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SPCPrice21

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So i came across a youtube video today and it was Maroney and Barber just beastin it for the U of M. and it got me thinkin about the 2003 or 2004 (the 10 win team) whichever year it was. and why they were so much better then we were last year or better then we are gonna be next year. Id say this years team is better at QB, FB, WR (questionable), DE, DT, LB (questionable), CB, S, K, P, PR, KR

Did the RBs and O-line really make a 4 game difference? Look at this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnhfPLrniFM

How many runs are over 10 yds. i think i caught one. I dont think the o-line was terrible last year. they had theyre ups and down. I think if we had Maroney, Barber, or heck even Russell they couldve ran for at least 800 yards. The O-line will only get better. Still not as good at '04s O-line but they will be solid. I really dont think Bennett or Eskridge are Big 10 worthy. Not one bit. Id pick Eskridge over Bennett. If one of these Freshman come in and prove to be solid this could be an 8 win team. Look at Maroney and Barber play. They had such great vision and elusiveness. Whaley was my favorite last year but hes gone. If these freshman cant come in and take a starting spot this team is in HUGE HUGE trouble. IMO its the key to next year. The defense will hold its own like last year. The passing game will do fine. Weber had his ups and downs. He was set up for failure tho. The Fisch really screwed him last year and add no running game to the mix, very few college QBs could succeed. All we need is a running game and i think the gophers will be back on track to becoming a good team once again.
 

This years team is not better at QB.
This years team is not better at RB.
This years team is not better at any one of the 5 OL spots.
This team is better at WR.
This years team is not better at TE.
This years team is better at DL
This years team is better at LB
This years team is better at CB.
This years team is better at CB.

If this years team played the 2003 schedule. They could win 10 games. 4 bad non-conference opponents. 5 wins against the bottom 5 teams of the Big Ten (In a year where the bottom 3 of the Big Ten were terrible). 0 wins against the top 6 of the Big Ten. Win against a team of similar ability in a bowl game.
 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Minnesota_Golden_Gophers_football_team#2003

I am posting this just because I didn't remember the 2003 season as this underwhelming. The "big victory" of the year was either a home win over a Wisconsin team that finished 7-6 or a bowl win over an Oregon team that finished 8-5. Everyone remembers the 3 losses because they were all debacles and all easily winnable games. Still, I thought there was a bigger win in 2003 somewhere...we missed 2 of the top 4 teams in OSU and Purdue.

Those Gophers ran the ball very well against most teams. If they couldn't get the running game going, they couldn't move the ball. The current Gopher teams do nothing so well that they can dominate anyone in a certain aspect of the game.
 

I know our Non-conference is tougher. Thats why i said 8 wins. And there is no way you can can Brian Cupito is better then Adam Weber. just no way... If you flip teams Adam Weber wouldve been amazing on that team. And Cupito wouldve been benched along time ago. otherwise we agreed on everything thing. I still dont know about WR. We dont really have a proven WR. Ernie Wheelwright, Jared Ellerson, Logan Payne, Jakari Wallace, and Paris Hamilton was a very good group.
 



Brian Cupito was not the QB in 2003.

Asad Abdul-Khaliq was a better QB than Adam Weber. He was more accurate on short throws. More accurate on long throws. He was an equal runner to Weber when Weber was running well (He hasn't since his freshman year). On ball security I will call them equal (Weber turns it over much more and makes much dumber throws more often...but Weber also has more attempts and I am still bitter about the pick-6 against Michigan). In 2003 Khaliq threw 1int/50 attempts, In Weber's best year, Weber threw 1 int/51.25 attempts. So I think calling them equal is fair (if not generous for Weber). Khaliq had better pocket awareness, I know it was a better line and a system less likely to get you sacks, but Weber has very bad pocket awareness. Perhaps getting beat down by opposing defenses has made Weber a little Skiddish in the pocket, but whatever it is... it isn't good. Khaliq's efficiency rating in 2003 was about 160. In Weber's best year his was 127.

I know no one argued that Weber was better than Khaliq, but I thought I would launch a preemptive strike in case someone wanted to.
 

I noticed in the video that Weber likes to throw behind receivers a lot. Never really crossed my mind before, more distracted by the throws in the turf. Hopefully he gets on top of that. Too many passes that could have been touchdowns, and too many chances for receivers getting lit up.

Also noticed that All Maroon + Night game + Halloween = Pretty awesome on TV. It helps when the other team wears all white....
 

SPCPrice21 said:
I know our Non-conference is tougher. Thats why i said 8 wins. And there is no way you can can Brian Cupito is better then Adam Weber. just no way... If you flip teams Adam Weber wouldve been amazing on that team. And Cupito wouldve been benched along time ago. otherwise we agreed on everything thing. I still dont know about WR. We dont really have a proven WR. Ernie Wheelwright, Jared Ellerson, Logan Payne, Jakari Wallace, and Paris Hamilton was a very good group.
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Very good is pushing it, Wheelwright was a severe underacheiver.
 

Asad was 10 times the runner Weber is-has-or ever will be. It was painful watching Weber run the ball his freshman year. Reminded me of Sauter trying to run his senior year in Mason's first year.

Here is my evaluation of Weber: When he decides to find a mean streak and an ounce of leadership in the huddle he will finally become a good to decent qb. Get pissed once in a while. Get in the helmet of an opposing player and show some balls. I swear he plays with his tail tucked between his legs and is just going through the motions that the coaches taught him. At some point you need to just play football. He's a robot out there.
 



that was then, this is now

I agree with most of your comparisons. One can quibble (as others have) about WR's. Wheelwright could make some amazing catches, albeit rarely in the endzone. OTOH, he could also drop a screen pass that hit him in the numbers.

My main quibble with this post is unfortunately, we don't get a redo of the 2003 season (I realize this is an intellectual exercise). One could turn it around and ask how would the 2003 team do against our upcoming slate of opponents. I'd argue we'd still be looking at 5 or 6 wins. As someone else pointed out, our big wins were against a crappy UW team, and Oregon wound up in the Sun bowl for a reason: They were mediocre.

Granted, SDSU and N. Ill are Masonesque OOC opponents, but Glen would have messed himself if he had to play USC, and he wouldn't have been too happy about opening against MTSU on the road, either. While I'm not the biggest Brewster fan, I do have to give him credit for raising the quality of our nonconference opponents.

As for how this year's team would have done 7 years ago, one will never know. For sure we wouldn't have given up 41 points to SCum in the 2nd half with Brewster's D. But we wouldn't have run for over 400 yards on them in the first 30 minutes. Now as long as you're talking hypotheticals, if you took the 2003 offense and the 2010 defense and replayed the '03 season, we would have spent January 1, 2004 in Pasadena. I'd have made book on that!
 

Rosemountian said:
Brian Cupito was not the QB in 2003.

Asad Abdul-Khaliq was a better QB than Adam Weber. He was more accurate on short throws. More accurate on long throws. He was an equal runner to Weber when Weber was running well (He hasn't since his freshman year). On ball security I will call them equal (Weber turns it over much more and makes much dumber throws more often...but Weber also has more attempts and I am still bitter about the pick-6 against Michigan). In 2003 Khaliq threw 1int/50 attempts, In Weber's best year, Weber threw 1 int/51.25 attempts. So I think calling them equal is fair (if not generous for Weber). Khaliq had better pocket awareness, I know it was a better line and a system less likely to get you sacks, but Weber has very bad pocket awareness. Perhaps getting beat down by opposing defenses has made Weber a little Skiddish in the pocket, but whatever it is... it isn't good. Khaliq's efficiency rating in 2003 was about 160. In Weber's best year his was 127.

I know no one argued that Weber was better than Khaliq, but I thought I would launch a preemptive strike in case someone wanted to.
Click to expand...

Sorry bout that, '03 and '04 teams kinda blend of me. It is hard to compare these QBs since the '03 team would run for 300 plus yards everygame. You would think anyone could succeed with a running game like that. Especially with the O-line. Do u really think Khaliq could do better then Weber with this years running game and O-line?
 

I think AAK would have been called upon more to bootleg it given how weak we've been at RB, especially relative to the glory years with MB3 & LM. Actually, I've never understood why we've went away from designed QB scrambles since Weber's freshman year. Is it him (or Brewster) being gunshy, or has Adam lost a step due to injury?

I agree with most of your comparisons between Weber & Khaliq. One area where I think Weber is more valuable, is that he isn't afraid to throw it. Granted, sometimes with unpleasant results. I always thought that AAK was sometimes tentative on pulling the trigger, and tucked it to run instead. Also, Mason was skittish about letting AAK throw it in certain situations, which I think hurt us in that SCum game. Like when we couldn't run for a first down in the 2nd half. Some play actions (Weber's strongest suit) might have opened things up for us. I guess we'll never know which QB is better, since they're 6-7 years apart. One thing's for sure, though. If we had both QB's on the same squad last year, Weber would have been benched in favor of AAK given the way he was playing most of 2009
 

Rosemountian said:
If this years team played the 2003 schedule. They could win 10 games. 4 bad non-conference opponents. 5 wins against the bottom 5 teams of the Big Ten (In a year where the bottom 3 of the Big Ten were terrible). 0 wins against the top 6 of the Big Ten. Win against a team of similar ability in a bowl game.
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Nuff said
 



JoeDirt said:
Very good is pushing it, Wheelwright was a severe underacheiver.
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our WR's have yet to prove anything. just saying. Wheelwright was a severe underacheiver because he had ALOT of potential. That being said he still had a pretty good career. I think he'd be the number 1 option on this years team
 


After watching a Texas Tech's comeback video, I am reminded why we fired Mason.
 

SPCPrice21 said:
our WR's have yet to prove anything. just saying. Wheelwright was a severe underacheiver because he had ALOT of potential. That being said he still had a pretty good career. I think he'd be the number 1 option on this years team
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Agreed. Wheelwright should have been a beast every game, it's too bad he couldn't figure it out.
 

SPCPrice21 said:
Sorry bout that, '03 and '04 teams kinda blend of me. It is hard to compare these QBs since the '03 team would run for 300 plus yards everygame. You would think anyone could succeed with a running game like that. Especially with the O-line. Do u really think Khaliq could do better then Weber with this years running game and O-line?
Click to expand...

In my opionion, he would be better. He would have made more plays with his feet than Weber did last year. He was a better scrambler. Weber is probably as good of a designed runner as Khaliq, but Khaliqs pocket awareness made him much more dangerous to run out of the pocket. He would have taken care of the football much better. There was that terrible int against Michigan, but other than that he was very careful with the ball. He would have hit decker and the other WR in stride on more of the deep balls. weber has a tendency to turn an easy TD into a circus catch by throwing it way behind a deep WR.

It is a really tough comparison because Khaliq was a perfect QB for the system he was running and Weber is average at best in any system.
I will say this, if I had a team and I got to pick one of the two, I would pick Khaliq without hesitation regardless of the system i was trying to run.
 

A good coach...

EDIT: I'll add a little more.

A good coach, an offensive line that isn't awful, a QB that doesn't throw 2 yards behind wide open receivers, and RBs that can find and hit holes (also a product of poor offensive line play), a defense that can stop the run, etc.
 

streetfighter said:
A good coach...

EDIT: I'll add a little more.

A good coach, an offensive line that isn't awful, a QB that doesn't throw 2 yards behind wide open receivers, and RBs that can find and hit holes (also a product of poor offensive line play), a defense that can stop the run, etc.
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When was the last time we had a good coach? Does Lou Holtz's 2 years count?
 

streetfighter said:
A good coach...

EDIT: I'll add a little more.

A good coach, an offensive line that isn't awful, a QB that doesn't throw 2 yards behind wide open receivers, and RBs that can find and hit holes (also a product of poor offensive line play), a defense that can stop the run, etc.
Click to expand...

I dont think Brewster is that much worse then Mason! See Texas Tech game. I was kinda going with the running game here.. if we get some type of decent running game this team can be pretty good. Waayy better defense. More potent passing game! just need some type of running game.. We barely get half the production that we use dont
 

Good point. Given the hypotheticals in this thread, a RB of MB3's stature last year would have made Weber look a lot better. For one thing, #8 wouldn't have had to carry the team offensively, and opponents would have had to respect the run. Maybe decker wouldn't have been double teamed as much?

That said, there's still the matter of offensive lines. While one can argue there's more athleticism on Brewster's OL, Mason's offensive line was better as a unit. Perhaps it was the cutblocking technique. But if there was one thing Mason could develop, it was offensive linemen (and RB's). Defense, not so much.
 


In Retrospect
Brewster would have well served to leave the offensive staff in tact. Bring in some stud recruiters in his defensive staff. If they could have improved the defenses athleticism and added a few more big time recruits offensively to the previous system, it would have been a recipe for quicker success.
 

SPCPrice21 said:
our WR's have yet to prove anything. just saying. Wheelwright was a severe underacheiver because he had ALOT of potential. That being said he still had a pretty good career. I think he'd be the number 1 option on this years team
Click to expand...

I agree. Wheelwright and Payne are a lot better than anyone we have right now. A lot.
 


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