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Gophers Saturday Scrimmage Recap: Kill Says Defense Is Further Along, Offense Has All the Parts
By Alex Van Abbema
http://www.gopherhole.com/news_article/show/408862?referrer_id=331171
Scrimmage Notes:
The story of the scrimmage was the aggressive play of the defense. The offense was kept simple today and was fairly predictable for the defense. Here are a few notes:
Out of the 20 or so total drives within the scrimmage, only one resulted in a touchdown. The drive started at the fifty, and ended with about a ten yard pass from Jacques Parra to Jeff Borchardt.
Chris Streveler threw a pass right to Alex Keith for an interception relatively late in the scrimmage. He still is miles away from Mitch Leidner in terms of development. If Leidner happens to get hurt this season, the Gophers are going to be in a lot of trouble with the passing game.
The defense is still playing very strong, and tackled strong, while breaking up a good amount of passes.
Derrick Wells made a good read on one of Leidner’s throws to the end zone, picking the ball off and returning it about 40 yards. Leidner has developed a bit of a gunslinger mentality.
Wide receiver Isaac Fruechte had a solid scrimmage, making a few first down plays, and had the ball thrown at him quite often.
The kicking game continues to look strong with no clear leader in who will be the field goal kicker. Ryan Santoso fell just short on a 59 yard try, and Andrew Harte nailed every one of his tries. Coach Kill hinted that the field goal kickers might be situational.
There were also quite a few dropped passes from the receivers. Wolitarsky, who had looked polished in practice, dropped a couple, and KJ Maye dropped a catchable pass as well.
David Cobb and Maxx Williams had very limited appearances, which likely hampered the offenses playmaking ability throughout the later drives.
Former Washburn RB Jeff Jones was in attendance cheering on his future teammates today.
A compilation of quotes from players to the media after the scrimmage:
David Cobb quotes
(Passing game of scrimmage)
It was definitely good, seeing Mitch confident in the pocket, and the O-Line giving him time. I mean he did a great job all game. Seeing Donovahn get some yards after the catch, and the receivers breaking away from their man, that’s definitely good to see.
Defense making offense work
That defense out there, that secondary, they have guys with chips on their shoulder, flying around physical, they give our receivers some good work, and I’m definitely seeing the growth in them. I mean they’re making moves, getting yards after the catch. They get it in practice every day, so it’s good to see them relate that from practice to the scrimmage.
(Running team mentality)
We’ll definitely have that mentality of being physical and we want to run the ball first, but we want to be more balanced or 60-40. But if we can get to 50-50 where the defense won’t know what to expect, that would be good.
Mitch Leidner quotes
(Progress of offense)
We definitely feel good about the progress. We didn’t show everything today, and we’ve got a lot more in our arsenal obviously, but I thought we executed well. Obviously there’s a lot of room for improvement.
Coach Jerry Kill quotes
(Overall thoughts on scrimmage)
Well we’re into kind of the grind, and we haven’t given them a day off, they’ve had school and all that, so we pushed them pretty hard. So I think some kids were tired today, but there were some good things and there were a lot of things that need to be cleaned up. So back to work tomorrow, we’ll watch film with them and give them some time off, and give them a bit this evening. We’ve been going from 7 in the morning with school until about nine, ten oclock at night, and so have the coaches. So I think we have to regroup a bit.
(Defense stepping up)
There’s no question that our defense is better in the redzone than it was last year. A lot of people question our secondary, but our secondary is good, and we have Craig James at corner coming in, so there’s a lot of our team where we’ve improved our talent, but now we’ve got to get them taught. Defensively, we’re a lot farther along. Offensively, we’ve got all the parts, but we’ve just got to get the execution down, and find out who we’re going to play.
(Steven Richardson)
He’s gonna play. I’ve said that from day one, sometimes you just know. He’s an unmovable object, and you’re never gonna get leverage on him. He’s still learning, but he’s had a great camp. And for us to be really good, he has to come through, and he’s doing a good job of that right now.
(Depth at tight end)
We’ve got a whole lot of them. And Duke, that was a major blow, because I’ve felt so bad for the kid. He was a tremendous kid and a great athlete, and he was going to play for us. He’s got a lot of Marcus Jones in him, so he’ll fight back. It’s a shame for the kid, and a shame for us, but we’re fortunate that we’ve got some good freshmen that have done a good job, and they’ve got a lot of reps and we’ve just got to get them settled in and understand what’s going on.
By Alex Van Abbema
http://www.gopherhole.com/news_article/show/408862?referrer_id=331171
Scrimmage Notes:
The story of the scrimmage was the aggressive play of the defense. The offense was kept simple today and was fairly predictable for the defense. Here are a few notes:
Out of the 20 or so total drives within the scrimmage, only one resulted in a touchdown. The drive started at the fifty, and ended with about a ten yard pass from Jacques Parra to Jeff Borchardt.
Chris Streveler threw a pass right to Alex Keith for an interception relatively late in the scrimmage. He still is miles away from Mitch Leidner in terms of development. If Leidner happens to get hurt this season, the Gophers are going to be in a lot of trouble with the passing game.
The defense is still playing very strong, and tackled strong, while breaking up a good amount of passes.
Derrick Wells made a good read on one of Leidner’s throws to the end zone, picking the ball off and returning it about 40 yards. Leidner has developed a bit of a gunslinger mentality.
Wide receiver Isaac Fruechte had a solid scrimmage, making a few first down plays, and had the ball thrown at him quite often.
The kicking game continues to look strong with no clear leader in who will be the field goal kicker. Ryan Santoso fell just short on a 59 yard try, and Andrew Harte nailed every one of his tries. Coach Kill hinted that the field goal kickers might be situational.
There were also quite a few dropped passes from the receivers. Wolitarsky, who had looked polished in practice, dropped a couple, and KJ Maye dropped a catchable pass as well.
David Cobb and Maxx Williams had very limited appearances, which likely hampered the offenses playmaking ability throughout the later drives.
Former Washburn RB Jeff Jones was in attendance cheering on his future teammates today.
A compilation of quotes from players to the media after the scrimmage:
David Cobb quotes
(Passing game of scrimmage)
It was definitely good, seeing Mitch confident in the pocket, and the O-Line giving him time. I mean he did a great job all game. Seeing Donovahn get some yards after the catch, and the receivers breaking away from their man, that’s definitely good to see.
Defense making offense work
That defense out there, that secondary, they have guys with chips on their shoulder, flying around physical, they give our receivers some good work, and I’m definitely seeing the growth in them. I mean they’re making moves, getting yards after the catch. They get it in practice every day, so it’s good to see them relate that from practice to the scrimmage.
(Running team mentality)
We’ll definitely have that mentality of being physical and we want to run the ball first, but we want to be more balanced or 60-40. But if we can get to 50-50 where the defense won’t know what to expect, that would be good.
Mitch Leidner quotes
(Progress of offense)
We definitely feel good about the progress. We didn’t show everything today, and we’ve got a lot more in our arsenal obviously, but I thought we executed well. Obviously there’s a lot of room for improvement.
Coach Jerry Kill quotes
(Overall thoughts on scrimmage)
Well we’re into kind of the grind, and we haven’t given them a day off, they’ve had school and all that, so we pushed them pretty hard. So I think some kids were tired today, but there were some good things and there were a lot of things that need to be cleaned up. So back to work tomorrow, we’ll watch film with them and give them some time off, and give them a bit this evening. We’ve been going from 7 in the morning with school until about nine, ten oclock at night, and so have the coaches. So I think we have to regroup a bit.
(Defense stepping up)
There’s no question that our defense is better in the redzone than it was last year. A lot of people question our secondary, but our secondary is good, and we have Craig James at corner coming in, so there’s a lot of our team where we’ve improved our talent, but now we’ve got to get them taught. Defensively, we’re a lot farther along. Offensively, we’ve got all the parts, but we’ve just got to get the execution down, and find out who we’re going to play.
(Steven Richardson)
He’s gonna play. I’ve said that from day one, sometimes you just know. He’s an unmovable object, and you’re never gonna get leverage on him. He’s still learning, but he’s had a great camp. And for us to be really good, he has to come through, and he’s doing a good job of that right now.
(Depth at tight end)
We’ve got a whole lot of them. And Duke, that was a major blow, because I’ve felt so bad for the kid. He was a tremendous kid and a great athlete, and he was going to play for us. He’s got a lot of Marcus Jones in him, so he’ll fight back. It’s a shame for the kid, and a shame for us, but we’re fortunate that we’ve got some good freshmen that have done a good job, and they’ve got a lot of reps and we’ve just got to get them settled in and understand what’s going on.
