B1G Mailbag: Mitch Leidner and Minnesota QB Situation

Donate To GopherHole
Iceland12

Iceland12

Well-known member
Joined
Nov 12, 2008
Messages
24,758
Reaction score
2,421
Points
113
Sounds like Brian Bennett has been reading Gopherhole!

@BennettESPN Will the Gophers look at someone other then Leidner to start next season because of his surgery?

Brian Bennett: Ah, yes. Minnesota fans never stop asking when Mitch Leidner will stop being the team's quarterback. Well, his foot surgery shouldn't prevent him from being ready for the start of next season. And Leidner is coming off one of the best games of his career, when he was MVP of the Quick Lane Bowl against Central Michigan after going 24-for-30 for 223 yards and a touchdown, plus a rushing score, on one good foot. He also made some good throws that were dropped, including one that should have gone for a long touchdown.

So, yeah, I very much expect Leidner will be the Golden Gophers starting quarterback to begin 2016. His injury might be a blessing in disguise, as backups like Demry Croft can get some more work in this spring. But new offensive coordinator Jay Johnson needs to find ways to maximize Leidner's abilities in the fall.

http://espn.go.com/blog/bigten/post/_/id/129464/b1g-mailbag
 

Bennett: There are 239 days until the next Big Ten game -- Oregon State at Minnesota. We can make it if we band together.
 

ESPNs Bennett: Jay Johnson needs to find ways to maximize Leidner's abilities in fall

per Bennett's Q&A:

@BennettESPN Will the Gophers look at someone other then Leidner to start next season because of his surgery?

— Tom Graves (@tgravesII) January 6, 2016
Brian Bennett: Ah, yes. Minnesota fans never stop asking when Mitch Leidner will stop being the team's quarterback. Well, his foot surgery shouldn't prevent him from being ready for the start of next season. And Leidner is coming off one of the best games of his career, when he was MVP of the Quick Lane Bowl against Central Michigan after going 24-for-30 for 223 yards and a touchdown, plus a rushing score, on one good foot. He also made some good throws that were dropped, including one that should have gone for a long touchdown.

So, yeah, I very much expect Leidner will be the Golden Gophers starting quarterback to begin 2016. His injury might be a blessing in disguise, as backups like Demry Croft can get some more work in this spring. But new offensive coordinator Jay Johnson needs to find ways to maximize Leidner's abilities in the fall.

http://espn.go.com/blog/bigten/post/_/id/129464/b1g-mailbag

Go Gophers!!
 

New HC, new OC, and new QBC. The competition for QB is wide open. With Leidner out for spring practice all the others get to strut their stuff. It is going to be all about winning. Winning the right way.
 

I liked how he looked since Kill left. I was all for ousting Mitch earlier this season, now I'm willing to roll with him.
 


Make QB play good.

That's kinda the rule for all OCs...
 

Actually Leidner played pretty well when he was protected, I suspect that Coach Miller and the OL, will have a big role in Liedner's success.
 

There is so close to zero chance of Leidner not starting vs. Oregon State it's crazy.

Scenarios where he doesn't start:

1. Declares for the UFL and gets an agent before realizing it went out of business.
2. Abducted by aliens.
3. Arrested for a crime he didn't commit, he escapes and searches the country for the one armed man.
4. An accidental overdose of gamma radiation interacts with his unique body chemistry. And now, when Mitch Leidner grows angry or outraged, a startling metamorphosis occurs. NCAA declares this performance enhancing and bans him.
5. Goes on a bender in Fargo and forgets to show up to the game.
6. His foot surgery turns out to be installing a jetpack, which violates NCAA rules.
7. Demry Croft masters the force and can use it to avoid sacks and move the ball anywhere he wants. NCAA scared to ban because of claim of Religious Freedom...
 

Lakeville Goldy said:
There is so close to zero chance of Leidner not starting vs. Oregon State it's crazy.

Scenarios where he doesn't start:

1. Declares for the UFL and gets an agent before realizing it went out of business.
2. Abducted by aliens.
3. Arrested for a crime he didn't commit, he escapes and searches the country for the one armed man.
4. An accidental overdose of gamma radiation interacts with his unique body chemistry. And now, when Mitch Leidner grows angry or outraged, a startling metamorphosis occurs. NCAA declares this performance enhancing and bans him.
5. Goes on a bender in Fargo and forgets to show up to the game.
6. His foot surgery turns out to be installing a jetpack, which violates NCAA rules.
7. Demry Croft masters the force and can use it to avoid sacks and move the ball anywhere he wants. NCAA scared to ban because of claim of Religious Freedom...
Click to expand...

8. Dr. Evil kidnaps him & Demry Croft to guarantee that Scott Evil, I mean Seth Green starts.
 



Mitch Leidner could be 1st team All Big Ten and some on this board would come back believing that Demry Croft and Seth Green would have been Heisman Trophy candidates if they were on the field instead of Mitch.
 

IDFM said:
Mitch Leidner could be 1st team All Big Ten and some on this board would come back believing that Demry Croft and Seth Green would have been Heisman Trophy candidates if they were on the field instead of Mitch.
Click to expand...

Correct. And if he gets hurt in week one and there is a new starter in week 2, there will be demands for the new backup to be playing by week 2.5.
 

IDFM said:
Mitch Leidner could be 1st team All Big Ten and some on this board would come back believing that Demry Croft and Seth Green would have been Heisman Trophy candidates if they were on the field instead of Mitch.
Click to expand...

I duno, I think a lot of the calling for a change came around Kent St. and most of those calls were something akin to oh gawd just try something else calls.

Nobody knows how good the other guys are.
 

The Oline was the problem earlier in the season. Not Mitch. Unfortunately for us, next season we will have a whole new Oline so it may take them some time to jive...
 



nsmike said:
Actually Leidner played pretty well when he was protected, I suspect that Coach Miller and the OL, will have a big role in Liedner's success.
Click to expand...

Completely agree. The Oline will determine whether our QB is successful or not. Of course calling plays within the means of the QB helps too and I don't believe Limegrover was very good at that.
 

bottlebass said:
Completely agree. The Oline will determine whether our QB is successful or not. Of course calling plays within the means of the QB helps too and I don't believe Limegrover was very good at that.
Click to expand...

It's hard to imagine a scenario where next year our Oline plays worse and/or the play calling is worse. Play calling was never Limegrover's strength and our oline was bad this year (I realize a lot of that was due to injuries).

So if you look at it that way, we really can only improve in those 2 areas.
 

Word said:
It's hard to imagine a scenario where next year our Oline plays worse and/or the play calling is worse. Play calling was never Limegrover's strength and our oline was bad this year (I realize a lot of that was due to injuries).

So if you look at it that way, we really can only improve in those 2 areas.
Click to expand...

idk, there are a lot of unknowns on the Oline next year. I'd like to optimistic but usually it takes some time for the guys to play well together.
 

bottlebass said:
The Oline was the problem earlier in the season. Not Mitch. Unfortunately for us, next season we will have a whole new Oline so it may take them some time to jive...
Click to expand...

This process will go a lot smoother if they watch Airplane and pay attention.
 

Bottom line - everybody on the offensive staff has to be in sync. I get the sense that was one of the issues Claeys had - there were times when it looked like they weren't sure what type of offense they wanted to be. There has to be one vision for the offense, and everybody has to know their role.

And - that offense has to fit the available talent. Nothing worse than a coordinator who comes in with the idea of "We are running offense X," and refuses to accept that the players he inherited don't fit that offense.

But, assuming that Johnson can design a scheme that fits the talent, and all the players buy into that scheme, I could see this being a much more explosive attack next year. (assuming the O-line is solid).
 

short ornery norwegian said:
Bottom line - everybody on the offensive staff has to be in sync. I get the sense that was one of the issues Claeys had - there were times when it looked like they weren't sure what type of offense they wanted to be. There has to be one vision for the offense, and everybody has to know their role.

And - that offense has to fit the available talent. Nothing worse than a coordinator who comes in with the idea of "We are running offense X," and refuses to accept that the players he inherited don't fit that offense.

But, assuming that Johnson can design a scheme that fits the talent, and all the players buy into that scheme, I could see this being a much more explosive attack next year. (assuming the O-line is solid).
Click to expand...

I couldn't have said it better so I won't even try.
 

We can call the Jay Johnson Era Phase Two of the Kill/Claeys rebuilding.

I trust what Jerry Kill has said that year six brings better talent on paper to win a few more games.
 

short ornery norwegian said:
Bottom line - everybody on the offensive staff has to be in sync. I get the sense that was one of the issues Claeys had - there were times when it looked like they weren't sure what type of offense they wanted to be.
Click to expand...

This was an issue. They wanted to be very multiple - - attacking each opponent differently based on perceived weaknesses. The problem with that is you have to be very good at many different things to be prepared to attack many styles of defense, because one week you're throwing deep a ton, the next you're running zone 20 times, the next you're throwing short play action, the next you're running the fabled jet sweep, and on and on. At times, we've seen this succeed and the offensive staff looked like geniuses - - and defenses looked clueless. But more often than not, we've seen an offense that only had one plan coming into a game, and when that didn't work they had no primary identity to fall back on. They simply weren't good enough at any one thing to do that. JMHO.

Sent from my SM-G920P using Tapatalk
 

Big plus for the O-line, Mitch, new coaches and the D, they don't play TCU the first game.
 


It will be interesting to see how Leidner does with a different QB coach. If he can someone find consistency with good mechanics, avoid the head-scratching stretches of inaccuracies and develop some pocket presence then he could be poised to have a the best season a QB has had for us in a while. (assuming WR and OL are not train wrecks)

While he definitely turned a corner in the second half of this year, I remember him turning a corner in the Missouri game last year. That however, did not translate into a good first half of 2015. Hopefully next year is the year it clicks for him.
 


short ornery norwegian said:
Bottom line - everybody on the offensive staff has to be in sync. I get the sense that was one of the issues Claeys had - there were times when it looked like they weren't sure what type of offense they wanted to be. There has to be one vision for the offense, and everybody has to know their role.

And - that offense has to fit the available talent. Nothing worse than a coordinator who comes in with the idea of "We are running offense X," and refuses to accept that the players he inherited don't fit that offense.

But, assuming that Johnson can design a scheme that fits the talent, and all the players buy into that scheme, I could see this being a much more explosive attack next year. (assuming the O-line is solid).
Click to expand...

The reason most teams do that is because learning an offense isn't a one year thing. You introduce it before all the players are there who can effectively run it so that as the players come in, they can learn from the guys that were here, even if those guys weren't good at it. If you wait until the players are there, then all the players are learning it from scratch and even though you have the players it will take a while to master it and you lose even more time (and are probably fired by that time).

In this case I think there will be a lot of overlap from what they did last year to what they do next year. They will probably have some learning curve and growing pains, but it shouldn't be nearly as bad as the Brewster years where it was an entirely different offense each year.
 

gopher7 said:
It will be interesting to see how Leidner does with a different QB coach. If he can someone find consistency with good mechanics, avoid the head-scratching stretches of inaccuracies and develop some pocket presence then he could be poised to have a the best season a QB has had for us in a while. (assuming WR and OL are not train wrecks)

While he definitely turned a corner in the second half of this year, I remember him turning a corner in the Missouri game last year. That however, did not translate into a good first half of 2015. Hopefully next year is the year it clicks for him.
Click to expand...

It is kinda strange but I'm more interested to open the 16 season with Mitch than I was the 15. This past year I was dreading more derps.... next I'm kinda hopeful we can minimize them / see more Mitch like we saw toward the end of 15.
 

You must log in or register to reply here.



Top Bottom