After the first two weeks of the college football season, the Minnesota Golden Gophers are 2-0, which means they will have better college football lines when they get back from their bye week. The Gophers defeated a Pac-12 school and an FCS school to get to 2-0, and get a week off to prepare for Colorado State, so they have a great chance of starting the season 3-0.
Against Indiana State this past weekend, quarterback Mitch Leidner looked good, completing 20 of 30 passes for 295 yards and four scores. Running back Kobe McCrary also looked good with 176 yards rushing and two touchdowns on 17 carries.
Takeaways from the Game
While the Gophers looked good on both sides of the ball this weekend, let’s not get too carried away because the team was playing an FCS school, which means they were expected to dominate. One thing that does bother a lot of Gopher fans is the fact that the team allowed Indiana State to score 28 points. While it doesn’t look good for the defense to allow a lower division team to score that many points on them, you have to be grateful ISU wasn’t good enough to pull off an upset like other FCS schools have done in the past.
Stars of the Game
The biggest stars against Indiana State are obviously quarterback Mitch Leidner and running back Kobe McCrary.
McCrary, who is a junior college transfer, proved to the coaches and fans that he is capable of doing a lot for the offense. The running back averaged 10.4 yards per rush and created a lot of problems for the Indiana State defense, who couldn’t figure out how to slow him down. McCrary’s emergence this week gives Minnesota another capable running back and good depth at the position. With Shannon Brooks expected to return soon, the Gophers might just have one of the best running games in the Big Ten.
Leidner’s senior year is off to a great start, and he would have put up some really big numbers against Indiana State if it wasn’t for a few dropped passes. Leidner looked good standing in the pocket, and he made good reads that allowed him to find the open man and pick the defense apart. Even though he was playing against inferior competition, the quarterback finished with a 67 percent completion rate, which is very impressive considering he has never completed more than 59.5 percent of his passes in his career.
Big Ten football can also be considered a winner because after several years of ridicule, the conference is now regaining the respect of the media and college football fans. Ohio State won the inaugural College Football Playoffs, Jim Harbaugh has led the Wolverines back to prominence, The Spartans are in the national championship conversation seemingly every year, and the conference has a winning record against Power 5 teams.
The upcoming games this weekend will help the conference solidify its position as the best or one of the best in college football if the Buckeyes defeat Oklahoma, the Spartans defeat the Irish, and the Corn Huskers defeat the Oregon Ducks. Also, the rest of the teams in the conference will be rooting for avoid losing three straight games to start the season, after a 10 win season last year.