What letter grade would you give Mitch Leidner against Eastern Illinois?

What letter grade would you give Mitch Leidner against Eastern Illinois?

  • A

    Votes: 2 1.5%

  • B

    Votes: 20 14.9%

  • C

    Votes: 79 59.0%

  • D

    Votes: 33 24.6%
  • Total voters
    134
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goldy93 said:
I give him a C+/B-, but the rest of the offense is more concerning.
For some people on here, all I can say is get a grip. A guy completes 65% of his passes and this is the reaction? I counted 2 drops by receivers (Edwards being the worst one) that affected the completion %, so if you count those he would have been 11-19 and at 65%. Not sure how Mitch gets them to catch the ball when he puts it in their hands.
That being said, was Mitch really sharp? No.
Was it the first game of the season? Yep.
Did we have guys wide open that he missed? At least one, but other than that, I did not see a lot of wide open guys. WHY???!!!!
Did he make any good throws? Yep. Did you see that beautiful pass to Williams?
Did we miss Wolitarsky? Yep.
Did Mitch have a lot of time to throw? Nope. Very concerning considering who we were playing.
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+100. Every point you made was right on target. It seemed obvious to me all night long that Leidner was not getting much time to throw and his receivers were not getting open.
 

husker70 said:
9 for 17 is not getting it done. That's 52%. He is not going to get more than 18 throws a game, and needs to hit on 11 or 12. He needs those completions when it counts. Third and 6, third and 10. Keep a drive alive. His grade C-.
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He went 9 for 17. At least three of the drops were completely on the receiver. That gets him to the 12 you are calling for.

While Mitch wasn't the 2nd coming of Tom Brady, he was what he is...a redshirt sophomore with a handful of games under his belt. As Mitch gets more and more comfortable in game situations he will be more and more efficient as a passer. Second, this was the first game of the season. There is always a huge jump in improvement between game 1 and game 2. No worries.
 

Wouldn't You like to Know said:
Mitch does not throw a very good spiral and does not have a lot of arm strength nor is he accurate. At least from what I've seen thus far in his young career. This scares the crap out of me!
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Spiral, schmiral. Leidner has the strongest arm of any QB the Gophers have had in at least two decades. And he is at least as accurate as any QB we have had during the last decade. By all accounts when Leidner was working out with Larry Fitzgerald and his buddies this summer they were impressed with his arm strength and throwing ability. However, I do agree with you on one thing. If Leidner doesn't progress from game to game this year it will be on Coach Z and the rest of the offensive coaching staff (including Kill).
 

UpnorthGo4 said:
Spiral, schmiral. Leidner has the strongest arm of any QB the Gophers have had in at least two decades. And he is at least as accurate as any QB we have had during the last decade. By all accounts when Leidner was working out with Larry Fitzgerald and his buddies this summer they were impressed with his arm strength and throwing ability. However, I do agree with you on one thing. If Leidner doesn't progress from game to game this year it will be on Coach Z and the rest of the offensive coaching staff (including Kill).
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I just Lol'd to that!!!!
 

UpnorthGo4 said:
Spiral, schmiral. Leidner has the strongest arm of any QB the Gophers have had in at least two decades. And he is at least as accurate as any QB we have had during the last decade. By all accounts when Leidner was working out with Larry Fitzgerald and his buddies this summer they were impressed with his arm strength and throwing ability. However, I do agree with you on one thing. If Leidner doesn't progress from game to game this year it will be on Coach Z and the rest of the offensive coaching staff (including Kill).
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Wait! I just Lol'd to the whole post after I read it. I'm sure you're tight with Larry Fitz :) LMAO
 



UpnorthGo4 said:
Spiral, schmiral. Leidner has the strongest arm of any QB the Gophers have had in at least two decades. And he is at least as accurate as any QB we have had during the last decade.
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This site has a great comedy section. :p
 


Ogee Oglethorpe said:
I found myself missing Max Shortell tonight. And I mean A LOT.

Mitch was not good tonight. Studwell was right, he had maybe 4 or 5 good passes. Nice to see Strev get some run tonight, almost hoped it would happen a series sooner than it did but he really needs to get some reps.

Not going to panic over tonight's performance, not even a little bit, but if Mitch looks like this in Week 5 and/or beyond, this team is in deep trouble.
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I wish Shortell had stuck around as well. That said, he is not starting as a senior for a FCS team. Let's see if he gets anytime tonight against Michigan State.
 



A lot of knee-jerk reactions in this thread which isn't too surprising. For those upset with Mitch's performance, take a deep breath and realize it was the first game of a long season. What has me optimistic is he seemed to get better and more comfortable as the game went on and the coaches and players started to realize what EIU was doing on defense. They threw some interesting blitzes our way that we clearly weren't ready for. He's still young and pretty inexperienced (YES, that's a good excuse) and can learn from last night's game. Looking forward to next Saturday already!
 

dboy said:
with our new arsenal of 'weapons', it should have been 40-0 at half.
i'm tired of 'hes young'... 'first game jitters'... 'they threw different sets out there', etc.

fact is they stacked the box... and Mitch was unable to hit our weapons.. the underthrow to Jones... he had to come back for it? should have been an easy 6.

problem is we are locked into Mitch until:
1.) he gets hurt
2.) we lose 3 in a row and he has a QB rating of 50 in those games.

so unless he gets hurt, we are playing in another pre-Christmas bowl.

burn Perra's redshirt now.
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Beating FCS teams by 3+ scores is not good enough around here considering we used to lose to and beat them by 1-3 points? These are not the past FCS teams. These teams are filled with FBS transfers.
 

Anyone else feeling some deja vu here? If you substituted "Nelson" for "Leidner" this is almost a carbon copy of the conversation after last year's first game. I bet a more ambitious GH'er than myself could actually go grab some quotes from the day after UNLV if they were so inclined :)

My feeling on it is that it's a soph QB in his first season as the starter. Dude ain't gonna be great. He'll be OK (probably Nelson-level), but that's about it. Sad, but true. I'm disappointed, but it is what it is. He was outplayed yesterday by two FCS QB's (IMO), but both of them are more experienced. Mitch will get there, but it'll take a while -- hopefully a few games, rather than a couple years.
 

Hold on....

Now there are some that are overreacting, but the thread title is grade his performance in one game, not his potential, not how you feel about him.

In a glass bubble, Mitch looked sub par today, lots of room for improvement. I don't know how anyone could grade his performance LAST NIGHT as anything better than a C+, if you do you're looking at much more than what was asked. A D1 Power 5 quarterback who was touted as vastly improved and is being looked at as the leader of the team has to do better. He practically bounced his first 3 passes, had a terrible fumble, took a few stupid sacks in a game against a FCS team.

Cross our fingers that's his worst game, I think it will be.
 



goldy93 said:
I give him a C+/B-, but the rest of the offense is more concerning.
For some people on here, all I can say is get a grip. A guy completes 65% of his passes and this is the reaction? I counted 2 drops by receivers (Edwards being the worst one) that affected the completion %, so if you count those he would have been 11-19 and at 65%. Not sure how Mitch gets them to catch the ball when he puts it in their hands.
That being said, was Mitch really sharp? No.
Was it the first game of the season? Yep.
Did we have guys wide open that he missed? At least one, but other than that, I did not see a lot of wide open guys. WHY???!!!!
Did he make any good throws? Yep. Did you see that beautiful pass to Williams?
Did we miss Wolitarsky? Yep.
Did Mitch have a lot of time to throw? Nope. Very concerning considering who we were playing.
Click to expand...

Quit being so logical.
 

UpnorthGo4 said:
Spiral, schmiral. Leidner has the strongest arm of any QB the Gophers have had in at least two decades. And he is at least as accurate as any QB we have had during the last decade. By all accounts when Leidner was working out with Larry Fitzgerald and his buddies this summer they were impressed with his arm strength and throwing ability. However, I do agree with you on one thing. If Leidner doesn't progress from game to game this year it will be on Coach Z and the rest of the offensive coaching staff (including Kill).
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"Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth"
 

afurry91 said:
It's a pick 6 of the corner doesn't slip. The pass shouldn't have been thrown at all.
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proxy.jpg


Looks like Jones had the ball when the defender slipped to me.

This video from twitter shows it clearly imo:

https://twitter.com/BTN_Minnesota
 

Ogee Oglethorpe said:
I found myself missing Max Shortell tonight. And I mean A LOT.

Mitch was not good tonight. Studwell was right, he had maybe 4 or 5 good passes. Nice to see Strev get some run tonight, almost hoped it would happen a series sooner than it did but he really needs to get some reps.

Not going to panic over tonight's performance, not even a little bit, but if Mitch looks like this in Week 5 and/or beyond, this team is in deep trouble.
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You hit in on the head. We don't need Leidner to win games for us. But he has to be effective enough that other teams respect the pass and don't just load up against the run. Also, our D looks solid, but if the O puts up a bunch of 3 and outs we're not gonna win many (or any) BT games.

I thought Leidner did improve as the game went on. One problem on a few of the throws was that he was a half second late releasing the ball. There were a couple of instances where a WR was open downfield, but the CB had closed it down by the time the pass got there. Leidner gets the pass off a tick faster and its a big gainer. That goes back to the comment someone made about going through his progressions. Hopefully Mitch is still on a steep learning curve and we've solved these problems by week 5.
 

Gophers7NatTitlesBadgers0 said:
proxy.jpg


Looks like Jones had the ball when the defender slipped to me.

This video from twitter shows it clearly imo:

https://twitter.com/BTN_Minnesota
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I think that pass could just as easily be called a good pass rather than a poor one. Although it was low and behind Jones, he threw it to a spot where only Jones was going to catch that ball. Just depends on how you look at it I guess.
 

I gave him a C because I have nothing yet this year with which to compare it. Everyone starts with a C and goes up or down from there.
 



D. Watching his passes was absolutely painful to sit through. Man, I hope he improves as the season goes on.
 

C

Average. Some of you need to take a long walk. He had some bad throws. Berkeley should have had one and jones should have had the underthrown deep ball. A good receiver makes that catch. Jones in a year or two makes that catch. He has 5 inches and 40 pounds on that DB. Go get the ball. Use two hands. Maybe melvin holland can make that catch.

The DB had no chance at Jone's TD catch. Arm strength is more than adequate. How many INts?

His completion % was 53 for the night? Berkeley makes the catch, 59. He had some decent throws. Any fan not in our self-hating fan base looks at Leidner last night and says ok I guess. Not terrible. Not great. He'll almost certainly get better over the season.

Our pass-averse offense has to affect the average QB's rhythm and accuracy. During my pitching days if I didn't warm up after every inning I had no idea where that first pitch was going. Keeping an arm "warm" matters and builds confidence and accuracy. See Texas A/M.
 

Leidner would not be the starting QB on EIU. it really is that simple.
 

I was wondering how long it would take for the Max Shortell name to pop up. What a joke.

Sent from my MZ617 using Tapatalk
 

I'm going with a solid...C. For me, one frustrating aspect with average QBs is the inability to look off a receiver. Leidner locked on way too much. Hopefully this is coachable.
 

NorthernLakesGopher said:
I'm going with a solid...C. For me, one frustrating aspect with average QBs is the inability to look off a receiver. Leidner locked on way too much. Hopefully this is coachable.
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You can make the same observation about 75% of QB's in the NFL and 90% of QB's in college. As for me, I will be happy if Leidner is better than any Gopher QB during the last 25 years. I believe it is going to happen if he doesn't get hurt.
 

C Grade

UpnorthGo4 said:
You can make the same observation about 75% of QB's in the NFL and 90% of QB's in college. As for me, I will be happy if Leidner is better than any Gopher QB during the last 25 years. I believe it is going to happen if he doesn't get hurt.
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I agree that Mitch starts with a C and move up or down from here. Hopefully up to a B next week.

One thing I know for sure is I would take him over the Wisconsin quarterback situation. Wisconsin fans are freaking out about their QB's total choke job in the second half. That quarterback gets a D. An F grade goes to a QB who plays so bad he gets yanked during the game and never sees the field again.

If you watched the second half of the Wisconsin game you would know what I'm talking about.
 


This is how I know our hearing impaired Wait!What? is the resident contrarian. Nothing wrong with that but what excited you the most, the roughly 5 yds/pass for each?, Manley's total inability to run the read option, or his 53% completion rate?

Whitlow could be a good player in this system, no doubt. But it's hard to argue he's light years ahead of Leidner based on one game.

Leidner made his fifth start? Let's see how the season unfolds before making judgements.
 

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