Postgame Thread: Gophers Lose to North Carolina

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goldengophers said:
He's called a few games...they were far better.
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i was at the Auburn game. My point is our wide receivers are ok, not great. If he plans game strategy with Harbaugh, I see the lack of improvement i.e. dropped balls as a question as to why everyone thinks he'd be that much better.
 





Dakota2 said:
It is a bit difficult to evaluate play calling when the passing game execution was so bad, especially AK. He missed some throws and often panicked and threw into double coverage or worse (culminating with his last throw to BSF who had no less than five NC defenders surrounding him.

However, the play calling was balanced with 31 rushes and 30 passes which played a big part in Taylor's second great game. The running lanes were somewhat open because of the balance, which takes nothing away from Taylor's exceptional vision, balance, patience, and burst.

Tyler is going nowhere against a big D line which means we don't have much depth at RB unless Evans shows up somewhere along the line.
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Criminal to have balanced attack today when we couldn’t complete a pass against air and Taylor was running with abandon
 

salzie said:
If a season where we're 2-1 and our one loss is to top 25 team and you rank it as most disappointing season in your lifetime you can't be older than 12
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He didn’t say it was the most disappointing season in his lifetime.

Comprehend what you read much?
 


Some Day...Maybe said:
Wonder what kind of QB coach Harbaugh is? Is he any good? Same ole broken record, without Ciarocca Fleck’s offense is terrible. He needs to find a suitable replacement for KC. I’ve bet on Rutgers 3 straight weeks and they’ve covered by a mile all 3 weeks. Schiano defense, Ciarocca offense. They’d dust this Gopher team right now. Facts.
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They’ve beaten NW, Temple, and VT…
 




salzie said:
Sorry never more down
Point is the same
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I'm very down. Our defense was blown out, and we literally can't score with was what was supposed to be a good passing offense. We have 1 td pass in 3 games, and that was a poster catch.

This is ridiculous in year 7. To top it off, we are getting rid of divisions and adding high powered offenses.
 





kg21 said:
I'm very down. Our defense was blown out, and we literally can't score with was what was supposed to be a good passing offense. We have 1 td pass in 3 games, and that was a poster catch.

This is ridiculous in year 7. To top it off, we are getting rid of divisions and adding high powered offenses.
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Cool..

I'm going to let season play out. I'll let you overreact for the both of us
 


Some Day...Maybe said:
Just watched the Fleck presser, you could tell he was pissed. I’m glad to see it. See some fire.

Athan took full responsibility. Said it was the worst game he’s ever played and that he lost the game for them. The kid was a class act.
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He better do something with that anger that actually causes a change. Give Harbaugh an ultimatum, or hand over play calling to Simon for a few games, or something.
 

Athan has been mediocre to bad in all four outings this year, including the Spring game. QBs (the passing kind) are a little like baseball pitchers - no shame in pulling one and putting another in. Let Cole have a long run against somebody, at least two quarters.
 



Calm Down said:
The only thing I struggle with is the lack of progress with AK. Every QB has a rough game, but I haven’t seen anything improve with AK, in fact one can argue he has regressed since the Wisconsin game last year.

Not off the band wagon but would like to see some improvement in the QB play.
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I completely agree with the assessment of Athan. The most concerning point is that there doesn't seem to be any improvement as we start to wonder if the performance against Wisky last year was actually the aberration. I think PJ will have some decisions to make if we don't see some measurable improvements in Athan by game 8 or 9, because if there aren't improvements we will be talking about next year already with another 4 solid teams entering the conference.

I think the days of hoping that a QB will pan out are gone as PJ can't afford to let next year be a lost season as well. Like it or not, if we don't see some signs with Athan then PJ is going to need to start looking in the portal like many other teams in the conference have done as I don't think we know what we have in Viotto yet and Kramer will be gone. You don't want to look up and realize you are in the bottom 6 to 8 teams in an 18 team league.
 

I didn't expect the Gophers to win today, but hoped they'd be 4-1 after five games. But I was surprised at what a bad showing the Gophers made in the passing game, 11 of 30. If this doesn't improve, they will have to scratch and fight to get six wins and a bowl. Again, I'd like to see Kramer get a fair trial at some point in the next two games, and not in garbage time.
 

I don't understand why anybody thought the Gophers would win today. Fleck doesn't recruit at the level of UNC. We don't have the talent to compete with Top 25 programs right now.

We're a middling team with, unsurprisingly, middling recruiting. Our last few years' easy schedules and a few upsets have spoiled us. With a real schedule this year, I guess some fans are in for a reality shock.

We had the worst recruiting class in the Big 10 last year. Forget about clock management or burning TOs, Fleck's recruiting has been his biggest failure.

Fleck has to recruit better players if he wants to win more football games. If we keep recruiting at the level of Rutgers, in three years, that's against whom we'll be most competitive.
 

- Receivers need to be the strength of the offense they were expected to be. (BSF not playing like a high round draft pick)

- Need someone to emerge at RB next to Taylor.

- Gousby got burned way too much.
 

Live in the now said:
I agree. It was ugly but a tough team on the road. They will probably get pounded by Ohio state and Michigan. Need to get a split with Wisconsin and Iowa and win the rest. I do highly doubt that happens but hopefully they improve as the year goes on. Young qb and he could pull it together like we all saw last year in a few games. I’m not sure I understand all the sky is falling rhetoric, what did the average gopher fan really expect this year with a brutal schedule and having to replace some 6 year players and leaders.
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Likely need seven conference wins to win the division IMO!
 

Panthadad2 said:
Here's a sobering thought popping into my head. Was Clint Brewster right? I thought he was a dink, but is AK truly a below average QB in the B1G? After watching three games, there's a trend. What's his sustainable ceiling? The receiver corps is supposed to be pretty good (we know Jackson is good while Crooms and Spencer have proven success), but they aren't catching his balls and often aren't open when AK targets them, so it makes me wonder if his reads and timing are poor?

If AK maxes out as a mediocre QB, at what point does Fleck pull the trigger and give some reps to a young guy to see what he can do? Do the Gophs waste a whole year with a decent receiving corps and budding star in Taylor at RB?

Uffda.
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I don't care if he was right, Brewster's a dink!

Nobody in media can criticize Gopher players. That's the rules!
 


MZBKA1 said:
I don't understand why anybody thought the Gophers would win today. Fleck doesn't recruit at the level of UNC. We don't have the talent to compete with Top 25 programs right now.

We're a middling team with, unsurprisingly, middling recruiting. Our last few years' easy schedules and a few upsets have spoiled us. With a real schedule this year, I guess some fans are in for a reality shock.

We had the worst recruiting class in the Big 10 last year. Forget about clock management or burning TOs, Fleck's recruiting has been his biggest failure.

Fleck has to recruit better players if he wants to win more football games. If we keep recruiting at the level of Rutgers, in three years, that's against whom we'll be most competitive.
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The Gophers can of course compete with top 25 recruiting programs. It just that there are some variables there. Obviously, a difference in speed and skill can be shown in games, true. I don't think that difference really exists much if were talking a bunch of 86s vs a bunch of 89s. But...

In my opinion, the weighting for recruits shouldn't be equal. Landing a 98 CB is impressive, landing a 98 DT is better, but landing a 98 QB could promise incredible heights.
 

BilldGopher said:
Most irritating thing for the Billds was pass plays on first down when the running game was working. It may be confidence in AK but for Minnesota you need to run on 1st down, 2nd down, and decide what to do on 3rd.

While there's a lot of negative on our side of the ball gotta give NC credit. THEY DID SOME SCOUTING AND TAPE REVIEW TOO AND IT SHOWED.

Also, their homey's said they didn't have WRs who could make a play. Although their schemes did make it look like we couldn't put a paper towel to cover a spill, they were actually very good. Kudos to them. Even if we were firing on all cylanders, still think they would have risen to beat us. By the way, this is not a shot at the Defense. They did their job. Needed to score points.

Just that kind of matchup. Yuck.
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So they should remain up near the service academies in run: pass ratio?

You aren't going to be close to 50:50 with that approach!
 

We could have lost to a ranked team (though i still think they are overrated, App State didnt seem overmatched) on the road in a way that didn't cause too much concern. But we looked really bad, and a lot of what went wrong was self-inflicted (both coaching and execution). Don't want to overreact in week 3, especially when the loss is non-conference so it doesn't affect our ability to win the West. That said, if we make those mistakes consistently, we will be a really bad team this year. Hopefully, it's just an aberration and we will look better when we get into the meat of the conference schedule.
 

I'll start with the defense. The first TD we somehow allowed a receiver to get behind the defense while rushing 3. That absolutely cannot happend. The second TD was basically given to the Tar Heels as nobody on the defense knew what they were doing and we allowed a guy to run completely freen down the middle of the field for a free pass to the 2 yard line or whatever. The third TD was actually a good play call by Rossi. We ran a corner blitz off the weak side and UNC had a fake WR screen called to the strong side. The corner got picked up and nobody else won their individual matchup allowing Maye time to hit his TE for the TD. That had a great chance to be a sack/fumble, tipped ball, etc...but our guys just didn't execute on that one. In general I was extremely disappointed with the Rossi defense in the first half. UNC was on pace for over 600 yards of offense at the half and we continually let them off the hook with soft coverage on 3rd down that negated good work being done on first and second down. What good is getting the opposition in to 3rd and 8 if you are going to drop in to a soft zone and allow an easy pitch and catch from a first round NFL QB to a WR with an EDGE player like Collins closest in coverage? Rossi is a solid defensive coordinator, but I have to see a lot more for him before I put him anywhere near the category of a Parker from Iowa (why would Rossi be on a HC list before that guy?). He's been very good at holding bad offenses down, but the results against teams that can be dynamic have not been good. This isn't a "fire Rossi" comment, it's a lets wait to crown him until his defense wins us a game against a good offense comment.

The offense was frustrating. Athan misses Croom and Brockington and if he hits either of them it feels like this is a different game. The miss to Croom was particularly wild considering he had all day to throw and a wide open receiver and was not even close. What I've noticed about Athan is that his best balls are the throws outside the hash that he can just rip. He displays no touch and hasn't been accurate so all the throws that are short/intermediate over the middle are incredibly dangerous because of the increased traffic and the propensity for a tipped or inaccurate ball to end up intercepted. The best thing Athan did in this game was pick up a couple of first downs with his legs. The running game was there all day, but it didn't matter in the way it should have because it was a 2 score game for the vast majority of the day. I do feel like the offense is a little too predictable as it seems like far too many of our plays appear perfectly covered (the 3rd and 2 before PJ's horrible decision to punt in the 4th quarter being one example).

My big picture frustrations are mainly with the offense. I've felt we've needed a serious QB competition since 2020 when Morgan was awful. We blamed two years on Sanford and then Ciarrocca came back and we still were inept in the passing game. Fleck decided to stay in house with his coordinator change and to not bring in any competition for Athan from the portal. This very well could prove to be the right decision. The West is still right there begging for us to win it and Harbaugh/Athan could start clicking at any time.

To end on a positive, I liked that we didn't come out in this game afraid to make mistakes like PJ's teams so often do in big games (thinking more like Michigan/PSU/tOSU). We often run/run/pass our way to a couple 3 and outs and an early deficit that we can't recover from. I felt like we were more aggressive in this game early and I appreciated that. I also disagree with those who felt like there was a big talent gap. Our Oline got plenty of push, our Dline got pressure, the DB's did a nice job of tackling, our WR's got separation deep, etc, etc.
 

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