Football season approaches!!

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I was reading a season prediction from the Sporting News with amusement http://www.sportingnews.com/college...28/college-football-countdown-no-98-minnesota

What Amused me was the line "History has to play a role here." That's what you say when you haven't really don'e the research.

He also talks about the defense losing 9 starters from a lineup that was "spotty at best". I highly disagree with his assesment of the defense, it was one of the best Gopher defenses I had seen in a long time. With a competent offense, that defense would look a lot better. He says Weber, even if he works out, can't fix the defense. But he can, a decent offesne always helps the defense out. Three and outs make the defense look bad and tire them out.

He predicts us for 2-10, 1-7 in the Big Ten. He doesn't break down what games we will win, but I assume that one will be the South Dakota game. He has us losing to both MTSU and NIU?
 

What is fun about magazine predictions is that guy ranked the teams 1-120, he probably has only seen about 40 different teams play in the last year. Saying his confidence level is "high" that they win only 2 games is amazing. They are pretty much a lock to beat South Dakota. He is saying that of Northwestern, Illinois, Purdue, MTSU, N. Illinois, he is highly confident that the gophers only win one game. I can see being down on the gophers, but predicting 3 or fewer wins is a longshot.
 

History has never won or lost a football game. You can make the assumption that things will be the same as they were last year, but that's not an informed opionion, it's one that anyone could give you.

I wonder if any of them will eat crow if we do significantly better than they expect.
 

RodentRampage said:
History has never won or lost a football game. You can make the assumption that things will be the same as they were last year, but that's not an informed opionion, it's one that anyone could give you.

I wonder if any of them will eat crow if we do significantly better than they expect.
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The funny thing is, he brings up history. Somebody better tell him that the team beat Northwestern last year. Beat Purdue last year.

With the number of close games, history indicates the team will win 4-8 games. Not 2.
 

I love the use of "history" to back up BS. Looking at actual data like FBT does HERE and HERE paints a different picture. Wherever should I place my faith? Random opinion or statistical data? Hmmmmmm.........
 


When the magazine writers get enough information that allows them to properly name our starters and their correct positions, I will give their predictions about the Gophers a little bit of weight. But until then, I know that I have more and better information than they do. The Gophers will likely be the surprize team of The Big Ten this year. They certainly will not finish in th 9, 10- or 11 spot no matter what happens.
 

RodentRampage said:
I was reading a season prediction from the Sporting News with amusement http://www.sportingnews.com/college...28/college-football-countdown-no-98-minnesota

What Amused me was the line "History has to play a role here." That's what you say when you haven't really don'e the research.

He also talks about the defense losing 9 starters from a lineup that was "spotty at best". I highly disagree with his assesment of the defense, it was one of the best Gopher defenses I had seen in a long time. With a competent offense, that defense would look a lot better. He says Weber, even if he works out, can't fix the defense. But he can, a decent offesne always helps the defense out. Three and outs make the defense look bad and tire them out.

He predicts us for 2-10, 1-7 in the Big Ten. He doesn't break down what games we will win, but I assume that one will be the South Dakota game. He has us losing to both MTSU and NIU?
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My mistake.
 

Iceland12 said:
You may be right about that.

Scoring defense is the Defensive stat that counts the most. The Gophers finished 109th in the country in scoring defense in 2007. They moved to 61 under Roof and to 18th in the country under Cosgrove and Lee.

Now, if they can just score more...
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What made it more impressive was that the defense did this with little or no offensive support. The author doesn't seem to recognize the connections between offense and defense. There are a lot of teams built on defense, the offense's job is just do be competent and take advantage of the short field produced by the defense. The defense makes the offense look better. Similarly, the concept of "keeping the defense off the field" isn't exactly an alien idea. If an offense goes three and out a lot, the opponent gets great field position, and the defense gets tired. If the offense can at least move the ball, it helps the field position and the defense gets rested: the offense makes the defense look better.
 

Iceland12 said:
You may be right about that.

Scoring defense is the Defensive stat that counts the most. The Gophers finished 109th in the country in scoring defense in 2007. They moved to 61 under Roof and to 18th in the country under Cosgrove and Lee.

Now, if they can just score more...
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This sounded wonderful yet so odd given some of the beatdowns we took in the middle of the season or the barrel of points we handed to Illinois. According the NCAA site, is also appears to be erroneous. They list us as 51st. Still an improvement, just not nearly as much.
 



GoAUpher said:
This sounded wonderful yet so odd given some of the beatdowns we took in the middle of the season or the barrel of points we handed to Illinois. According the NCAA site, is also appears to be erroneous. They list us as 51st. Still an improvement, just not nearly as much.
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When the offense hangs the defense out to dry, I can't blame the defense too much.
 


The bizarre thing is that Cosgrove presided over the castration of Nebraska's defense. Nebraska fans are salivating at the thought of getting payback by hanging 77+ points on Cosgrove in 2011. Better hope the Gophers have an effective ball control offense by then.
 

bkrownd said:
The bizarre thing is that Cosgrove presided over the castration of Nebraska's defense. Nebraska fans are salivating at the thought of getting payback by hanging 77+ points on Cosgrove in 2011. Better hope the Gophers have an effective ball control offense by then.
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It's really hard to figure out. He has done a good job here. Cornhusker fans who are looking for a 1983-style desecration are going to be disappointed. I could spend my time scratching my head over why he is doing so well here when his Nebraska defenses did so poorly, but I will focus on here and now.

Such stats get skewed by how much offensive support defense had. This defense won the SDSU game for us, gave us a chance against Iowa, and kept us in the game for the first half against OSU and PSU.
 



GoAUpher said:
True enough, I just wanted to make sure we were getting excited about the right ranking. :)
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Mea culpa and nice catch. The article was written after the Penn State game. I just looked at the header; sorry.
 

Cosgroves problem was he hit the perfect storm. Missouri, Kansas, Ok-State, Texas, Oklahoma, Texas Tech were all running pass heavy and with the exception of Oklahoma, pure spread systems. They made up 6 of the top 20 offenses in the country over a 2-3 year period. Nebraskas defense (and entire team) was down at the worst possible time. Callahan had imploded the program to the point where they did not have the athletes do defend the spread. Cosgrove hardly did a good job at Nebraska, but the fault lies more with Callahan for letting the program slip to that point. When Texas Tech is putting up 77 on Nebraska, it means not only are they out athleted, but the head coach had also lost the team. A sitting duck coach with an inferior roster, that is a recipe for a blowout.
 

bkrownd said:
The bizarre thing is that Cosgrove presided over the castration of Nebraska's defense. Nebraska fans are salivating at the thought of getting payback by hanging 77+ points on Cosgrove in 2011. Better hope the Gophers have an effective ball control offense by then.
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Then Lee must be very good. Seriously, he and Cosgrove worked together while at Wisky and did well there together as well. We are in good shape with the coordinators on D for sure.
 

The infamous Texas Tech game was the first year of Callahan/Cosgrove. Complete chaos.

The fans really didn't think too highly of Cosgrove when he arrived in Lincoln, based on his Wisconsin defenses. It's always possible that a different head coach can correct his past problems, though.
 

Some people here are........

Some people here are getting drunk on Kool-aid. I'm not very optimistic about this season but here are some things that make me a little optimistic about the season.

1. Assitant coaches - This is by far the best group of assistant coaches we've had. I just have to believe they will make a big impact.

2. Quarterbacks - I can't remember a Gopher quarterback crew as talented as this one (Weber, Gray, and Alipate). I think someone from this group will have a good season.

3. Offensive line - I do think this group will be much improved and will not be the achilles heel anymore. Four seniors will anchor this line. They won't be dominate but they might turn out to be one of the better lines in the Big Ten.

4. Experience - Hopefully Brewster with three years under his belt in head coaching will continue to get better.

I think this is a make or break year for Brewster. I would not have objected if they fired Brewster after last year. He definetly is on the hot seat for this year. I hope he proves me wrong but I'm not very optimistic about this year.
 

bkrownd said:
The infamous Texas Tech game was the first year of Callahan/Cosgrove. Complete chaos.

The fans really didn't think too highly of Cosgrove when he arrived in Lincoln, based on his Wisconsin defenses. It's always possible that a different head coach can correct his past problems, though.
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Well that does not mean much; I recall a lot of complaining about the hire of Cosgrove here as well. Bottom line, he has been more successful than unsuccessfull and he and Coach Lee have chemistry. The Gopher D is in good hands and the offense is quite mature. Nice combination, I'd say. Likely 7 wins.
 

The whole offense depends on the QB position. the line improved as some have pointed out, rec. are very acceptable and the defense if given time will be better than last yr. Breaks will determine the early part of the yr. and if a few go our way and these kids mature like I think they will it should be a respectable yr. With 2011 and 2012 very exciting.
 

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