1) Disagree on the Auburn game. Their team and coaches repeatedly stated they were all business and planned to win that game. The "dejected" excuse is thin. Minnesota beat Auburn straight up, sorry.
2) The Iowa loss was disappointing, but mostly because MN got badly outcoached in the first 20 minutes. They dominated the rest of the game, put up about 400 yards of offense, and held Iowa to something like 150 from that point forward.
3) The Wisconsin loss was horrible, but part of it was Wisconsin making big play after big play on offense and opening up a lead that changed Minnesota's gameplan considerably. But no excuses -- Wisconsin came in and executed a great plan...and the scoreboard reflected that.
4) Agree most of the rest of the B1G schedule was against "down" teams, but MN didn't just win those games -- they pretty much dominated in every facet of those games. They weren't squeaking out wins against similarly talented/well-coached teams. They were blowing people out for the most part.
5) Agree the non-con was VERY shaky. Still struggling to understand that, but clearly both offense and defense made adjustments based on those games and improved steadily as the year went along. Does anyone think GSU or SDSU would've been competitive with Minnesota at the end of the year?
Great post. Sorry I didn't get to it until now.
1 - zero chance that Auburn wasn't dejected after winning an emotional Iron Bowl against Bama and ending up ranked #12 in the CFP. They thought they deserved a NY6 game. That's what I mean by dejected. They also probably thought they deserved the higher-order bowl game against Michigan, that went to Bama.
Yes obviously we beat them straight up in the game. I don't deny that. And I think it was the 2nd best/most important win of the 2019 season.
2 - Yards don't win. Points do. And we scored 6 of our 19 in the first half. We did not dominate the 2nd half. If we had, we would've scored a TD on our second drive and/or not let them kick a FG on their third drive. Even if we had done the latter, we could've then gone for 2 after scoring the TD on our fourth drive to tie the game at 20.
Regardless, it was a competitive loss. That's the type of game I expected last weekend. If we had gotten that, I doubt anyone would've been as pissed.
4 - Purdue game: they lost Sindelar and Moore I think on the same play? That's obviously "down". We did blow them out the first half after that, but they regrouped and the game score ended as 38-31.
Next 4: Illinois, Nebraska, Rutgers, Maryland. Four awful teams. Not "down", just bad. We took care of business, no doubt.
Then Penn St, then Iowa.
Then NW. They were very much "down" last year. No QB. Still, they played us very tough. Game score was 38-22. Again, not a domination.
Then Wisc.
So the point mostly comes down to Purdue and NW, I guess. They were "down" when we played them, in reasonable sense. We didn't dominate either. We were lucky then, in those senses, that they weren't their normal selves.
5 - you raise a great point about playing at the end of the year. I'd like to think no. Hope so.
