Gopher Football
Another Gopher season began on Thursday, about twenty-five minutes and ten points late (more on that in a moment), and with it begins another season of evaluation. Will Laurence Maroney gain two thousand yards? Will the demons of Greg Hudson be exorcised? Will ESPN ever cut away from the Oregon/Houston game? We can begin to find some answers with this, the opening game of the 2005 campaign.
First, a note about the format of these grades. Longtime GopherHole readers may remember me as the regular author of these grades during the 2003 season. That year, I graded the hometown team by position ““ by quarterback, running back, etc. I’ve re-evaluated this season and decided that the old system was fairly obtuse, and makes it impossible to assign credit or blame; after all, who do I credit for a completed seven-yard pass? Bryan Cupito for not throwing the ball out of bounds? Ernie Wheelwright for using his hands in the prescribed manner? I’d rather be able to fold both into the same grade and assign one to the passing offense in general. I’ll also likely single out some players, both good and bad, for individual grades when I see fit.
With that said, onto the 2005 season”¦ that is, just as soon as it comes on the screen. Here now is a running diary of what I and everyone else had to go through to get there:
9:15pm ““ No Gophers. Oregon is leading Houston by three touchdowns. Houston is already throwing deep in the manner of a man launching bottle rockets from an empty beer bottle ““ inaccurately, without concern to consequences, and with the specter of possible bodily harm to bystanders. ESPN2, however, is doggedly sticking with this game for now. I’m relatively calm because the Gopher game won’t be kicking off until 9:30 at the earliest, anyway. I flip over to Minnetonka and Wayzata, where Wayzata has not been informed that they must play beyond the game’s first five minutes. (And as I type this, someone apparently mentions this and they proceed to blow the Skippers out of the water. Nice work, and major kudos to FSN for showing the game and giving it the full production values ““ it looks better than the Prep Bowl usually does.)
9:20 ““ Still no Gophers.
9:25 ““ Still no Gophers. The living room goes to DEFCON 4 as I begin to look for signs that the game may be moved to another channel.
9:30 ““ The supposed deadline has come and gone. We move to DEFCON 3, as I begin working the remote control with all possible speed, and my brother leaves the room to check other channels on a separate TV. We begin yelling ridiculous updates: “œNothing on Fox College Sports Atlantic!” “œNothing on Lifetime!” “œUNIVISION IS SHOWING MEXICAN SOAP OPERAS FEATURING WILDLY UNREALISTIC PLASTIC SURGERY JOBS!”
9:31 ““ I flip crazily through the channels at a speed that, if not representing someone with their underpants on fire, would at least do that badly singed person proud. No football on KSTC or ESPN Classic or the Comcast channel. ESPN2 is stubbornly sticking with Oregon and Houston despite the fact that no fans remain in Reliant Stadium.
9:32 ““ I rail at the sky in anger, and also against the programming idiots at ESPN, who scheduled three hours for this game despite that every college football game on TV since 1972 has been at least three and a half hours long. I curse the gods of Bristol: why must you stay with Oregon and Houston? And why is Stuart Scott still employed?
9:33 ““ Time to flip on the radio.
9:34 ““ Batteries in radio die immediately after opening kickoff. Can nothing go right?
9:35 ““ Laurence Maroney scores as I rip open drawers, searching for triple-A batteries. From what
Dave Lee said after the ensuing kickoff, it sounded nice.
9:45 ““ ESPN2 finally deigns to show a highlight of the game. Geez, thanks, guys, nice of you to help out. Houston’s team has left the field and a group of eight-year-old girls are throwing deep (and missing) against Oregon. Sean “œQuaaludes” McDonough has actually fallen asleep. ESPN2 is sticking with this game just in case the referees award Houston forty-two points for a completed pass.
9:53 ““ Oregon and Houston finally stumble to the finish line. Houston kicks a field goal with three seconds left, for pride’s sake, I guess. Final score: Oregon 163, Houston 24.
9:54 ““ And we’re FINALLY looking live at Skelly Stadium in beautiful Tulsa. It’s 10-0 at this point and Tulsa already are starting to drop passes. And finally ““ FINALLY ““ we’re able to take our first look at the 2005 Gophers. They look sweaty. Especially the defense. But never mind that, we’re finally able to get onto the unit grades for this week. May our Minnesota heroes never bow to the whims of the programming morons in Bristol again.
OFFENSE
On the ground– Two plays. Two huge plays, and the game was thusly defined for all: “œJunior tailback Laurence Maroney scored twice and rushed for 203 yards on 21 carries as Minnesota drubbed Tulsa 41-10.” We can even easily distill the game down to the “œ318 yards on 41 carries” statistic that still leaves us feeling impressed with the ferocity of the Gopher ground game. Unfortunately, I think this conceals the larger truth: other than two home runs and some fourth-quarter, garbage-time runs from Gary Russell, the ground game was not particularly impressive.
If you take away those two carries for 140 yards, Maroney carried 19 times for 63 yards. This is not particularly impressive for anybody, especially considering that this came against Tulsa, not a Big Ten defense. I think most Gopher fans would have like to have seen a more consistently dominating performance up front, given the hype given the Gopher ground attack. Speaking of which: Eslinger Setterstrom Eslinger Setterstrom Eslinger Eslinger Setterstrom Setterstrom. (If I don’t mention those two at an incredible rate, my pass to write about the Gophers will be revoked. This is not to say that they do not deserve this kind of hype.)
On the bright side, though, I think that this less-than-impressive performance can be attributed to a couple of factors. First, Minnesota spent much of their time running inside the tackles, as befitting a team with a four-touchdown lead that would like to control the clock. The Gophers are usually at their most dangerous with the outside zone plays that have been so successful over the past few years, and thus, the less-than-garish stats created were not a result of a lack of dominance but a desire of the team to run inside against eight defenders and to kill the clock. Second, Coach Mason criticized Maroney for too often trying to look for the huge, eighty-yard run rather than taking the simple, six-yard run”¦ which then led to a three-yard gain. I suspect this would not be a problem in a game that was more tightly contested.
And yet, I’m still worried when Tulsa can put eight in the box and not only get away with it, but have some success stopping the Gophers with it. This is not a Big Ten front eight. This does not bode well.
And yet, they ran for more than 300 yards and I’m still disappointed. Perhaps I’ve just become spoiled.
Either way, there’s still room for a better performance.
Grade: B
Through the Air – The nicest thing I can think of to lead off this section is this: there were very few dropped passes. (Except for a dump-off to Laurence Maroney; Cupito threw it hard and low from about ten feet away, and Maroney looked like he was trying to snatch a frozen turkey out of the air.)
At best, the passing offense was inconsistent, a combination of bad throws and strange play-calls that all added up to 14-for-25 for 235 yards. A representative sample play, in the form of my notes from the game: “œFourth and three. It’s a tight-end release into the short side of the field, involving a right-handed quarterback rolling left into the short side of the field, throwing to Posthumous who wasn’t past the first-down marker anyway. It gets tipped away. There was nothing about that play that wasn’t incompetent.”
Focus on: Bryan Cupito – I’m singling out Cupito on offense because he was clearly the story of the offense apart from Maroney’s two long runs. I think all Gopher fans hoped that Cupito was going to improve in the off-season, that he was going to be more consistent, a better leader, any number of things. In the first game of the year, he looked practically the same: capable of throwing a forty-yard fade route on the money on third down, then of throwing a five-yard out into the eighteenth row of the stadium on the ensuing first down.
Also, his offensive leadership was less than stellar ““ witness him changing the play at the line and getting called for delay of game yet again, or having to take a timeout near the end of the first half even though the receiver got out of bounds and the clock was stopped. These are not the mistakes that we would expect from a guy in his second full year.
He makes the pretty throw every once in awhile, and the solid throw about half the time, but most of the time you watch him short-hop a fifteen-yard pass to a wide-open receiver, and you can’t help but think, “œWell, it’s the same old Cupito.” Asad Abdul-Khaliq had the same problem of inconsistency, but he wasn’t bad by his senior year, so maybe we can all take heart: give Cupito two more years, and he’ll be the new Abdul-Khaliq, only without the athleticism and the ability to make things happen with his feet.
This picture of the future does not exactly make the heart soar in wonder.
When Cupito is good, he is an average quarterback. When he is bad, well, I can’t stand seeing too many more throws bounce off defenders’ helmets or soar into the band beyond the end zone. When he’s off, Cupito is a poor quarterback, one who cannot run, throw straight, throw hard, throw with touch, read a defense, manage the clock, or lead the offense.
I was not impressed with Cupito’s performance, and on this hinged the performance of the passing game.
Grade for Cupito: D
Grade for the pass offense overall: C-minus
Kicking game– On Thursday morning, I opened up the paper and checked the two-deep depth charts for the Gophers. One area on the chart jumped out: two freshman kickers, two freshman punters. Against Tulsa, it was John Giannini at kicker and Justin Kucek at punter. With Tulsa’s best player being Ashlan Lewis, a guy most known for his kick and punt returns, the prospect was frankly a bit frightening. The result was, frankly, pretty darn good.
Kucek’s second punt was an absolute beauty, a 55-yard boomer that landed inside the 5 and backed up. Giannini made two field goals and consistently put the ball five yards deep in the end zone on kickoffs. There were no missed extra points and no Rhys Lloyd-style running shank punts. And Ashand Lewis was a non-factor. In other words, Giannini and Kucek did everything they could have done, and here’s hoping Kucek’s career highlight didn’t happen on his second try.
Grade: A
OVERALL: Offense
Some things were decent: 41 points, 301 rushing yards, 536 total yards. But bigger problems could lie just beneath the surface: Minnesota’s five touchdows were the result of two long runs, two garbage touchdowns scored after everyone had gone home, and one where the Gophers started at the Tulsa 40-yard line. (This last one was the third consecutive drive that the Gophers started inside the 50, but the only touchdown.) Combine this with Cupito’s inconsistency and there are worries enough for a legion of Gopher pessimists who have seen this sort of thing before ““ most recently, last year.
Grade: C-plus
DEFENSE
Against the run– I’d say the defensive performance against the run was really about average for a collegiate defense ““ which means it was pretty much awesome for a Gopher defense. I did not notice the front seven being blown off the ball very often. I did not see linebackers being crushed five yards down the field. These things are both improvements.
There were times in the third quarter that the defense appeared to be getting worn down, and Tulsa did outgain the Gophers in that quarter. We may be able to attribute this to a combination of the heat and the fact that the Gophers defense spent the majority of the game on the field (Tulsa had over half the game’s possession, especially in the first three quarters.)
The relevant statistics look pretty darn good: Tulsa ran the ball for 135 yards on 35 carries, an average of less than four yards a carry. Minnesota also forced four fumbles, recovering three.
Other than the defense slowly wearing down over the course of the night and looking a bit slower, I thought they played very well against the run. They were also helped by Tulsa’s propensity for screwups ““ or they were helped by their own propensity to cause Tulsa mistakes, depending on how you look at it.
Grade: B-plus
Against the pass– My first defensive note of the evening: “œDefense looks pretty decent ““ they even got a sack! A blitz! Hallelujah, they’ve finally hit the quarterback!”
Sure, that might have been the only sack of the night for the Gophers. Sure, they might have only had three other quarterback knockdowns through the rest of the game. You know what? I don’t care. They showed a desire to hurry the quarterback that I like to see. They got an interception. They caused dropped passes. They knocked three passes down. They did not appear to be able to be pushed aside by a three-wide receiver set, nor did they appear to necessarily play a prevent defense on first down in order to stop the other team from throwing downfield at will.
Maybe it was just the fact that they were facing Tulsa ““ and the Golden Hurricane’s backup quarterback, no less ““ that caused this. Maybe you’ll point out that, despite this, Tulsa managed to complete 27 of 41 throws for 218 yards.
For once, I say this: you have to start somewhere. And I’m willing to start with a game that included a sack, an interception, and the other team averaging less than ten yards per completion. My hope is that it leads to lots more of the same in the Big Ten season. My hope is that when I close my eyes to go to sleep, I’ll no longer see seeing John Navarre and Chad Henne throwing at will without worry about being knocked down or otherwise prevented from throwing.
Maybe I’m losing the subject a little bit”¦ but maybe the end of that nightmare is the point.
Grade: B
Return game– Dominic Jones, take a bow: you’re officially the first person to enrage Gopher nation this year. With 28 seconds left in the first quarter, Tulsa was down 17-0 and ready to roll over and die, or at least punt the ball away again. However, it clanked off of Jones’ hands and was recovered by the Golden Hurricane, who proceeded to kick a field goal. It was not a particularly auspicious beginning for the freshman from Columbus.
Overall, Tulsa punted six times, and the Gophers returned one of them for a total of two yards. Tulsa kicked off three times, with Minnesota averaging 26 yards per kick return.
One fumble plus no punt returns to speak of plus a decidedly average kickoff return game equals”¦
Grade: D-plus
OVERALL: Defense
Let’s look at the totals: Tulsa scored ten points. The Gophers forced four turnovers. Tulsa averaged less than four yards per rush and just barely over five yards per pass attempt. My favorite statistic, though, is the rundown of how Tulsa’s drives ended:
Punt, punt, punt, field goal, punt, fumble, interception, half, missed field goal, fumble, punt, touchdown, punt, fumble.
All of those rhythmic “œpunt” sounds and those melodious “œfumble” notes”¦ it does sound like a bit of poetry, doesn’t it? At the very least, it’s a lot nicer than what we’re used to hearing: a lot of harsh “œtouchdown” and “œfield goal” notes, all back-to-back.
Grade: B
OVERALL: Golden Gophers
It’s funny ““ when you look at the team as a whole, you’d have to say that the overall performance was decent. When you split it up into units, you notice the difference between the two sides of the ball: the Gopher offense was decent but should have been better; the Gopher defense was decent and this exceeded all expectations.
Perhaps we’ve just been conditioned by 400-yard rushing games and a Greg Hudson defense. Or perhaps the defense really is decent and the offense really has room for improvement. Time (and a Big Ten season) will probably tell. For now, though, the final grade for this week is just as we’ve said: decent.
Overall grade for the Gophers at Tulsa, 1 September 2005: B-minus