Gopher Football
Scoring summary
The Gophers opening drive of the season was exactly the type of drive that you’d dream of for that situation. After a holding call negated a nice Jay Thomas return on the opening kickoff, the Gophers put together a mammoth drive, taking the ball 90 yards in 16 plays; chewing up 8:50 off the clock. The drive featured numerous third down conversions, and six receptions by Eric Decker. Northern Illinois responded with a 9 play, 74 yard scoring early in the second quarter to tie the score at 7-7. The teams then traded field goals (after a blocked punt by NIU) and went into halftime tied at 10-10.
After a rather deliberate first half, the third quarter saw plenty of fireworks. Weber found Jack Simmons wide open on the sidelines four minutes in, and Simmons put a good move on a defensive back on his way to a 53 yard touchdown reception. On the Gophers next offensive play, Duane Bennett went left for a 61 yard touchdown run, which featured some nice blocks by the wide receivers. This score put the Gophers up 24-13, momentum was clearly in the Gophers favor, and all indications were that they were taking control of the game. It was at this time that the ghosts of 2007 started to make an appearance. After forcing NIU into a third and long, Husky freshman QB Chandler Harnish found Nathan Palmer open about 20 yards downfield. Rather than try to make the safe play and tackle the receiver, Ryan Collado tried to jump in front of the receiver and swat the pass. Unfortunately Collado missed, and there were no Gopher defenders behind him. Palmer than raced down the field for a 91 yard touchdown. Collado needs to understand when there is no help behind him, and keep the play in front of him rather than risking the big play. Mid-way through the fourth quarter, Collado was again on the wrong end of a long touchdown pass to Palmer, this time for 52 yards which gave Northern Illinois a 27-24 lead.
Minnesota responded with the makings of a nice drive, but after Ralph Spry gained 16 yards on a screen, he fumbled and gave the ball back to NIU. The Gopher defense responded, holding NIU to a three & out, and Minnesota got the ball back on their own 26 yard line with 5:25 left in the game. Adam Weber was very good on the last drive, completing 5-5 passes in driving the team down to the NIU 12. After a couple rushes, the Gophers found themselves with a 4th and 1 from the NIU 3. Rather than attempting a tie with a field goal, Minnesota called their final timeout and decided to go for it. Bennett got the first down behind a great push from the offensive line, but did not get in the end zone. With the clock ticking away, Bennett got the call again on the next play as got the ball into the end zone, to put the Gophers up 31-27.
It wasn’t quite over yet though. Joel Monroe put his squib kick out of bounds, giving the Huskies the ball at their 40 yard line with 22 seconds left. After a couple dump-offs to the running back, NIU found themselves at the Gophers 30 with 8 seconds left. The Huskies had two shots at the end zone, but both fell incomplete and the Gophers victory was secure.
Other thoughts
Ball distribution: The tight ends were great in this game. Combined, Simmons and Nick Tow-Arnett had 7 catches for 133 yards. Duane Bennett also chipped in 4 receptions for 25 yards. So a positive for the offense was Weber’s ability to find guys to throw to outside of the wide receivers.
However, this leads to the problem. In my game preview, I wondered about the depth at wide receiver. Since you almost always have at least 3 WR’s on the field in a spread offense, depth there is going to be important. What we saw in this game was that depth appears to be VERY thin. Eric Decker had a great game, hauling in 9 balls for 89 yards, but the only other two WR’s to catch a pass were Ralph Spry and Ben Kuznia. Spry had 2 receptions, and each did not end well. On his first catch (a third-down play), he didn’t push his route far enough up-field and ended up a yard short of the first down. On his second, he did a nice job finding the crease for a 16 yard gain, but then lost the ball as he was stumbling and trying to pick up extra yards. Kuznia had only one reception (and he was only thrown to twice from what I recall), but it was a key one; a 16 yarder on the final, game-winning drive.
For future games, the Gophers need to find a 2nd and 3rd receivers, period. Otherwise opponents will continually shift their priority in coverage over to Decker, which will limit his production and possibly result in more interceptions. I’ll have to check the final notes later to find the exact numbers, but these three receivers got a huge percentage of the reps. The three true freshmen who were expected to see the field did not. I am a little surprised by that.
Running back: Another surprising stat for me in this game was that Duane Bennett got all but one the carries for the running backs. On the game he had 18 carries for 92 yards, including the big game-winning touchdown. The only other carry by a RB was DeLeon Eskridge, who gained 5 yards. I still think that either Eskridge, Thomas or Shady Salamon will need to step up to give Bennett a little bit of a break. On a positive note, Adam Weber did not seem to have too many carries. He was used more as a change of pace, rather than the primary running that he turned into at times last year.
Defense in general: Even though the final stats don’t wouldn’t really give cause for celebration, I actually thought the “˜D’ did a pretty nice job. If you take away the two long plays given up by Ryan Collado, they only gave up around 300 yards. I was encouraged by the play of Marcus Sherels. He seemed to do a good job of sticking with his guy for his first career game at cornerback. Overall with the secondary I was a little disappointed in the Huskies ability to get receivers open, and that their freshman quarterback was able to so easily throw to them. I really like the future of Simoni Lawrence. He has a nice combination of speed and toughness that should allow him to develop into a very good defensive player. It’s pretty obvious there is still a lot of room for improvement, but from an overall perspective, I think that the defense did look a full notch better than they did last year in the opener.
Special Teams: With the exception of two plays (the blocked punt & kickoff out of bounds) the special teams was pretty good. There were several good kickoff returns, especially by true freshman Troy Stoudamire. Kicker Joel Monroe was 4-4 on XP’s (horray!) and was good on his only field goal attempt. Justin Kucek did have a couple of uncharacteristic punts into the end zone, but I have a feeling that will not happen too often this year.
Early thoughts on next week: Wow, the Gophers will be in for a tough game next week. Bowling Green is fresh off a 27-17 upset of Pitt, and they’ll be fired up in their first home game. They had a huge, emotional win over the Gophers in the opener last year, and the Gophers of course have not fared well against spread offenses historically. If the Gophers come out with a win I will be really encouraged, but my early thoughts are this is a game we will lose.
Talk about the Gophers opening-game win on Brew’s Crew message board.