and while their defense is solid they are not world beaters. Of our 4 remaining regular season games this one is easily the most winnable and would be pretty disappointing not to go down there at get the W.
Wisconsin is a good team, not a great team like it looked like they might be early but still a very good team. That said they are also a very one dimensional team on offense. Slow their running attack and they struggle to score points. The defense which looked untouchable early has shown some flaws the past few weeks. With this game being at home we have a great chance to keep the Axe in Minnesota for another year.
Head says we go 2-2 during this stretch, heart says there is the potential there for more. Majority of us felt like 8-0 was possible to this point with our schedule but I doubt many of us truly believed we would pull it off without slipping up somewhere along the way. It wasn't pretty early but this team found a way to win the tight games and have found a whole nother gear during conference play. We haven't beaten any good teams in the conference games so far but we are beating those bad teams the way good teams do by crushing their spirit and leaving no doubt as to the outcome.
Here we go!