A little bulletin-board material, courtesy of NW blog

Donate To GopherHole
Gopher07

Gopher07

Captain of Awesome
Joined
Nov 20, 2008
Messages
9,008
Reaction score
15
Points
38
http://www.insidenu.com/2014/10/7/6938649/minnesota-is-not-as-good-as-youve-heard

It's come to my attention that we have not yet reached the point in the season when Minnesota gets its reality check. Credit the Gophers, who have gone from dreadful to mediocre, for prolonging that point in the year, and credit the schedule makers who got them to 4-1.

But unfortunately for the Gophers, they're still, well, the Gophers. Not because they're bound to mediocrity just because of who they are, but because when we look deeper inside the statistics they're being praised for, there isn't always a whole lot of substance to back that praise up. The defense is good — possibly even elite — but the offense is bad, and it's even worse than people are making it out to be.
Click to expand...
 


If we truly have gone from dreadful to mediocre as the blogger suggests, this game should be no problem.
 




wait!what? said:
what part of the clip do you disagree with?
Click to expand...

I don't think I said I disagreed with any of it (though generally there's a shot there about going from dreadful to mediocre - I'd argue a team that is 8-10 in their last 18 B1G games isn't so much dreadful as it is pretty much average). The stats are the stats, we'll see which hold true come Saturday.
 


I would be surprised if we didn't rush for over 200 yards this weekend. I'm not real worried about Northwestern despite them winning two straight. Watching them against Wisconsin it was more Wisconsin mistakes and play calling that allowed Northwestern to win that game. Even if our offense struggles I think our defense can create some turnovers and really control their offense that seems to be lacking playmakers.
 

Gopher07 said:
I don't think I said I disagreed with any of it (though generally there's a shot there about going from dreadful to mediocre - I'd argue a team that is 8-10 in their last 18 B1G games isn't so much dreadful as it is pretty much average). The stats are the stats, we'll see which hold true come Saturday.
Click to expand...

The stats game is fun. vs. CA: NW offense put up 354 yds .... lowly bottom dweller WSU puts up 812 on the same D? Jackson may be a force, but stop him and NW stinks up the place.
 



HAHA. The NW guys make me laugh. They tout there defense which gave up a bunch of yards to Wisky (Melvin Gordon) on the ground, essentially eluding to their "run-stopping" ability as to why they won. But, somehow ignore the LARGE turnover margin in that game of +4 for NW. Even with that large TO margin, they won by 6. "Only Six?!" you might say. I would say, "Yes, six". Excuse me while I give there D a round of applause. :rolleyes:
 

I love internet smack talk. That is why I am the Head Referee of Pissing Contests.
 

e.bigelow said:
HAHA. The NW guys make me laugh. They tout there defense which gave up a bunch of yards to Wisky (Melvin Gordon) on the ground, essentially eluding to their "run-stopping" ability as to why they won. But, somehow ignore the LARGE turnover margin in that game of +4 for NW. Even with that large TO margin, they won by 6. "Only Six?!" you might say. I would say, "Yes, six". Excuse me while I give there D a round of applause. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...
Well, to be fair NW was playing in front of a hostile crowd.
 




"I'm still riding high from beating Wisconsin by receiving the ball gift wrapped from perfectly executed arm punts! Now how do I get psyched about the next game and convince myself that the Gophers are inferior because they are the Gophers? OH YEAH, put some numbers together to prove my stout run D is allowed to give up 250+ yards rushing, package 50% of those yards up in a black hole so they never happened, and be considered great! Elite even! And then look at one or two stats that might correlate to my thought process after slamming a few victory beers! Ha, you had the fewest Yards/Attempt against TCU! You guys suck!"

Yeah, because ignoring that we essentially abandoned the run game because we were down early and were forced into pass attempts and thus 5 TOs. Ignoring how the games were played at all is really an effective way to evaluate a team. I really hope Fitz has the same approach.

Be my guest. Ignore that we run misdirection, screens, jet sweeps, throw to Maxxxxx, Bootlegs, read options, and shift and motions. Go ahead and focus on the RUTM and allow Cobb/Berkley et al get to the edge. Ignore our LBs, run D, pass rush, and secondary. Take away all those elements so you can play to your narrative. That sounds like a great game plan.

Penn State has never looked to be a consistently stable team this year. Wisconsin had 4 arm punts. Why they don't hand the ball to Gordon on 1st and Goal is beyond me. That is why you won.
 

I think our coaching staff is very comfortable with averaging 4-5 yards per carry to control the clock and reduce the number of plays our defense is on the field for. So should we thank Mr. Trahan for confirm our coaches' strategy?
 

Getting 4 takeaways is part of being a good defense. If we picked a guy off 4 times we'd be touting our secondary and rightfully so.

I agree that the picks were partially bad decisions by McEvoy / Stave but we can't completely discount them. We can feel confident that we won't be -4 in the TO battle, and use that to bolster our opinion that we'll win this weekend, but still have to give NU defense some credit.
 

It's funny how they can lose a couple of Rose Bowl games and think they're something special while at the same time conveniently forget about their 34-game losing streak. Let them think their wins against Pedophile State U and the skunks meant something. Come Saturday, reality will set in and things will be back to normal in Evanston like it was the first two or three games of this season.

Go Gophers!
 

MNGoldenGophers1 said:
It's funny how they can lose a couple of Rose Bowl games and think they're something special while at the same time conveniently forget about their 34-game losing streak. Let them think their wins against Pedophile State U and the skunks meant something. Come Saturday, reality will set in and things will be back to normal in Evanston like it was the first two or three games of this season.
Click to expand...

Wild guess...if Minnesota had three big ten titles in the last 20 years, we'd conveniently forget about things like 84-13.

Unfortunately....back to normal in Evanston has recently meant a Wildcat win in Minneapolis.

To try and paint Northwestern fans as arrogant is pretty ridiculous.
 

Pretty sure TCU was a reality check.
 

Or we could just win and move on to the next game... The Gophers should be NW no problem. They likely will come out rusty after the bye week. But this team is better than last year's team.
 

#GnawEmDown said:
Or we could just win and move on to the next game... The Gophers should be NW no problem. They likely will come out rusty after the bye week. But this team is better than last year's team.
Click to expand...

Amazing. TCU had a bye week to prepare for us. We come off a bye week and will likely be rusty. Good grief!!!
 

We're not TCU... and we handed TCU that game early. I don't expect the Gophers to win by 40 if that's what you were going for
 


I expect this to be a slow moving, maybe even boring game, we'll be back to running every 1st and 2nd down, doing our best not to turn the ball over, and forcing NW to beat us with their offense. We probably win the game 20 - 10. We'll have a bunch of yards on the ground, and they'll struggle to get much going on offense.

The game is 13-7 at halftime, and the 2nd half is a total snooze fest.
 

Northwestern shouldn't be doing any talking after last year's flop of a season. Absolute joke that they got College Gameday to come to campus.
 



Dr.Don said:
Amazing. TCU had a bye week to prepare for us. We come off a bye week and will likely be rusty. Good grief!!!
Click to expand...

I have no stats to back this up, but I do seem to remember the Gophers being very rusty for the first quarter or two after a bye in the past few years. Does anyone else have any similar memories?
 

"It's come to my attention that we have not yet reached the point in the season when Minnesota gets its reality check. Credit the Gophers, who have gone from dreadful to mediocre, for prolonging that point in the year, and credit the schedule makers who got them to 4-1.

But unfortunately for the Gophers, they're still, well, the Gophers. Not because they're bound to mediocrity just because of who they are, but because when we look deeper inside the statistics they're being praised for, there isn't always a whole lot of substance to back that praise up."
*************************************************
One can very easily replace the Mildcat's for the Gopher's in this statement: "But unfortunately for the Gophers (Mildcat's), they're still, well, the Gopher's (Mildcat's). Not
because they're bound to mediocrity just because of who they are, ........

This game Saturday is basically a game for some early season respect and to determine if either team has the makings to be in contention for the West title come the last weekend in November. I still maintain that the Huskers, Becky and yes, even the Hogeyes, have a better chance to be there than either us or the Mildcats
 

Gopher07 said:
http://www.insidenu.com/2014/10/7/6938649/minnesota-is-not-as-good-as-youve-heard
Click to expand...

However, TCU was up 24-0 at halftime of that game and pretty much laid down.
Click to expand...

Translation: "I didn't actually watch the game but when a team puts up a lot of points early on and then doesn't score much like that, it must mean the offense stopped trying."

Of course that didn't happen. TCU may have not have been as aggressive in the second half, but they certainly didn't become conservative. They still passed the ball 59% of the time and only handed the ball off to a RB seven times in the second half. They still essentially ran their offense. We just played better in the second half and didn't give them a lot of short fields like in the first half. I remember being a little surprised at how aggressive they still were late in the game.
 

You must log in or register to reply here.



Top Bottom