Gopher Football
Yes, the Gophers really beat Purdue. Apparently, the Joe Tiller Curse is over (although it needed a better name: Curse of The Bushy Moustache, anyone?) It’d been a good solid decade since the last time we could say that.
More shocking, I think, was the manner in which the game was won. I personally had most of this article written just about the time that Bryan Cupito was despairingly chasing Purdue linebacker Dan Bick into the end zone. It went something like this:
“œSame old Gophers.
It is comforting to know that, though times may change and the hole in the ozone layer may continue to grow, the Gophers won’t be able to win the big, close, important game until at least all of the polar ice caps have melted and flooded the earth, thus killing all life on the planet and sending the world into a second Ice Age.
Perhaps this seems fatalistic. Perhaps someday the Gophers will come through at the end of the game. Personally, I’d put my money on global warming, because frankly that seems a lot closer to fruition right now.”
And it went on in that vein for some time, making more comparisons to disastrous apocalyptic scenarios as it grew.
But while I was composing this ode to dashed hopes in my head, a funny thing happened: a Gopher quarterback who’d thrown three interceptions and killed an otherwise powerful offense (and let’s face it, we’ve read that sentence many times before) got up, dusted himself off, and started throwing the ball on target. What history will remember about this game is not the three picks, but the fact that Minnesota got up off the mat ““ twice ““ when they should have been counted out and came back and won it. It’ll remember Logan Payne getting open for no good reason in the end zone. It’ll remember an option play with a quarterback so lead-footed that the slow-motion camera was out of focus. And it will remember a running back and an offensive line that could barely walk off the field after being dominant for an obscene number of plays.
They came back and won it. Over a ranked team. How crazy is that?
Please don’t get me wrong; I can read the remainder of the schedule and logically assess the Gophers’ chances of a conference championship or an undefeated record. (Why, in this year in which the home team finally gets a win over Purdue, does it have to be Illinois and Northwestern, not Ohio State and Michigan, that they avoid?) Just let me have this week. They’ve been few and far between.
Onto the grades. (Never mind being out of town for a week ““ probably the best reason to delay this article was to keep myself from throwing out more A-pluses than a Harvard professor who needs good classroom evaluations to get tenure.)
OFFENSE
On the ground – Before this one started, Purdue had given up 32 yards rushing to their first two opponents. Not per game. Total. Granted, these opponents were Akron and Arizona, so it’s not like they were stopping the ’95 Nebraska Cornhuskers, but you have to admit that it’s a pretty impressive total.
Three and a half hours later, they’d given up 333 in three games. Kind of a nice symmetry there.
Early on in this game, the Gophers offensive front was absolutely dominating Purdue. Hark back to the first drive of the game; the Minnesota offense absolutely steamrolled down the field (until running out of gas and missing a field goal, but that’s sort of beside this point.) The dominance continued unabated throughout the first half, and only ended, in my view, when the offensive front simply got tired. After all, the Gophers ran the ball 68 (!) times in this game. As a comparison, Purdue only ran 63 total plays on the day.
Look at the statistics for the big two Gopher tailbacks: Laurence Maroney, 46 carries, 217 yards. Gary Russell, 16 carries, 75 yards. Total, 62 carries, 292 yards.
To the Purdue defense, it must have seemed like they were trying to stop the ’95 Cornhuskers.
Grade: A
Through the Air – I’ve already given Bryan Cupito his due, up above in this article. I admired his poise at the end of the game. I admired him crashing into the end zone on the last two-point conversion
That being said, if he doesn’t throw three interceptions in this game, the Gophers win by two touchdowns without too much problem. The picks killed two first-half Gopher drives ““ when they were killing the Boilermakers up front ““ and the third one, of course, turned into six quick for Purdue. I’ve already admitted that I was about to rip the Gophers before the improbable toughness at the end of the game, and much of that venom was going to be directed at Cupito.
It was nice to see Matt Spaeth get it together and catch four passes for 68 yards ““ and of course, the all-important eight-yard touchdown. I confess that last week I was ready to see the Gophers make a new team rule: “œNo throwing to the tight end under any circumstances.” This seemed like a good idea at the time. As I watched pass after pass clank off Spaeth’s hands like he was wearing boxing gloves filled with sand, I remember saying something like, “œThey should replace Matt Spaeth’s hands with something a little more useful, like a vise grip, or a lollipop.”
Turns out, he just needed some big catches to make. For one game, at least, he was a Ben Utecht-style weapon, leading the team in receiving and making the big catch at the end of the game.
We also need to mention Laurence Maroney in this area as well; he caught five passes in addition to running the ball 46 times. You know, because it’s not like he was busy or anything. The guy ended up with fifty-one (bold, italic, underline, all caps, whatever, !) touches in this game. And all told, every time he touched the ball, he picked up almost five and a half yards. What an amazing weapon.
Credit also goes to the offensive line, for allowing just one sack in 36 times Cupito dropped back to pass, this to a Purdue team that was averaging four per game.
You know”¦ if Cupito’s just going to work the tight end and the backs”¦ maybe we don’t need wide receivers after all. Single wing, here we come.
If it hadn’t been for the three interceptions, this unit would have earned a perfect game. As it was, they certainly were better, especially when it counted.
Grade: B-minus
Kicking Game
After Jason Giannini missed a field goal on the Gophers’ opening drive, I was hoping for some kind of miracle ““ a meteor, a long-distance phone call, anything that kept Giannini from getting on the field again.
In hindsight, it was Giannini’s comeback that predated the Gophers’. From there, he kicked four extra points and two field goals ““ both from more than 35 yards away ““ without a problem. (Like a lot of people, I didn’t watch either extra-point attempt in overtime. I couldn’t. It was too nerve-racking.)
Anyway, for this game at least, Giannini was an asset and not an anvil around the Gophers’ neck. Which was nice.
Grade: B-plus
Offense overall – Three picks, a missed field goal, and they still managed to be in position to tie it up at the end. That sounds like a pretty normal day for the Gophers. What wasn’t the same was the fact that they rolled down and tied it up when the game was on the line.
GradeA-minus
DEFENSE
Against the Run – The stats don’t look good for the rush defense: 29 carries, 205 yards. Yikes. Makes you wonder why Purdue threw the ball 34 times. Let’s bring in Lee Corso for a minute:
“NOT SO FAST, MY FRIEND!”
Remember, Purdue had a crazy, what-the-heck-just-happened there 88-yard option play that might end up being one of the longest running plays this year that didn’t end in a touchdown. It was a breakdown, to be sure, but it was sort of a fluke. If we go ahead and throw that one out of the statistics, we come back to earth: 28 carries for 117 yards. That’s over four yards a pop, to be sure, but it helps explain why the Boilermakers threw the ball 34 times. Without that near-home run, neither Purdue back would have been anywhere near four yards a carry.
Another fairly solid performance for the Gophers’ run defense, then. Ho hum. Yawn. (A guy could get used to this.)
Grade: B
Pass Defense
I’ve been poring over the Purdue passing statistics, and I’ve come to a conclusion: none of them make any sense or do any justice to the participants. Not a one. For example, Brandon Kirsch ended up completing only 15 of 34 passes. He wasn’t that bad ““ that fourth-down drop in the second overtime wasn’t even close to the first one of the game.
Then again, Kirsch did throw for 246 yards, over 15 yards a completion. He wasn’t nearly that good ““ at times he had that blind-man-throwing-laser-beams-to-nowhere (in-a-hurricane, of course) look that Asad Abdul-Khaliq once made so famous.
The Gophers had two interceptions, one by Terrance Campbell, one by John Pawielski. They weren’t nearly that good ““ one was an end-of-half bomb that Campbell caught in order lead a merry chase in the Minnesota half of the field.
The Gophers got a sack. They didn’t even deserve one. And this is where my biggest problem with the defense lies. I’ve never seen a team that’s so unable to get any kind of pressure on the quarterback with four guys rushing the passer. The front four, whoever it might be, has been getting erased by five blockers for years now. Thank goodness Kyle Orton and Drew Brees have left West Lafayette ““ both of them must have been salivating watching this one, as Kirsch regularly had upwards of eight minutes to throw the ball.
I don’t know what David Lockwood needs to do to change this. Running stunts doesn’t seem to help. I’ve been racking my brain for an answer, and I don’t have one, except for a desperate hope for the second coming of Karon Riley. As it is, if I were playing the Gophers I’d try to figure out a way to only keep four guys in to block, because clearly that’s all it would take.
Grade: C-plus
Return Game
There’s not much to say about this. It really wasn’t a factor. Purdue punted seven times, of which a total of zero were returned. Laurence Maroney returned two kicks for 57 total yards, which was nice, I guess.
Grade: Not Failing
Defense Overall – It’s not like I’ve handed out great grades so far, but let’s look at the practical upshot of the defensive play: they only gave up 21 points in the game, and if you throw out that strange 88-yard option, they allowed only two touchdowns. Considering it was not that long ago when the Gophers gave up 115 points in two years to the Boilermakers, that’s nice to see.
Grade: B-plus
OVERALL
I’ve said enough. The comeback, the toughness, the poise, the grittiness, the nerviness late in the game ““ I didn’t think that the Gophers could do this.
They won. I can’t believe it. Against Purdue!
Grade vs. Purdue, 24 September: A-minus