1500's Nate Sandell: Stretch run critical in gauging Gophers' long-term success

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I thought it was a decent article but I think sometimes people take the easy way out when evaluating our team.

He points out TO and penalties and those are two of the issues where we are in the middle of the road in the Big 10. 5 teams in the Big 10 have as many or more TOs as the Gophs and they aren't good but not egregiously bad in the penalty department.

Our biggest issue is our inability to create a TO (we are deadlast by a wide margain). We've forced 4 TO, the next closest teams in the Big 10 have forced 9.

There also seems to be a hint that what we see our of this team will be some indication of how good they will be in a few years. I don't really buy that. Some terrefic coaches have been god awful in their first few years. It sucks, but it's true.
 

I firmly believe over the next several weeks, and the last 3 games in particular, that we're going to see a LOT fewer players playing than what we've seen so far. They've been playing dozens of guys, especially on defense, to see who CAN play and who WANTS to play. To me, that also explains a lot of the mental mistakes, penalties, etc. Too many guys playing who quite frankly may not be on the roster next year, or at the very least will be sitting on the bench.

I think the cream will rise to the top, at least to an extent, from the beginning of the BT slate up through a few weeks from now and we hopefully will see more of a core group of guys playing more of the snaps in the last couple games.

I can't wait to see how it shakes out.

The Turnover situation and the sack situation are just mind-boggling. That's the one thing that is just tough to figure out. Usually you get a number of TO's just from the opposing team being generous, without even being forced. Likewise with sacks; it's difficult NOT to have gotten more sacks than they have up to this point. Doesn't help having a couple of freshmen at the DE spot but that doesn't come close to accounting for all of the issues.
 

Ogee Oglethorpe said:
I firmly believe over the next several weeks, and the last 3 games in particular, that we're going to see a LOT fewer players playing than what we've seen so far. They've been playing dozens of guys, especially on defense, to see who CAN play and who WANTS to play. To me, that also explains a lot of the mental mistakes, penalties, etc. Too many guys playing who quite frankly may not be on the roster next year, or at the very least will be sitting on the bench.

I think the cream will rise to the top, at least to an extent, from the beginning of the BT slate up through a few weeks from now and we hopefully will see more of a core group of guys playing more of the snaps in the last couple games.

I can't wait to see how it shakes out.

The Turnover situation and the sack situation are just mind-boggling. That's the one thing that is just tough to figure out. Usually you get a number of TO's just from the opposing team being generous, without even being forced. Likewise with sacks; it's difficult NOT to have gotten more sacks than they have up to this point. Doesn't help having a couple of freshmen at the DE spot but that doesn't come close to accounting for all of the issues.
Click to expand...

Yeah Ogee, the TO thing is mind boggling. As ugly as we've been all around, our inability to get pressure on the QB and to force TOs is still a problem of almost historic proportions.

Some of those kind of go hand-in-hand though, it's hard to get a QB without any pressure on him, against a bad secondary to throw the ball to the opposing team. Our lack of a pass rush almost makes it the only way we can get a TO is from stripping the football from a runner or receiver.

I see some light at the end of that tunnel with Ben PErry, Amaefula, (hopefully) Cockran and Hageman and our young DBs who have impressed in very limited duty (Thompson, Wells, i'll even thrown Vereen in there (he's only a SO)
 


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