Connor Mayes

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diehard said:
He has dropped the 40 pounds from his junior year of HS football. His baby face is gone and he has developed a hungry game face. They say he looks great in SA!

The very best HS RBs should be fighting to come here and play behind the OL we are developing. OL is the slowest part of a team to develop. We are a work in progress. We have the parts.
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Yep. I agree. The OL has much to do to be better. Progress is debatable. Yards per play was terrible with 2/3rds of teams have a better yard per play average.

I hope Connor can help turn the line around. He, alone, can not change the chemistry of the line enough. Jerry Kill needs to recruit more great recruits to make it happen.
 

Love this kid. He is out there representing the U and has never played a down at TCF. I'm glad he picked us.
 

Dean S said:
Progress is debatable.
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Ummm....what? I think reasonable people can disagree on exactly how far along the line is, but to imply that there may not have been progress when we just had our best year running the ball (easily) since the Mason years....
 

Back on topic.... The Gophers are very lucky to have such a great player and ambassador for our program. Puppy Loves is already one of my top 10 Gophers.
 


fryguy22 said:
Ummm....what? I think reasonable people can disagree on exactly how far along the line is, but to imply that there may not have been progress when we just had our best year running the ball (easily) since the Mason years....
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1500 less yards of offense does not make the offensive line fabulous and comparable to the Mason years. Yeah, they are comparable to the train wreck of the Brewster years, but that is nothing to brag about. The line has a long way to go to be even considered good. The way people think of success does matter. Low benchmarks and low expectations seem to be the norm around GH. Why be that way! Grade the line the way a line should be graded, by how the best lines perform. Comparing the offensive line by a small arbitrary recent group with a small sample size is not the way to go through life.

The current group gets a C grade.
 

Dean S said:
1500 less yards of offense does not make the offensive line fabulous and comparable to the Mason years. Yeah, they are comparable to the train wreck of the Brewster years, but that is nothing to brag about. The line has a long way to go to be even considered good. The way people think of success does matter. Low benchmarks and low expectations seem to be the norm around GH. Why be that way! Grade the line the way a line should be graded, by how the best lines perform. Comparing the offensive line by a small arbitrary recent group with a small sample size is not the way to go through life.

The current group gets a C grade.
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Comparable to Brewster? You can not be serious. You're funny Dean.
 

cjcarter8 said:
Comparable to Brewster? You can not be serious. You're funny Dean.
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Yes. I am serious. Maybe I grade out tougher than you. Maybe I have higher standards than to give this current group a better score. They are not filled with award winners along the line. They haven't beat out anybody to any degree. Show me how this current group is in any way better than the group with Hamilton or Setterstrom?
 

Dean S said:
1500 less yards of offense does not make the offensive line fabulous and comparable to the Mason years. Yeah, they are comparable to the train wreck of the Brewster years, but that is nothing to brag about. The line has a long way to go to be even considered good. The way people think of success does matter. Low benchmarks and low expectations seem to be the norm around GH. Why be that way! Grade the line the way a line should be graded, by how the best lines perform. Comparing the offensive line by a small arbitrary recent group with a small sample size is not the way to go through life.

The current group gets a C grade.
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I'm not sure you understand what "progress" means. No one said they were a great group or anything. I'm not sure how anyone could say they didn't get better this year compared to the last two years. And if they got better, then that is progress. Nothing more, nothing less.
 



Dean S said:
Yes. I am serious. Maybe I grade out tougher than you. Maybe I have higher standards than to give this current group a better score. They are not filled with award winners along the line. They haven't beat out anybody to any degree. Show me how this current group is in any way better than the group with Hamilton or Setterstrom?
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No one said they had individuals on par with those two. Mason definitely put together good OLs.

This edition of the Gophers ran for about 2500 yards.

Brewsters best year running the ball the team ended with right around 1900 yards. That was in his first year when the Gophers ran the Dunbar spread. His next best was about 1600 and that was the year he was fired. His other two years were less than 1400 yards.

Total yardage in the Brewster era is deceiving as he had a habit of leaving his starters in blowouts against the opponents 3rd string defense.

Finally Brewster's OLs were usually overweight, slow and often times got manhandled. This year's OL wasnt often manhandled. One could say they struggled against Iowa and had a hard time picking up the Syracuse blitz but they never looked completely overmatched.

So in review the Gophers don't have an OL on par with either of Eslinger or Setterstrom but they are light years ahead of the Brewster years.
 

GophersInIowa said:
I'm not sure you understand what "progress" means. No one said they were a great group or anything. I'm not sure how anyone could say they didn't get better this year compared to the last two years. And if they got better, then that is progress. Nothing more, nothing less.
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Thanks, that was my exact point as well which seemed to go over Dean's head
 

fryguy22 said:
Thanks, that was my exact point as well which seemed to go over Dean's head
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300 more yards than last year is so small as to be insignificant. Being ranked 12th as a pass unit is where you bury your heads in the sand. I could care less if we gained more yards and still ended up 12th. Being 12th is not improvement. It is being static, not dynamic. I could care less that we gained more yards on the ground if we had no better attack than 4 years ago. The difference is 100 yards more now than then. Spin your head on that statistic and tell me that we are an improved offensive line. The difference is insignificant.

Brewsters 1st year as coach, the offense put together 4890 yards of offense. This year, Kills third, with one extra game had 4463 yards of offense. The deficit is substantial and I get it. This offensive line produced less than the 1-11 of Tim Brewster's first year. Put that in your hat and mull that factoid over for a while. Don't tell me this unit is an improvement. The facts don't give that position any merit.
 

Dean S said:
300 more yards than last year is so small as to be insignificant. Being ranked 12th as a pass unit is where you bury your heads in the sand. I could care less if we gained more yards and still ended up 12th. Being 12th is not improvement. It is being static, not dynamic. I could care less that we gained more yards on the ground if we had no better attack than 4 years ago. The difference is 100 yards more now than then. Spin your head on that statistic and tell me that we are an improved offensive line. The difference is insignificant.

Brewsters 1st year as coach, the offense put together 4890 yards of offense. This year, Kills third, with one extra game had 4463 yards of offense. The deficit is substantial and I get it. This offensive line produced less than the 1-11 of Tim Brewster's first year. Put that in your hat and mull that factoid over for a while. Don't tell me this unit is an improvement. The facts don't give that position any merit.
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The line play isn't the reason for the bad passing stats. I already addressed all these points. You keep cherry picking stats to prove poor line play but the stats you choose aren't an indicator of the lines success or failures. There is a litany of reasons that this year's Gophers weren't as prolific as the first year under Brewster but you'll have to look way down the list to find OL.
 



cjcarter8 said:
The line play isn't the reason for the bad passing stats. I already addressed all these points. You keep cherry picking stats to prove poor line play but the stats you choose aren't an indicator of the lines success or failures. There is a litany of reasons that this year's Gophers weren't as prolific as the first year under Brewster but you'll have to look way down the list to find OL.
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This is a bald faced lie. I cherry picked nothing. Instead of refuting the stats, you picked to attack the messenger. Nice try. Big fail on your part. Instead of waiting for my retort, why didn't you just give the litany of reasons why I was wrong. Let's be academic about this and put it into the form of a hypothesis. Is this line empirically better Brewsters first year line? I'll sit back and read. If my hypothesis is wrong, it should become self evident. Fire away big guy.
 

Take your pissing match somewhere else. Get back on topic.
 

Let's look at practice v game. In practice, Nelson hits most of his receivers when no opposition line is present. Reason: everybody is in the correct position. In game experience, less than 50% of passes are successful. Why? The offensive line was not able to defeat the defensive line. Now, I am greatly simplifying this to show that the QB is not responsible for most of the depreciated play of the game. Most is due to other factors. The job of the offensive line and receivers is to defeat those factors. When a known number of plays the receivers are in open positions, we know that missed balls are mostly the fault of the OL not defeating their men. So, we can deduce that a certain number of plays called X are only the responsibility of the OL not defeating and taking it in the chin. That X factor is what has concerned this board for years, including this year. Giving the line a good grade is like giving everybody a trophy for suiting up.

I don't have individual stats in front of me for assignment success in passing plays, but I would bet they were less than stellar compared to better years in the passing department. This years rank in passing in the NCAA was so bad it ranked in the hundred plus rank.

I hope Connor is absolutely stellar at it. But, because we have so few recruits along the line, and because the line takes so long to train, I don't think he, with one other recruit on the line, is going to make a significant difference. We need Ragnow or a Ragnow quality recruit to make long term improvement a remote possibility.
 


Dean S said:
This is a bald faced lie. I cherry picked nothing. Instead of refuting the stats, you picked to attack the messenger. Nice try. Big fail on your part. Instead of waiting for my retort, why didn't you just give the litany of reasons why I was wrong. Let's be academic about this and put it into the form of a hypothesis. Is this line empirically better Brewsters first year line? I'll sit back and read. If my hypothesis is wrong, it should become self evident. Fire away big guy.
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Ok. I never attacked you. I agreed that the offense did not gain as many yards as Brewster's first year. Where we diverge is the reason for such deficit in total yardage for the current installment of the Gopher offense. I'll keep it simple. The OL did not attempt a single pass this year or did they make a single reception. The QBs alternating between launching rockets into the stands and pounding bounce passes into the turf in tandem with the receivers dropping their fair share of the accurately thrown footballs is far more responsible.

Total yardage from a 1-11 Brewster team needs to be taken with a grain of salt as they were behind in every ball game trying to run as many plays as possible in an attempt to make a feverish comeback often times against 3rd string defenses. Brewster had a propensity to leave starters in the whole game regardless of the score thus racking up statistics in "garbage" time.

This year the offensive line was by far the most consistent position group for the Gopher's offense and adding players like Connor Mayes will only make the unit better.

By the way I like this year's record way better than the one from the season you keep referring to.
 

Dean S said:
Let's look at practice v game. In practice, Nelson hits most of his receivers when no opposition line is present. Reason: everybody is in the correct position. In game experience, less than 50% of passes are successful. Why? The offensive line was not able to defeat the defensive line. Now, I am greatly simplifying this to show that the QB is not responsible for most of the depreciated play of the game. Most is due to other factors. The job of the offensive line and receivers is to defeat those factors. When a known number of plays the receivers are in open positions, we know that missed balls are mostly the fault of the OL not defeating their men. So, we can deduce that a certain number of plays called X are only the responsibility of the OL not defeating and taking it in the chin. That X factor is what has concerned this board for years, including this year. Giving the line a good grade is like giving everybody a trophy for suiting up.

I don't have individual stats in front of me for assignment success in passing plays, but I would bet they were less than stellar compared to better years in the passing department. This years rank in passing in the NCAA was so bad it ranked in the hundred plus rank.

I hope Connor is absolutely stellar at it. But, because we have so few recruits along the line, and because the line takes so long to train, I don't think he, with one other recruit on the line, is going to make a significant difference. We need Ragnow or a Ragnow quality recruit to make long term improvement a remote possibility.
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Do I need to find the link to Allen Iverson's famous press conference?
 

Dean S said:
300 more yards than last year is so small as to be insignificant. Being ranked 12th as a pass unit is where you bury your heads in the sand. I could care less if we gained more yards and still ended up 12th. Being 12th is not improvement. It is being static, not dynamic. I could care less that we gained more yards on the ground if we had no better attack than 4 years ago. The difference is 100 yards more now than then. Spin your head on that statistic and tell me that we are an improved offensive line. The difference is insignificant.

Brewsters 1st year as coach, the offense put together 4890 yards of offense. This year, Kills third, with one extra game had 4463 yards of offense. The deficit is substantial and I get it. This offensive line produced less than the 1-11 of Tim Brewster's first year. Put that in your hat and mull that factoid over for a while. Don't tell me this unit is an improvement. The facts don't give that position any merit.
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This is all academic since the only column that matters is the win-lose column. Wins are wins regardless of whether they are statistically pleasant to look at. You are too flipping far down in the weeds here, from my perspective. Its a long wait until Sept 2014; try to not wear yourself out.

Sent from my ADR6350 using Tapatalk 2
 

MDGopherFan said:
This is all academic since the only column that matters is the win-lose column. Wins are wins regardless of whether they are statistically pleasant to look at. You are too flipping far down in the weeds here, from my perspective. Its a long wait until Sept 2014; try to not wear yourself out.

Sent from my ADR6350 using Tapatalk 2
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Too lazy to read the whole pissing match, but I would think we can all agree our offense needs to improve a lot if we want to win 8 games again. The offensive line is a big part of that. Mayes had a lot of really good offers, one of our best looking recruits under Kill. So I'm hoping he'll be really solid in 3-4 years...
 

I haven't looked, but it seems like we had much greater time of possession this year than in years past. I wouldn't think that is possible under a poor offensive line.
 

Dean S said:
Maybe I grade out tougher than you. Maybe I have higher standards than to give this current group a better score.
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How are you able to accurately grade oline play without knowing the play calls and what is your standard for scoring oline play?

The oline needs to continue to improve just like every other position group on this team, but their development this year to a solid B1G oline is obvious.

I am excited about Connor coming to the gophers. He should be a good player down the road.
 

Dean S said:
Just ban me.
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I can't ban you, but can block you. Done.

BTW - when you discover that everyone else in a room disagrees with you it is polite to just stop. Likely you are wrong, but even if you aren't it makes you look silly to continue spewing. I dropped my DCT posts months ago for the same reason. Let it go.
 

All I know is that he wants to play for Kill and he wants to be a Golden Gopher and he is one of the best offensive linemen in the country. WELCOME to the family Connor!!

He has great feet and balance and a great family who loves Coach Kill and what they are doing here in Minnesota!! He wants to improve and do great things here!!!!!

Brick by brick!! You build a program with strong offensive and defensive lineman, they are the foundation of a program and a way to win ballgames!! If you have time to throw thank the line!!! If you have big holes to run through thank a line man!!!
 

Sparlimb said:
Too lazy to read the whole pissing match, but I would think we can all agree our offense needs to improve a lot if we want to win 8 games again. The offensive line is a big part of that. Mayes had a lot of really good offers, one of our best looking recruits under Kill. So I'm hoping he'll be really solid in 3-4 years...
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Not too lazy...the pissing match is to tiresome to bother...

Sent from my ADR6350 using Tapatalk 2
 

Do the recruiting Web sites update the rankings one more time before signing day? I would like to see where they think Mayes and Jones stack up after playing in their all-star games.
 

I'm going to participate in the pissing match too because it seems interesting. That said, I think/hope Connor Mayes is a stud from Day One, and am hoping that one of these brother combinations works (which combination will be better, Olson/Olson, McAvoy/McAvoy, Mayes/Mayes?).

Pissing Match Contribution (sorry)
I find the argument between offensive stats in Brewster's first season of 1-11 vs. Kill's 3rd year of 8-5 interesting, and somewhat funny. I love stats, but you can't take one statistic and say you're better or worse than a previous year's statistic without looking at the bigger picture (or more stats). Of course, yards and TD's are great if you are playing solid defense...

I don't post often, and I probably won't look at this post after making it. That said, my response is ball control. I don't think it's lost on anyone that we need some significant offensive improvement, but we do need to admit that Kill-Ball is probably not going to be the flashy attempt at the spread offense that Mike Dunbar brought that wretched year of 2007. It's also not likely to be the terrible attempt at defense that we saw in 2007.

In 2007 the Gophers were 83rd in the nation in time of possession. Our defense was awful, we played catch up in games and tried to throw the ball around. We also had a professional QB on the roster and an NFL receiver.....and that's about it.

In 2013 the Gophers were 12th in the nation in time of possession. Our defense was a solid blend of bend but don't break, splashed with a key and at times lucky turnover here and there. On offense we grinded it out, and maintained ball control to keep ourselves in games.

Disclaimer: I chose a statistic here too, without looking at any others. Feel free to bash it. I'm sure others would appreciate in a separate thread than the Connor Mayes thread.
 

2011 Total Yards: 3724 Rushing 1920 Passing 1895
2012 Total Yards: 4178 Rushing 1975 Passing 2203
2013 Total Yards: 4463 Rushing 2538 Passing 1925

Who is returning? Everyone for us…not so for our opponents. I see improvement. Whether or not we get Mr. Ragnow, we will improve even more. Lauer was named 1st team Freshman All-American, we have Connor's brother and Mitch's brother coming in after redshirting plus two other walk-ons, we have Luke Rasmussen coming on scholarship too. This whole post seems silly to me. Mr. Mayes is an All-American, Lauer is an All-American…we have been improving steadily and it is easy to see that that is going to continue. Brewster and Mason aren't at Minnesota anymore and no one is considering bringing them back so who cares. Is Kill putting a better team on the field each year. Yep. On both sides of the ball….
 

CoMn, but you are asking several GH'ers to stop their enjoyment of over analyzing things.
 

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