OSU Postgame Thread




The hit on Brown-Stephens just baffles me. They miss targeting live. They look at the replay, miss targeting there, but determine that he fumbled. Of course he fumbled. He was forcibly struck in the head.
Chris Carter, the man with strongest hands ever in football, also fumbles when knocked unconscious.
 

-lack of defensive line pressure probably owes more to Ohio State’s dominant offensive line.
- MN running on Ohio State as effectively as they did was extremely impressive. That looks like an Alabama line.
-our linebackers and safeties seem to lack one of either football instincts or athleticism right now and Ohio State capitalized. PJF said Michael Dixon should be back soon. Experience *should* help some. We will need to score.
-felt bad for Swenson. He’s not equipped to defend first round receivers on his own.
-kicking game vastly improved
-BSF88 will be a factor
-DW16 is a specimen with pretty good hands that will only get better.
-ballsy 4th down call in second quarter
-disappointed we left points on the table at the half.
-unforgivable officiating and league oversight. Warren dead to me from this day forward if nothing happens to this crew.
-Gus Johnson is a bootlicking coward
-Ohio State is very talented across the board. Stroud will be excellent
-Wiley is not a running back. Convert to WR or S before it’s too late, kid.
-I’ve always liked Bryce Williams. With this offensive line he could really do things with his extra gear.
- Morgan had ups and downs with a couple great throws and couple horrible throws. Mulligan for the wet conditions.

Much respect for PJF. They came *this* close to upsetting a top 5 team despite lacking key playmakers. This team could be really, really good. Overall pretty excited going forward.




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Pennies for my thoughts:

The tOSU game may be full of blessings in disguise. The Gophers had a gut-check time against the best team they will face all season. The film room will be busy. The Gophers will use this as a learning tool with vulnerabilities exposed. "We thought we are who we are until we were not." They will know what to do to deserve to be in the conversation for a Big Ten West title.

Special teams' play was very admirable.

The Offensive Line had some trouble against a very good tOSU DL. They know they can do better. Run blocking allowed Mo to knife through with over 160 yards rushing until he got hurt. Morgan had happy feet here and there. His accuracy was razor-sharp. All-in-all he played well.

The WRs are showing good promise with the emergence of Dylan Wright. We get CAB back and all is good. We can't forget that other guys are capable of stepping up. They have a good WR corps.

The loss of MO will hurt in the short term. In a way, if he was going to get hurt the first game is the time. The other RBs and the entire offense can focus on gelling together. I don't know if any of the RBs have the vision and reaction that Mo has to pick razor-thin holes. He plays low to the ground and is hard to tackle on the first try.

The DLs and LBs were outclassed by tOSU. We have to remember a lot of these players haven't played together in a game. They are not world-beaters, but they are no slouches. They need time to gel and move pieces around.

I've always thought that one of our weak spots was in the defensive secondary. When Howden went down, tOSU picked us part. We don't have the experienced depth we thought we had. The defensive secondary should have adjusted sooner and double-teamed Olave. You don't sleep against NFL-caliber WRs.

I think if Mo didn't get hurt, and the Brown-Stephens play was called for targeting, the game could have been a lot closer. There were other non-calls.

That is the break playing against the best groups of talent tOSU has assembled this season.

PJ Fleck is getting closer and closer to putting together a championship team. I honestly believe this Gopher team can challenge for the Big Ten West title. Imagine what PJ Fleck can do if he has six or more legit 4-Star/5-Star players that tOSU has on his team.

Their worse nemesis this season will be injuries to key players especially in the meat of the tough games towards the end of the season.

Win or lose, this team will be entertaining. This team should hold their heads up high.
 
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Continued lurking around OH-IO State sites acknowledges surprise and respect for Gophers offense in this game. Not all of course but enought to be worth noting.

Like 2019 need to go to fundamentals and be in every game.

7-1 will look very good in November if we pull it off. Even without Mo...
 

The hit on Brown-Stephens just baffles me. They miss targeting live. They look at the replay, miss targeting there, but determine that he fumbled. Of course he fumbled. He was forcibly struck in the head.
Agreed, that hit is EXACTLY why the targeting rule exists. MBS was knocked unconscious and out of the game. THAT IS LITERALLY WHY TARGETING IS A RULE. Anyone that wants to argue the technicalities of targeting for that specific hit is 1, missing the forest through the trees, and 2, wrong.
 

Pennies for my thoughts:

The tOSU game may be full of blessings in disguise. The Gophers had a gut-check time against the best team they will face all season. The film room will be busy. The Gophers will use this as a learning tool with vulnerabilities exposed. "We thought we are who we are until we were not." They will know what to do to deserve to be in the conversation for a Big Ten West title.

Special teams' play was very admirable.

The Offensive Line had some trouble against a very good tOSU DL. They know they can do better. Run blocking allowed Mo to knife through with over 160 yards rushing until he got hurt. Morgan had happy feet here and there. His accuracy was razor-sharp. All-in-all he played well.

The WRs are showing good promise with the emergence of Dylan Wright. We get CAB back and all is good. We can't forget that other guys are capable of stepping up. They have a good WR corps.

The loss of MO will hurt in the short term. In a way, if he was going to get hurt the first game is the time. The other RBs and the entire offense can focus on gelling together. I don't know if any of the RBs have the vision and reaction that Mo has to pick razor-thin holes. He plays low to the ground and is hard to tackle on the first try.

The DLs and LBs were outclassed by tOSU. We have to remember a lot of these players haven't played together in a game. They are not world-beaters, but they are no slouches. They need time to gel and move pieces around.

I've always thought that one of our weak spots was in the defensive secondary. When Howden went down, tOSU picked us part. We don't have the experienced depth we thought we had. The defensive secondary should have adjusted sooner and double-teamed Olave. You don't sleep against NFL-caliber WRs.

I think if Mo didn't get hurt, and the Brown-Stephens play was called for targeting, the game could have been a lot closer. There were other non-calls.

That is the break playing against the best groups of talent tOSU has assembled this season.

PJ Fleck is getting closer and closer to putting together a championship team. I honestly believe this Gopher team can challenge for the Big Ten West title. Imagine what PJ Fleck can do if he has six or more legit 4-Star/5-Star players that tOSU has on his team.

Their worse nemesis this season will be injuries to key players especially in the meat of the tough games towards the end of the season.

Win or lose, this team will be entertaining. This team should hold their heads up high.
I agree with a lot of what you say. And while I didn’t watch either Wisconsin or Iowa, I do believe they’ll be tough. I don’t think we have a big margin for error to contend. I just don’t see us having an explosive offense or a shutdown defense or an opportunistic scoring defense. That leaves grind it out time of possession football games and close games and close wins or losses. We can do it but
we can’t lose too many more already and still win the West.
it’s been awhile since we beat both Iowa and Wisconsin in the same season.
I think it may require that to win the West.
 



I agree with a lot of what you say. And while I didn’t watch either Wisconsin or Iowa, I do believe they’ll be tough. I don’t think we have a big margin for error to contend. I just don’t see us having an explosive offense or a shutdown defense or an opportunistic scoring defense. That leaves grind it out time of possession football games and close games and close wins or losses. We can do it but
we can’t lose too many more already and still win the West.
it’s been awhile since we beat both Iowa and Wisconsin in the same season.
I think it may require that to win the West.
They will have a hard-fought season with not many gimmies. They will be tested all season and will have to earn the right to represent the B1G West.

Fans want to see gritty Big Ten Football. As I said, it will be an entertaining season.
 

I didn't notice him out there, did Walley play against OSU?
 

I didn't notice him out there, did Walley play against OSU?
I didn't notice him either but others have said he did and was good in coverage. For the most part, OSU was exploiting our safeties in the passing game rather than the CBs. Smith got the PI on that one long one and Harris was beat deep once, but other than that it was mostly the S IIRC. So Durr, Walley, and Smith must've been fairly decent...
 

Key stat of game. Yards per play. Our 408 yards of offense is good against OSU. Especially with CAB out and Mo’s injury. But OSU’s average if 10+ yards per play on offense is where the talent differential really shows. One blown defensive assignment and a touchdown is almost automatic. So many explosive plays for OSU. Hope we have some explosive plays in our book as the year wears on. With our defense, a grind-it-out offense isn’t going to get us past 6 or 7 wins.
Even at half time I had no confidence that we could hold that lead. That defense has issues. The time consuming drives that our offense had in the first half is what got us the lead. The long TD run that they ran around our left defensive side was ridiculous. We had no defenders there. None! If we make things easy for the good teams we will never beat them. Claeys is the last DC that produced a competent defense.
 



Even at half time I had no confidence that we could hold that lead. That defense has issues. The time consuming drives that our offense had in the first half is what got us the lead. The long TD run that they ran around our left defensive side was ridiculous. We had no defenders there. None! If we make things easy for the good teams we will never beat them. Claeys is the last DC that produced a competent defense.

The 2019 defense was better than any Claeys season.
 

The 2019 defense was better than any Claeys season.
In terms of scoring defense that isn't correct -- '13 - 24th, '14 - 34th, '15 - 45th, '16 - 21st, '19 - 37th -- I assume other metrics show Claeys producing a defense that was better than '19 as well.
 

In terms of scoring defense that isn't correct -- '13 - 24th, '14 - 34th, '15 - 45th, '16 - 21st, '19 - 37th -- I assume other metrics show Claeys producing a defense that was better than '19 as well.
2013, 2016 and 2019 all averaged 22+ points per game. The 2019 limited teams to 306 ypg while Claey's best year was 346 in 2015.
 

2013, 2016 and 2019 all averaged 22+ points per game. The 2019 limited teams to 306 ypg while Claey's best year was 346 in 2015.
I realized after I posted that their finish in team defense was not the best way to show that they were better. But if you went through the trouble of finding that '13,'16 and '19 averaged more that 22+ points you could do the readers the decency of saying that the numbers were '13 - 22.2, '16 - 22.1, '19 - 22.5 -- and thus Claeys's defenses (by at least one metric) were better than '19.

Lastly, in terms of cherry picking its funny you went with ypg as one doesn't win by outgaining an opponent -- merely by outscoring them.
 

I realized after I posted that their finish in team defense was not the best way to show that they were better. But if you went through the trouble of finding that '13,'16 and '19 averaged more that 22+ points you could do the readers the decency of saying that the numbers were '13 - 22.2, '16 - 22.1, '19 - 22.5 -- and thus Claeys's defenses (by at least one metric) were better than '19.

Lastly, in terms of cherry picking its funny you went with ypg as one doesn't win by outgaining an opponent -- merely by outscoring them.

OK. If your gonna argue tenths of a point per game, then realize that the 2019 had a rash of TDs scored against them early in the season without the defense being on the field. Plus, 40 yards per game is not a small thing.
 

OK. If your gonna argue tenths of a point per game, then realize that the 2019 had a rash of TDs scored against them early in the season without the defense being on the field. Plus, 40 yards per game is not a small thing.
40 yards per game matters -- but to what extent it matters is shown in the amount of points scored on our defense and how much more difficult it makes it for our offense in terms of field position.

I apologize for misunderstanding your original post. I didn't understand that the '19 defense being negligibly worse than some of Claeys's defenses, in terms of total defense, was an example of them being better.
 

40 yards per game matters -- but to what extent it matters is shown in the amount of points scored on our defense and how much more difficult it makes it for our offense in terms of field position.

I apologize for misunderstanding your original post. I didn't understand that the '19 defense being negligibly worse than some of Claeys's defenses, in terms of total defense, was an example of them being better.

No need to apologize on this message board! We could argue nerd stats all day long, but my point in doing that was to argue your opinion that we haven't had a good D coordinator since Claeys. In my subjective opinion, Rossi showed his coaching chops by turning around an awful 2018 defense mid-season and following up with a very good 2019. Last year was terrible, especially early, with basically a new defense and COVID absences, so the remainder of this year for the defense will be fun to watch. Even with all the big plays the D gave up last Thursday, I'm guessing OSU exceeds the points and yards allowed by the Gophs in most games. We'll see.
 

I apologize for misunderstanding your original post.
o5m0tebtcll21.jpg
 

No need to apologize on this message board! We could argue nerd stats all day long, but my point in doing that was to argue your opinion that we haven't had a good D coordinator since Claeys. In my subjective opinion, Rossi showed his coaching chops by turning around an awful 2018 defense mid-season and following up with a very good 2019. Last year was terrible, especially early, with basically a new defense and COVID absences, so the remainder of this year for the defense will be fun to watch. Even with all the big plays the D gave up last Thursday, I'm guessing OSU exceeds the points and yards allowed by the Gophs in most games. We'll see.
I'll be honest FFOL, I didn't make the post that we hadn't had a good D coordinator since Claeys -- I just didn't think that '19 was clearly better than Claeys's defenses. I do like Rossi for his work in '18 and '19 -- additionally I think he's been a much better recruiter than Claeys was in terms of stars -- but Claeys's was able to find diamonds (along with Sawvel) which is something we haven't seen under Fleck.
 

40 yards per game matters -- but to what extent it matters is shown in the amount of points scored on our defense and how much more difficult it makes it for our offense in terms of field position.

I apologize for misunderstanding your original post. I didn't understand that the '19 defense being negligibly worse than some of Claeys's defenses, in terms of total defense, was an example of them being better.

40 yards per game less on defense, 40 yards worse field position through special teams equals roughly the same points allowed per game.
 

40 yards per game less on defense, 40 yards worse field position through special teams equals roughly the same points allowed per game.
Pardon me Poock, I don't exactly follow what you mean.
 

Pardon me Poock, I don't exactly follow what you mean.
Sorry was trying to point out the 40 yards less of defense still equates to the 22 points per game because the 2019 special teams likely cost us 40 yards of relative field position as compared to those Santoso teams. Thankfully it looks like we have improved in this department for 2021!
 



Sorry was trying to point out the 40 yards less of defense still equates to the 22 points per game because the 2019 special teams likely cost us 40 yards of relative field position as compared to those Santoso teams. Thankfully it looks like we have improved in this department for 2021!
TrickettThroughForThree
 

The receiving team on a kickoff has that extra play to make something happen. Why do we throw it away and wave it off?
 





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