Gopher Football
Game To Forget
Rather than just mention a single game here, I think a more fitting recap would be to mention the first two Big Ten games of the year; Penn State and Northwestern. These two games represented possibly the ugliest stretch of Special Teams play that I’ve ever seen from a Gopher team. Against Northwestern, the Wildcats returned a kickoff for a touchdown and averaged 43 yards per kickoff return for the game. Meanwhile, Rhys Lloyd missed two extra points and managed only 35 yards per punt. The following week against Penn State, Rhys missed another extra point along with 2 field goals. Marion Barber fumbled a punt (which he did recover), and on one occasion instead of making a fair catch he let the ball bounce only to see the field position back up by twenty yards. Over these two games, the Gophers had a whopping FIVE kicks blocked. It really doesn’t get much worse than that.
Game To Remember
Michigan State. Part of the reason why the special teams can hang their hat on this game is because they were the only unit on the field for the Gophers who did anything positive. The team as a whole got waxed 51-17, but things could’ve been much worse if the Special Teams had played as bad as the offense & defense did. What made this performance even more impressive is that Michigan State was pretty widely regarded as having the best special teams in the conference, and one of the best in the nation. Both their kicker & punter made the post season award watch lists, and their return games have been excellent the past couple years. Outside of an opening 50 yard kickoff return, the Gophers held DeAndra Cobb to an average of 14 yards per return. What’s even more impressive is that on the Spartans 4 punt returns, they managed a total of just 2 yards.
Relative Strength
Kick & Punt coverage. In a complete flip flop from 2003, the Gopher coverage teams came out and did an outstanding job this year. The punt coverage team was 2nd in the Big Ten, allowing an average of just 2.9 yards on 26 punt returns. (Purdue was 1st at 2.6 yards/return). The kickoff coverage team was equally as impressive, allowing just 19.4 yards on 28 kickoff returns. (Indiana led the conference with an average of 18.6/return). Ironically, Minnesota was the only Big Ten team to allow a kickoff return for a touchdown this year. If you take away that one return Minnesota gave up, you see even more how solid the coverage was for most of the year.
Relative Weakness
Kick & Punt returns. In another complete flip flop from 2003, the Gopher return games went down the tubes in a big hurry this season. Last year, Marion Barber and Laurence Maroney led Minnesota to the upper region of the conference in both categories, but even with both players back this year, the averages still sunk to near bottom. The kickoff return unit finished 8th in the conference with an average of 18.6 yards/return, and the punt return team finished 10th in the conference with an average of 7.1 yards/return. Both of these averages have to be disappointing considering the talent you had returning the ball.
Looking Ahead
Next year will feature many changes on special teams. Most notably, Rhys Lloyd will need to be replaced at both punter and kicker. Jason Gianinni, a true freshman this past season, is the favorite to take over the kicking duties. Justin Kucek, another true freshman this past year, is the early favorite to be the next Gopher punter. Both Gianinni and Kucek are native Ohioans.
In the return game, the primary focus will be replacing Marion Barber for punt returns. The list for this duty could be very long, and should make for an interesting battle in the spring. Both Logan Payne and Quentin White have a little experience here already. Throw in a few more veterans and a couple of true freshmen and the coaches will have a lot of candidates to choose from.
Summary:
2004 has to be considered a disappointment for the Gopher special teams. Coming into this season, I felt all of the pieces were in place for the Gophers to have a dominant special teams. Rhys Lloyd was coming off a good Junior season with two game winning field goals, Marion Barber and Laurence Maroney tore up the return game, and the coverage teams had nowhere to go but up. The coverage teams did not disappoint this year, but just about everything else did. Lloyd missed 4 extra points (92%) and 6 field goals on the year (67%). On top of that, Rhys did not make a 50 yard field goal this year, missed badly in a game winning attempt against Iowa, and missed a chip shot that would’ve iced the Alabama game. Rhys did even worse punting the ball, average a conference worst 39.8 yards per punt. Despite the bad season, Rhys still has a huge upside to him and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him on an NFL roster someday. I already touched on the return games, but this is an area the coaches have to be disappointed with. With the horses the Gophers had on their roster bigger things should have been expected.
About the only other thing I haven’t touched on special teams wise was the long snapping and holding. I was a little disappointed that starting quarterback Bryan Cupito was still the holder this year. To me, that means nobody else stepped up enough to take it from him. Perhaps I’m in the minority, but it’s not the most ideal situation to have your starting quarterback (not to mention, the only healthy quarterback) holding your kicks. I still hope to see someone else doing this next year. Getting back on track, Bryan is a good holder and has two years of experience under his belt if needs to continue to be the man. The long snapping was handled by true freshman Robert McGarry. I would give him pretty high grades considering he was a true freshman walk-on, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement. He did have several bad snaps this year, but the Gophers should be in good shape with him for the next three years if he improves as one would expect.
Season Grade: C-
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