Chip Scoggins: What we’re hearing about improvement isn’t what we’re seeing

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BleedGopher

BleedGopher

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The notion that this season would be better was spoken but certainly wasn't backed up in two Big Ten failures.

The Gophers proudly proclaimed themselves an improved football team this season. At every chance, they trumpeted a bigger, faster, stronger refrain. Just you wait, they vowed, this year will be different.

Maybe they still believe that internally, but the proof is in the results, and that giddy 4-0 start looks more like fool's gold right now.

http://www.startribune.com/sports/gophers/174050361.html

Go Gophers!!
 


Well Chipper, we didn't even have fool's gold last year.
 

BleedGopher said:
The notion that this season would be better was spoken but certainly wasn't backed up in two Big Ten failures.

The Gophers proudly proclaimed themselves an improved football team this season. At every chance, they trumpeted a bigger, faster, stronger refrain. Just you wait, they vowed, this year will be different.

Maybe they still believe that internally, but the proof is in the results, and that giddy 4-0 start looks more like fool's gold right now.

http://www.startribune.com/sports/gophers/174050361.html

Go Gophers!!
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Right on the money. Gopher football teams have constantly touted themselves as being better than they really are over the years. I've gotten to the point where I stop listening whenever a gopher football player or coach starts talking about how much better the team is. About 99 percent of the time with this program, all it means is that these guys are good at flapping their gums.
 

Pretty much the truth. This team needs a healthy Gray. I did like what little we saw of Williams and a lot of what we saw of Kirkwood - and the defense shut out a high-scoring NW in the second half.
 


You people are so negative - this team is so much better than last year. We would not have beaten Syracuse last year.
 


Interesting article considering Minnesota has already won more games than the last two years. I fully believe the Gophers will equal or exceed their BT wins from last year.
 




Parski1 said:
You people are so negative - this team is so much better than last year. We would not have beaten Syracuse last year.
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We are better than last year (a little bit), but we beat them two years ago, so are you telling me we got worse last year compared to the previous year?
 



Well, he is correct that there were some issues, and he pointed those out in this article. But the title would make the reader assume that he does not see improvement in this team over last year. And if that is the case, he simply is not paying attention.

Also, he writes "The Gophers need Gray to operate their offense if they have any hope of preventing this season from circling the drain." On September 18th he writes an article discussing how great it would be if Gray and Shortell would split snaps? So which is it? It appears that he's just making it up as he goes along.
 




What happened to patience? Give it time folks, the foundation is being laid.
 

tikited said:
We are better than last year (a little bit), but we beat them two years ago, so are you telling me we got worse last year compared to the previous year?
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They beat Syracuse in 2009, when we were a bowl team.

I guess I'm not sure why people thought this team would leap from back to back 3-9, to suddenly being this deep squad that can overcome any injuries to key cogs in their lineup (Gray, Olson, Shabazz, etc.) and just move on and keep beating on teams. I know the errors are frustrating, but guess what, even though you don't like to hear it, it's pretty typical of young, unpolished, squads to crap on themselves.

Year 2 of a rebuilding project as complicated as ours isn't gonna yield the smooth, polished results that we would like to see, you're gonna see bumps in the road, they're gonna frustrate you. If a few weeks down the line, we're healthier, and we're still seeing a lot of miscues out there, it's more concerning, but at this point, we're not even halfway done yet, and we're only a quarter into the conference season.
 

Monty519 said:
They beat Syracuse in 2009, when we were a bowl team.

I guess I'm not sure why people thought this team would leap from back to back 3-9, to suddenly being this deep squad that can overcome any injuries to key cogs in their lineup (Gray, Olson, Shabazz, etc.) and just move on and keep beating on teams. I know the errors are frustrating, but guess what, even though you don't like to hear it, it's pretty typical of young, unpolished, squads to crap on themselves.

Year 2 of a rebuilding project as complicated as ours isn't gonna yield the smooth, polished results that we would like to see, you're gonna see bumps in the road, they're gonna frustrate you. If a few weeks down the line, we're healthier, and we're still seeing a lot of miscues out there, it's more concerning, but at this point, we're not even halfway done yet, and we're only a quarter into the conference season.
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Oops. Off by a year, but the point is the same-it's stupid to think we couldn't have beaten Syracuse last year.

I'm frustrated-you are correct. Biggest thing today was the play calling imo. Same thing all year really. Guess I'm not sold on Mr. Limegrover.
 

mkAz said:
What happened to patience? Give it time folks, the foundation is being laid.
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It's hard to have patience forever, we were told the same thing under the past regime. I'm not comparing the two, and Kill deserves his own timeline, but that's where the frustration comes in. It seems that the Gophers are "Forever Young." After the 2008 class, we were told, "Wait until these guys are juniors and seniors." We've seen the fruit of that the last two years, and all we can do is hope this time it really will be different.
 

tikited said:
Oops. Off by a year, but the point is the same-it's stupid to think we couldn't have beaten Syracuse last year.

I'm frustrated-you are correct. Biggest thing today was the play calling imo. Same thing all year really. Guess I'm not sold on Mr. Limegrover.
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I thought the play calling was fine, it's difficult when you can't execute.
 

Big Ten wins have went 0,3,3,2,2 the past 5 years. Coach Brewster was on the hot seat after 2 consecutive 3 win seasons in his second and third years on the job...why should Jerry Kill get longer? We're just two games in to Coach Kill's second Big Ten season, but 2 Big Ten wins this season would not represent progress and fewer than 2 wins would represent regression.
 

EG#9 said:
Big Ten wins have went 0,3,3,2,2 the past 5 years. Coach Brewster was on the hot seat after 2 consecutive 3 win seasons in his second and third years on the job...why should Jerry Kill get longer? We're just two games in to Coach Kill's second Big Ten season, but 2 Big Ten wins this season would not represent progress and fewer than 2 wins would represent regression.
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Because Brewster took a team that was winning 6-8 games per year and led them to 1 win his first season. Jerry Kill inherited a team that was losing to NDSU and South Dakota and the like...
 

EG#9 said:
Big Ten wins have went 0,3,3,2,2 the past 5 years. Coach Brewster was on the hot seat after 2 consecutive 3 win seasons in his second and third years on the job...why should Jerry Kill get longer? We're just two games in to Coach Kill's second Big Ten season, but 2 Big Ten wins this season would not represent progress and fewer than 2 wins would represent regression.
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Stop with the logic!
 

EG#9 said:
Big Ten wins have went 0,3,3,2,2 the past 5 years. Coach Brewster was on the hot seat after 2 consecutive 3 win seasons in his second and third years on the job...why should Jerry Kill get longer? We're just two games in to Coach Kill's second Big Ten season, but 2 Big Ten wins this season would not represent progress and fewer than 2 wins would represent regression.
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Well, maybe at least wait till then......
 

John Galt said:
Because Brewster took a team that was winning 6-8 games per year and led them to 1 win his first season. Jerry Kill inherited a team that was losing to NDSU and South Dakota and the like...
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Not entirely true. Mason had us barely beating the teams mentioned and left Brewster nothing to work with. No excuses for Brewster, but Kill should not get any special treatment imo.

From previous post: So you liked the passing on 3rd and 1? I just haven't been impressed by the O play calling at all since the new guys took over. Doesn't mean they all should be fired, but I'm certainly not impressed.
 

EG#9 said:
Big Ten wins have went 0,3,3,2,2 the past 5 years. Coach Brewster was on the hot seat after 2 consecutive 3 win seasons in his second and third years on the job...why should Jerry Kill get longer? We're just two games in to Coach Kill's second Big Ten season, but 2 Big Ten wins this season would not represent progress and fewer than 2 wins would represent regression.
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I don't think Kill should, or really will, get "longer", but chances are, if he makes a bowl this year and next, he won't have as many enemies as Brew just due to the way he carries himself, which does matter. But if does do that, and then in Year 4, fields a team that rivals his first year here in how bad they are, I think he will be justifiably on his way out after Year 4, or maybe will be given that 5th year to regroup pending how it ends.

The assumption is, we won't see that Year 4 collapse under Kill like we did with Brewster, simply cause of his track record, and also cause of the continuity on his staff.
 

tikited said:
Not entirely true. Mason had us barely beating the teams mentioned and left Brewster nothing to work with. No excuses for Brewster, but Kill should not get any special treatment imo.

From previous post: So you liked the passing on 3rd and 1? I just haven't been impressed by the O play calling at all since the new guys took over. Doesn't mean they all should be fired, but I'm certainly not impressed.
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It was a rather odd call but:
1. If we complete a long pass there because everyone thought we'd run, we'd all think it was a great call. It certainly was a risky call that didn't pay off.
2. You can probably pick and choose plays you don't like in every game ever played.

I'm not saying he's perfect or anything, but we missed a lot of open receivers and had several drives stopped by fumbles. Overall, we had five drives of 9 plays or longer.
 

I mentioned in another thread, I thought it was a winnable game. It's really frustrating, but starting to whack people never even entered my thinking yet. The guy deserves some time.
 

Monty519 said:
I don't think Kill should, or really will, get "longer", but chances are, if he makes a bowl this year and next, he won't have as many enemies as Brew just due to the way he carries himself, which does matter. But if does do that, and then in Year 4, fields a team that rivals his first year here in how bad they are, I think he will be justifiably on his way out after Year 4, or maybe will be given that 5th year to regroup pending how it ends.

The assumption is, we won't see that Year 4 collapse under Kill like we did with Brewster, simply cause of his track record, and also cause of the continuity on his staff.
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Don't forget he has a seven year contract.
 

tikited said:
Not entirely true. Mason had us barely beating the teams mentioned and left Brewster nothing to work with. No excuses for Brewster, but Kill should not get any special treatment imo.

From previous post: So you liked the passing on 3rd and 1? I just haven't been impressed by the O play calling at all since the new guys took over. Doesn't mean they all should be fired, but I'm certainly not impressed.
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I'm far from a Mason apologist and don't think he left Brewster a lot, but the fact is that every year from 1999-2006 we won at least 6 games. Brewster took that foundation, put in a spread offense, and led us to the single worst season in Gopher history and what ESPN recently ranked as the worst team in the history of the Big Ten. 2010 was on pace to equal it, until Horton helped change things at the end.

Today's loss was disappointing in part because we all still think of Northwestern as the weak team that they had been for so long, but the fact is they have been to bowl games the last 6 years and were 4-1 coming into today's game. It's not like we lost to a team that was 1-4. I'm not making excuses, we need to start winning these type of games soon, but let the season play out before we have conversations regarding Kill's long-term status.
 

tikited said:
... but the point is the same-it's stupid to think we couldn't have beaten Syracuse last year.
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I have watched an awful lot of football for decades and in the first half of last year the Gophers played some of the worst football I have ever seen. It was certainly the worst Gopher football I have seen in my almost 30 years of watching. Worse than Brewster's one win season. There is no chance they could have beaten Syracuse last year. None. Nada.
 

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