Is AKs play a concern?

Donate To GopherHole
If sidearm mattered at all, then I trust KC and/or Greg Harbaugh would’ve worked to coach it out of him.

To me (a complete layperson for throwing a football at a high level), the emergence of Mahomes as a superstar disproves any such “need” for coaching that out of a kid. If he makes he throw, he makes it.
 

Our receivers are better than last season. Mike Brown-Stephens and Dylan Wright are not missed.
 

MplsGopher said:
If sidearm mattered at all, then I trust KC and/or Greg Harbaugh would’ve worked to coach it out of him.

To me (a complete layperson for throwing a football at a high level), the emergence of Mahomes as a superstar disproves any such “need” for coaching that out of a kid. If he makes he throw, he makes it.
Click to expand...

If the kid is as talented as Mahomes, then by all means let him throw like Mahomes.
 




The Gophers can't use a cookie-cutter game plan for every opponent where they dominate the run and TOP. The Gopher coaches are game-planning differently for each opponent today compared to last season:

Minnesota/Nebraska: RPR 22/78, TOP 30:42/29:18

Minnesota/EMU: RPR 72/28, TOP 39:24/29:18

They will game-plan for UNC based on UNC's strengths and weaknesses.

establishing the Run Game against EMU was critical.
 
Last edited:

Mahomes wasn’t yet Mahomes at Texas Tech.

I’ll trust Gopher QB coaches over random internet guy who is open about wanting to force us to run the ball 45 times a game, every game no matter what.

Agree completely with above posts getting at that we need to be able to do both kinds of game plans well.
 

jonnyganas said:
Last night, he scrambled out of pressure to avoid a sack and hit a wide open RB for a first down, something Tanner could not do. Lots of upside.
Click to expand...
That RB check down has been there a few times this year. Glad he saw it yesterday and hope he keeps that in mind each play (as opposed to forcing a throw to his 2nd read who is double covered).
 

MplsGopher said:
If sidearm mattered at all, then I trust KC and/or Greg Harbaugh would’ve worked to coach it out of him.

To me (a complete layperson for throwing a football at a high level), the emergence of Mahomes as a superstar disproves any such “need” for coaching that out of a kid. If he makes he throw, he makes it.
Click to expand...
Coach the kid to take advantage of his strengths, not what we think he should have.

You can miss an opportunity like the Minnesota Twins did with David Ortiz. They tried to coach him out of his natural batting stance. Boston acquired him and let him loose on his natural ability.
 



I think he has a great arm/delivery for intermediate throws. I’d like to see us call more of them though. We seem to love calling short digs and flats which I just don’t understand.
 

matt said:
That RB check down has been there a few times this year. Glad he saw it yesterday and hope he keeps that in mind each play (as opposed to forcing a throw to his 2nd read who is double covered).
Click to expand...

Great point. I was a little surprised when he actually threw to a running back last night. We haven't seen that type of play featured much in our offense over the Fleck years.
 


RememberMurray said:
Our receivers are better than last season. Mike Brown-Stephens and Dylan Wright are not missed.
Click to expand...
Okey Dokey. Who other than Crooms has impressed you? Thru 2 games our WRs look to be pretty much exactly like they were last season.
 



RememberMurray said:
Great point. I was a little surprised when he actually threw to a running back last night. We haven't seen that type of play featured much in our offense over the Fleck years.
Click to expand...
They did it in the practices I attended as a drill. First time I think I have seen it practiced on a Fleck team.
 

Spoofin said:
Okey Dokey. Who other than Crooms has impressed you? Thru 2 games our WRs look to be pretty much exactly like they were last season.
Click to expand...
I do think the EMU game was focused on getting the run game back on track, thus the classic gameplan we have seen so much.
 

RememberMurray said:
I'm excited about Kaliakmanis' career at Minnesota. He's going to be a great one, I believe.

My only concern is his apparent love for using a Mahomes-style sidearm delivery, dropping his arm down when it isn't necessary or even desirable.
Click to expand...
Yeh I noticed the side arm delivery too. When I played QB way back when, a long time ago, my old ball coach would take me aside and show me the proper delivery. The problem was he had to do so many times he finally accepted that I threw the ball side arm.
 

Count me among those that daydreamed and let myself believe that AK was going to take a big step forward this year now that he is the undisputed #1 and has a better group of receivers to throw to.

But his completion percentage is concerning and his stat lines callout “average QB”.

Having a great QB can be a cheat code to lifting up an otherwise-average offense. It is early and I hope things change but for now it looks like he is going to be another Morgan-level QB, just with different strengths and weaknesses.
 


PMWinSTP said:
I do think the EMU game was focused on getting the run game back on track, thus the classic gameplan we have seen so much.
Click to expand...
Fair enough. After 2 games our passing game looks average - in the “can’t miss transfers” Crooms looks good and Spencer is MIA. I think AK8 has a ton of talent and will only get better. There is a fair chance by the end of the year one might be able to declare our WRs were better this year, but it certainly isn’t time to do that after these 2 games. The funny thing is the whole reason Murray pulled that post out of thin air here in an AK8 thread is that in the off-season he was a leader of the “Look at these transfers - our WRs will be a strength next year” group and he wanted to head off the WR talk before it even started.
 


roadrunner said:
Sure, the Gophers are 2-0 but if you look at the QB stats what do you see?
GP- 2, COMP PCT- 57%, YDS- 313, TDS- 1, INT- 2
Take away the miracle TD catch on a ball nearly overthrown and things would look even worse.
My overall impression is Athan is a good scrambler but an average runner, has a strong, accurate arm in the intermediate pass game but is innacurate on the deep ball, has some issues with touch, and has trouble making the right reads in the red zone.
Now, there's a chance he will improve, but is anyone else having any concerns???
Click to expand...
No.

As is common on message boards, several posters will hype the bejesus out of a player, elevating them to almost god-like status. Then when the player appears in human form, others panic.

What I'm seeing is a R-So going through the growing process.

All those successful runs - a lot of that is the QB reading the defense and adjusting the play at the line. Doesn't show up anywhere in the stat lines.

Red zone - the other major contributor is scheme, and when he has 1 or maybe 2 read options in the red zone, nobody is going to look terribly competent when the playcalling is pedestrian at best.

If anything, stop this co-OC crap, because I'm not sure what it is really getting us other than an offense that looks like it is run by committee.
 

It's been two weeks .........

As Conan would say: "be coooo mah babies!"
 


Gopher 461 said:
Yeh I noticed the side arm delivery too. When I played QB way back when, a long time ago, my old ball coach would take me aside and show me the proper delivery. The problem was he had to do so many times he finally accepted that I threw the ball side arm.
Click to expand...
I had a 3/4 arm delivery. It was my natural throwing motion, football and baseball. I found it far easier to throw on the run with that delivery.
 

^^ speaking of which, just saw the Johnny Manziel "Untold" on Netflix.

WOW
 

OK, you don't like the Ewers comparison. How about small college transfer Shedeur Sanders comparison...
GP- 2, COMP PCT- 77%, YDS- 903, TD- 6, INT- 0
Can we all just agree AK is underperforming?
 

Underperforming ....

compared to what? Why is that a valid comparison?
 

He’s still in the honeymoon period but count me among those that are concerned with the passing game. I’ll leave it to the experts here and elsewhere to dissect how much is AK versus receivers versus scheme versus protection versus opposing defensive prowess. My hot take is he has much better escapability versus any QB in recent history, fairly athletic, strong arm but maybe less than great accuracy and touch. By comparison Morgan could seemingly consistently drop balls in a barrel 25 yards downfield, not sure if AK with his janky delivery can do that and that might affect red zone efficiency.

If the problem is more the receivers, it’s hard to attract top tier receivers to a program that has historically shown they want to run on average 70+ percent of the time. Not enough balls to go around. Feedback loop ensues. What’s the story on Elijah Spencer? I haven’t been paying attention, sorry.

This defense is pretty good, especially the line. Our place kicker may be elite. Wenger’s special teams in year 7 might not be a liability. That will obviously help win games while the O sorts itself out.
 

roadrunner said:
OK, you don't like the Ewers comparison. How about small college transfer Shedeur Sanders comparison...
GP- 2, COMP PCT- 77%, YDS- 903, TD- 6, INT- 0
Can we all just agree AK is underperforming?
Click to expand...
Compared to who or what? Legit asking.
 

Spaulding!No! said:
How soon we forget the qbs we had in the past. Cadillacmanis is wonderful.
Click to expand...
He's young and has lots of time to improve but statistically so far he's actually pretty similar to Leidner. But I'm one of the few Leidner fans so that isn't meant as a rip.
 

You must log in or register to reply here.



Top Bottom