Held Maryland, a pretty decent offense, to 268 yards, 14 first downs, 16 points.
Those numbers include 91 yards and 6 points the Terps got on their final drive, which was in 'garbage time'.
The Gophers have already faced Ohio State, Nebraska, Purdue and Maryland — 4 of the top 6 most productive offenses in the league.
Going forward, they take on Northwestern, Illinois, Iowa, Indiana and Wisconsin. Those 5 teams are all currently in the bottom 7 of the B1G offensively.
Beat me to it, was going to post something very similar.
We are done with the elaborate and dynamic offenses in the Big Ten at this point. The 5 remaining on our schedule have not looked good on that side of the ball this season. The past few weeks our defense has had to pass rush with the idea that there is a mobile QB on the field who might look to run and can be dangerous when he does. We won't face that kind of QB again for the remainder of the regular season. That means the D-Line can really go after the QB and with the way that unit is playing right now I love what that potentially means.
Northwestern - Offense is a joke. Scored 7 on Michigan due to a 75 yard TD run, got nothing else for the entire game.
Illinois - Put up some gaudy rushing numbers against Penn State. Those numbers led to almost no points. They can be pesky but they are not good on offense especially.
Iowa - Well documented that this is a bad offensive team. If your offense gives them short fields to work with they can hurt you. If they consistently have to drive or play catchup to beat you, they are toast.
Indiana - Lot of hype around this team coming into the season, and in their defense they have played a brutal schedule to this point. They have yet to top 15 points in a conference game so the reality is that quality defenses are shutting them down without a ton of trouble....we have a quality defense.
Wisconsin - They have run the ball better in their last few games, but if they go up against a team with a good run defense (we have one) that forces Mertz to throw.....well let's just say he likes throwing it to the other team just as much as he does with his guys, sometimes even more.
Statistically our Defense doesn't jump off the page but there is no denying that unit is playing really really well and has done well against some very dangerous offenses. Our d-line has been disruptive, our LBs are flying around making plays and the secondary is solid. If our offense doesn't help our remaining opponents, I don't see an offense left on our schedule that can hang a big number on our D.
