BuckeyePlanet Fan Site on Saturday's Game

[dbaldrich1]

1940

Leidner is not the second best qb, you are cherry picking stats. His ypc is high because we mostly throw deep balls. Most other teams run a spread short pass offense. Cook is far superior and that's no knock on mitch. We don't need mitch to do anything other than be efficient and make good decisions.

No one is saying that Mitch is, literally, the 2nd best QB in the B1G. The OP was saying that an argument can be made that, based on stats from BIG games, Mitch performed the 2nd best of the BIG QB's. The QB on a given team can (and should) only do what is asked of him in the context of his team's offensive scheme. That means that Mitch needs to be efficient when we do throw (struggled early, getting better as the season progresses, nearly perfect against Iowa), make good decisions on the read option plays, and not turn the ball over. He's done that in our B1G games, for the most part, and so the OP makes a valid argument.

Another valid argument can be made that other QB's (Cook is one example) who are asked to throw more short passes AND more passes total in the context of their offense will have lower stats like YPC by nature of their scheme, which makes using the stats the OP chose a less than complete analysis. I tend to agree with this argument, even though I'm happy that Mitch seems to be hitting his stride as the season progresses.

Here's hoping that Mitch continues to improve, and takes another step forward in his maturity by stepping up and playing well in the biggest test of the year (so far) vs. tOSU this week. Before anyone jumps on me and points out that TCU is better than tOSU, I'm saying it's the biggest test of the year because of the context of the game and the implications to both team's seasons. There will definitely be more pressure on Mitch (and the team) this week than vs TCU, because losing takes us out of possible contention (however unlikely) for a playoff spot. If we were to win out from here we'd have one "bad" loss to ILL, a "good" loss to TCU, and wins vs five (5) top 25 teams (including the B1G championship vs tOSU or MSU) leading up to the playoffs. Even though it's possible that we still don't make the playoffs based on how other teams do, it's a very solid case the team will have made.

Go Gophers!

 

[cemba99]

When's the last time the Gophers beat Ohio State and Michigan in the same season?

Only happened once - 1940, a national championship year for us.

From an historical perspective however, this is a little deceiving. While we have played Michigan most years, not so much for Ohio State. They joined the Big Ten in 1913 and in their first 56 years in the conference we only played them 12 times - OSU winning 7, Gophers 5. So they managed to avoid most of our "glory days" with Bernie Biernman and Henry Williams. Even Murray Warmath (who coached MN for 18 years) did not play against the Buckeyes until his 12th year.

 

[upnorthkid]

As someone else pointed out this has no bearing on the West division title. We can lose Sat but if we beat Neb and Wisc we win the West

aware of that, but a W this weekend puts us one game up on one of them, and if that team slips up again (which considering we all are in the most challenging part of the sked, it's a distinct possibility) then we wouldn't necessarily have to beat them. Just saying gaining an extra game on someone this weekend would be huge although I know a loss doesn't kill us

 

[upnorthkid]

MSU asked Cook to win the game for them, instead of feeding Langford. How'd that work out? Mitch has made some great throws in the last month or so. I'm good with jaymil's assessment and perhaps after Saturday we may have to move ML7 up! lol

Never said it worked out. I like the gameplan we have. It keeps us in nearly every game. With our defense, it's how you should try to approach it. I don't really understand what Mich St's O coordinator was trying to do. It was like he felt he needed to get into a shootout (ring any bells of the Oregon game?) once they got down, despite that Mich St usually thrives on defensive stops which usually require a D being rested.

 

[upnorthkid]

I see what you are trying to get at but i think you are using the wrong QB to compare Mitch. McCarron was not a game manager and was in a totally different class than Mitch.

McCarron was better than Mitch is now by the end of his career, but I'm meaning at the same points in their career as now (ie when McCarron was a first time starter, not as a senior where he was asked to lead the team). That's my bad for not specifying.

 

[Spoofin]

The "one-dimensional" and "they can't pass" arguments are getting pretty old. Leidner has arguably been the 2nd best QB in the conference behind Barrett in big ten games. He's first in yards per pass attempt and 2nd in passer rating.

Just imagine what the Augustana QB could have done.