Last week, Golden Gopher head coach Jerry Kill referenced preseason games in the NFL and the lack thereof in college football.
“Our preseason game is USC,” Kill said.
While college football teams don’t play preseason games, Tuesday morning’s scrimmage at TCF Bank Stadium was the next-closest thing for the Gophers. Preseason games in the National Football League are used to help make personnel decisions and to clean up execution before the games start counting in the win-loss column. Much of the same could be said for the Gophers’ scrimmages.
Tuesday’s first scrimmage of fall camp had its share of mistakes. But that’s what practice is for, according to Kill.
“I don’t think I’ve tolerated mistakes very well,” Kill said, referencing the first 10 practices of the fall and the 15 sessions back during the spring. “Nobody does. We’re not playing with 25 juniors and seniors. We’re playing with a lot of young people. They’re going to make (mistakes). We’ve got to just make sure they don’t continue to make them.
“And if we’re going to make them, I’d rather do it on Tuesday afternoon on the 10th practice than on game day,” Kill said. “So you train them. We’ll show them what they did wrong and point it out to them. Hopefully they’ll get it corrected. If they don’t get it corrected and they keep making the same mistakes, it’s hard to play that guy.”
In addition to a handful of mistakes, there were a few injuries which put a bit of a damper on the enthusiasm of the first scrimmage of fall camp. But in typical Coach Kill fashion, he brought it all back to building the team.
“Our starting center (Ryan Wynn) got hurt right off the bat,” Kill said. “So you’re underneath somebody different and I think it took a little while (for the offense) to get into rhythm. But I’ve been doing this for 29 years and every time you have a first scrimmage … that’s pretty much how it goes.
“We had a few guys get banged,” Kill continued. “When you get a few key players hurt, it’s probably good in camp for the next guy to have to step in. MarQueis (Gray) had to get underneath another center … and it took a little while for him to get used to it. But that’s going to happen. You’ve got to be ready for those kinds of things.”