***MICHIGAN STATE POST-GAME THOUGHTS THREAD***

[Pompous Elitist]

#1: Our WRs are NOT plenty good. They played hard and I'm encouraged about their future, but our WRs were not good. To even hint that they bailed out Nelson a lot (making his numbers better than he actually is) is absolutely asinine. Engel was solid and Jones flashed playmaking ability, but our WRs really hurt Nelson's production.

#2: The position is up for grabs. Leidner started for a couple of weeks in the middle of year. He was burdened with the same lack of playmaking and struggled throwing the ball as well.

I want the Gophers to play the best player and everyone can see that Nelson has struggled at moments. However, he really did not have any playmakers around him in the passing game. They certainly did not bail him out very often and they rarely made anything but the easy plays (Engel aside, he had a couple "plays"). I'm not ripping on them, I'm encouraged they will get better, but I can't fathom how anyone can watch this team and not see the glaring hole at WR.

Respectfully disagree, and I don't like throwing our young (and talented) guys under the bus. You must be watching a different team. Nelson rarely if ever hits his man in stride on crossing patterns. He is scattershot on deep patterns. These receivers have ABSOLUTELY bailed out Nelson on numerous occasions. How many times have we seen the wr have to pirouette 360 degrees to make a catch or have an easy td throw sail 10 yes downfield of the receiver?

The receivers get open. But the qb needs to make his reads and deliver a catchable ball in a timely fashion. I won't go into the inability to get rid of the ball in pressure situations. We need A LOT better play out of the qb position to make the next step. Sorry.

 

[pharmacygopher]

Respectfully disagree, and I don't like throwing our young (and talented) guys under the bus. You must be watching a different team. Nelson rarely if ever hits his man in stride on crossing patterns. He is scattershot on deep patterns. These receivers have ABSOLUTELY bailed out Nelson on numerous occasions. How many times have we seen the wr have to pirouette 360 degrees to make a catch or have an easy td throw sail 10 yes downfield of the receiver?

The receivers get open. But the qb needs to make his reads and deliver a catchable ball in a timely fashion. I won't go into the inability to get rid of the ball in pressure situations. We need A LOT better play out of the qb position to make the next step. Sorry.

I agree with both of you. The QB's haven't been super accurate and the receivers have made some nice catches (Engel drove me nuts sometimes, he likes to jump for the ball...even when it wasn't always needed). But they have dropped a lot of easy throws as well.

The QBs need to work on their accuracy
The WRs need to catch more consistently.
Nothing in our passing game is stellar and so good that it doesn't need improvement....agreed?

 

[GophersInIowa]

Sorry, I'm kinda late to the party. Had lots of family stuff all weekend so just catching up.

A lot of missed opportunities again on offense. Had our chances in the red zone and didn't capitalize. Have to do that against good teams. Would have been nice to get the obvious holding call against Maxx and the d-lineman made a great play on the 3rd down when he knocked it down. Encouraging though that we could move the ball against an extremely good defense. The OL opened up some holes and that isn't easy to do against that team.

Defense was incredible again. Not much else to say.

It sucks that we lost the last two weeks and I'm not a huge fan of "moral victories". But I think it is a positive in the sense that we lost because of mistakes. We have shown we can play with these teams; that we aren't over matched from a talent standpoint. Mistakes can be corrected. You can't make someone more talented than they are.

 

[Sparlimb]

The QBs need to work on their accuracy
The WRs need to catch more consistently.
Nothing in our passing game is stellar and so good that it doesn't need improvement....agreed?

Now that is something I can agree with. All facets of our passing game including pass protection need to get a lot better. What's interesting is coming into college Nelson was the runner and Leidner a passer. Play on the field has shown just the opposite. I think, in the end, when either QB has looked his best this year, Nelson has been better. So look for him to continue to start. I haven't seen many Leidner passes that wowed me.

 

[STPGopher]

Now that is something I can agree with. All facets of our passing game including pass protection need to get a lot better. What's interesting is coming into college Nelson was the runner and Leidner a passer. Play on the field has shown just the opposite. I think, in the end, when either QB has looked his best this year, Nelson has been better. So look for him to continue to start. I haven't seen many Leidner passes that wowed me.

Caught the end of the game on TV. Saw some of Nelson till he got hurt. When Leidner came in, he played well. He provided a spark. His passes were decent. Nice zip on the ball and seemed to be where they needed to be. It was the fumble that hurt. I like both of them and are glad we have both of them at QB.

May they continue to improve.

 

[Bob_Loblaw]

Respectfully disagree, and I don't like throwing our young (and talented) guys under the bus. You must be watching a different team. Nelson rarely if ever hits his man in stride on crossing patterns. He is scattershot on deep patterns. These receivers have ABSOLUTELY bailed out Nelson on numerous occasions. How many times have we seen the wr have to pirouette 360 degrees to make a catch or have an easy td throw sail 10 yes downfield of the receiver?

The receivers get open. But the qb needs to make his reads and deliver a catchable ball in a timely fashion. I won't go into the inability to get rid of the ball in pressure situations. We need A LOT better play out of the qb position to make the next step. Sorry.

Well, we can agree on one thing, I also think we need better play out of our QBs. I'm excited about their future in that they were both only in their second year in the program. We shouldn't have had to see Nelson until this year at the earliest. Kill and Co were forced to play that card, but FR and RS FR shouldn't see the field much at QB (ideally).

However, I just disagree with you on your point about the WRs. I am not throwing them under the bus, they are true freshmen and a former walk-on. My hat is off to all of them. I have no doubt in my mind that Jones will be a very good WR and I feel about the future of Wolitarsky. That said, I can't think of a single play that Wolitarsky made all season that wasn't a perfect/near perfect pass. Jones flashed occasionally and Engel was solid. However, none of them would have been better than #3 (IMO) for most, if not all, of the other teams in the Big 10. Until Jones at the end of the WI game, I can't think of a single "jump ball" that our WRs won. This is a staple in the modern passing game, and we don't have the players to do it (hopefully Wozniak can help here), right now. There have just been way more drops than actual nice plays (not just routine catches). There should be way more "plays made" than drops, I don't think we are there yet.

 

[jaymil]

Well, we can agree on one thing, I also think we need better play out of our QBs. I'm excited about their future in that they were both only in their second year in the program. We shouldn't have had to see Nelson until this year at the earliest. Kill and Co were forced to play that card, but FR and RS FR shouldn't see the field much at QB (ideally).

However, I just disagree with you on your point about the WRs. I am not throwing them under the bus, they are true freshmen and a former walk-on. My hat is off to all of them. I have no doubt in my mind that Jones will be a very good WR and I feel about the future of Wolitarsky. That said, I can't think of a single play that Wolitarsky made all season that wasn't a perfect/near perfect pass. Jones flashed occasionally and Engel was solid. However, none of them would have been better than #3 (IMO) for most, if not all, of the other teams in the Big 10. Until Jones at the end of the WI game, I can't think of a single "jump ball" that our WRs won. This is a staple in the modern passing game, and we don't have the players to do it (hopefully Wozniak can help here), right now. There have just been way more drops than actual nice plays (not just routine catches). There should be way more "plays made" than drops, I don't think we are there yet.

Correct. I can think of a lot more passes that Jones, Wolitarsky, and Engel dropped rather than made a great catch and bailed Nelson out. Nelson isn't perfect but I thought he played well this year for only being a true sophomore and considering the extremely young group of WR's he had to work with. The passing game will only get better the next couple of years.

So many strides were made this year, it seems silly for people to pick out a portion of the team that is still a weakness and complain about for multiple pages. This season was a lot of fun and the future is bright. It's a great time to be a Gopher football fan.

 

[mplsbadger]

Just saw in an ESPN article that the smallest margin of victory MSU had in the Big Ten this season was 11 points. Nice that the Gophers kept it this close in their house with so much on the line. If no missed FG or ML fumble this might have been thier toughest test all season.

 

[MplsGopherFan]

We made the trip this year to East Lansing and had a fantastic time! With only one exception all weekend, fans were extremely friendly, gracious, generous (random people were buying us drinks and shots literally all day/night both before and after the game), welcoming, knowledgeable, appreciative of us making the trip, and highly complimentary of Coach Kill and the improvements our program is making. I was pleasantly surprised. The fans there were drastically better than the uncivilized idiots in Madison and Iowa "City". No comparison whatsoever. The campus was nice, the bars/restaurants near campus were fun, the stadium was decent (much better than Kinnick for sure). Anyway, I'm glad I made the trip. I would definitely return.