Recent content by TwistingMyMelon

The 5-7 2023 team didn't get better as the season went on. They lost their last four games of the regular season and only one of them was close.

My feeling at this point is that we can rule out "good" but "OK" is still in play.

That's not for the whole season. That's roughly the average of the passing defense performance against the three power conference teams they played. I just did the numbers against those three teams (average of 290 passing yards given up with a 68% completion percentage). The averages are...

Yes, I'm surprised to see another generous spread given to the Gophers at this point of the season. The team hasn't covered the spread in any of the four games against FBS teams. I expect this spread to drop a bit before Saturday.

I assume you meant "wedding." I would be surprised if a Gopher fan skipped a game to do "weeding." But, yes, I agree with your decision to skip watching any parts of the game on replay.

Yes, I know about their schedule vs. ours but that's no guarantee of beating them head-to-head and, at this point, I'm far from certain that we'll get the 3 more wins to be bowl eligible. Schadenfreude against Wisconsin's misery isn't enough comfort for me.

Our kickers in the 2020 short year weren't reliable. We lost two games in overtime that year because of missed kicks - a field goal against Wisconsin and an extra point against Maryland. Trickett, in his first year (2021), only made 68% of his field goals. He was much better in his second year.

"We didn’t turn the ball over which is really positive for us." Who needs turnovers when you score touchdowns on 6 of your 9 possessions (not counting the final one with one play) and limit your opponent to 162 yards?

Well, we'll have a chance to see which one is worse in game 12. I'm not taking anything for granted at this point.

I don't see how anyone could dispute your first two sentences. As to your third sentence, I'd say that's conditional. For example, the best teachers, recruiters, and administrators in the world will not turn a lower tier state university into Stanford when it comes to academic appeal. There...

They've given up 22 points against three FBS teams (they had a shutout against the FCS team they played). That's an average of 7.3 per game which still is fantastic. The 9 points Ohio University scored was the most in one game.

Well, there are multiple raters who have taken a shot at ranking the Big Ten QBs. For the most part, Drake has been slightly below the league average in those ratings although one rater had him just in the top half. That's still darn good for a freshman. So, is Drake one of the very best...

Is that a rhetorical question? I would say all of them, so 18.

I don't think it would take 40 points to beat them because they've been pretty low scoring for such an elite team so far this year. The biggest problem has been scoring any appreciable amount of points against them. If you take out their game against an FCS team (a shutout against Grambling)...

Exactly. We know the kind of offense Fleck likes to have but we've now seen (last year with Max and this year with Drake) that he's willing to give up that preference when he realizes that's not likely to work with what he has available. We got punched in the face by CAL and OSU and Oregon are...