Gopher Football
There’s no need to depend on the programming whims of the boys in Bristol this week, as the Gophers opened their 2005 home schedule against Colorado State on Saturday. Your intrepid grader watched the game from the stands, then sped home to watch the recording ““ and ended up seeing two very different games.
This game was a mini-milestone for me personally, as it was my first as a regular, general-public season ticket holder. I guess I’ve finally made the transition from “œstudent” to “œbooster.” As I sat high in the second deck on Saturday and schemed about ways to become a Wisconsin booster and get the Badgers put on probation (kidding), I thought I saw the Gophers dominate the Rams of Colorado State. I thought I remembered a game that was all over but the shouting by the second quarter. I thought that I remembered Minnesota smashing CSU on both sides of the ball and coasting home to victory.
Instead, as I watched the tape, I saw the following scoreline in the corner of the screen: MINN 3, CSU 0, 14:39 to go in the 2nd”¦ and the Gophers lining up to punt the ball away.
At that point, thankfully, the Rams got caught in a bit of overzealousness, as they piled into Gopher punter Justin Kucek at high speed, giving Minnesota a first down that was followed by a touchdown drive. From there, the Gophers were on a downhill slope that culminated with three consecutive touchdowns in the third quarter. But if not for a few lucky breaks (including some very beneficial calls and non-calls by the officials), plenty of Colorado State penalties (a total of ten for 84 yards), and a strange CSU insistence on running the ball despite success through the air, the game could have turned out much different.
OFFENSE
On the Ground– When I was a freshman in college, I found a clearance-bin PC copy of “œMadden 2000.” This was one of the editions of the game in which John Madden and Pat Summerall both had a total of about fifteen lines to use beyond actually naming the players. Naturally, I took the Vikings and ran the ball up and down the field with Robert Smith, about whom Madden had exactly one thing to say: “œRobert Smith is one of those guys that you can stop him, and stop him, and you think you’ve got him, then BOOM he hits you for a fifty-yarder.” Eventually I had to turn off the commentary function because I was sick of hearing this eighty-five times per game, but it’s been seared into my brain, and someday when I am trying to remember an important date or appointment, all I’m going to be able to hear is John Madden screaming about Robert Smith.
The reason I mention this is because it’s a pretty apt description of the Minnesota running game against Colorado State. The whole game seemed to go the same way: three yards, four yards, two yards, three yards”¦ then twenty-eight yards at an opportune moment. Am I complaining? Not really ““ even I can’t find much to moan about when the ground game goes for 355 yards ““ but I think there were more than a few people who wanted to see more consistency out of the running game. Such as Laurence Maroney: “œ”We made a lot of mistakes,” Maroney said. “We could have played better. We have to play better.” Also Gary Russell: “œ”We were like, ‘We had that many yards?’ We definitely have room for improvement.”
There were other mistakes, such as the sequence in the first quarter involving two missed blocks on third-and-3, followed by a false start on fourth-and-one that meant the Gophers had to settle for a field goal. It’s always annoying to see this type of thing in spring practice; in a game it’s simply unacceptable. Also, for all the talk about the Gophers having to deal with stacked eight- and nine-man fronts against Colorado State, there were also plenty of examples where seven-man fronts were also successful. You can bet that Minnesota will see a lot more stacked fronts as the season wears on; one can only hope that they won’t consistently be stopped by seven in the box, or they might as well forfeit five or six Big Ten games.
Nevertheless, maybe we turn to the Coach, as we so often do, for the defining quote of the day: “Most people would strike up a band to be able to run for 355 yards,” Mason said. “Some people can’t rush for 355 yards against air.”
Grade: B
Through the Air: Two words come to mind: Ugh. Ack.
Maybe the best thing that we can say about the Gopher passing offense is this: usually only one thing goes wrong per play. There’s seldom a play on which Bryan Cupito stares down one receiver the whole play, makes a bad decision, followed by a bad throw, followed by a receiver dropping the pass. Usually it’s just one of the four.
The numbers don’t exactly flatter Minnesota: Cupito finished 9-for-21 for 159 yards and two touchdowns. About the only thing that went right was a 54-yard touchdown to Jared Ellerson, a play on which Cupito made one of the best fakes of the year so far. Throw that one out and the Gophers averaged five yards an attempt, which is the type of stat that makes the Gophers think about running the ball 60 times in a game.
The receiving corps comes in for a great share of blame in this one, though. Matt Spaeth had two touchdowns in his hands; one got knocked away and he simply dropped the other. Justin Valentine nearly dropped a touchdown that hit him between the numbers three or four times on the same play. Ernie Wheelwright dropped a clanker in the first quarter. The list could go on. Even when Cupito wasn’t forgetting about the free safety and throwing an easy interception, or underthrowing a wide-open Jakari Wallace when Wallace could have backpedaled into the end zone without being caught”¦ the Gophers were still ineffective through the air. If I’m an opposing defensive coordinator, I’m licking my chops to play about five linemen, four linebackers, and a safety that used to be a linebacker”¦ at least until the Gophers prove that they can all avoid screwing up on the same passing play.
Grade: D-plus
Kicking Game– Terrible. F.
No, wait, let’s try to be nice. Um”¦ the Gophers held CSU to less than nine yards per punt return, and made some nice open-field tackles on kickoffs”¦ and if the goalposts were ten yards wider, maybe that would help”¦
Ah, screw it. I tried. The kicking game was patently awful on Saturday. Justin Kucek averaged barely 35 yards per punt. The kickoff team gave up a fifty-yard kick return. And most glaringly, Jason Giannini’s afternoon was set to calliope music, as he gaily hooked extra points, one off the goalpost, one nearly off the map. I’m sorry, but three missed extra points can only result in one grade, even if the final score was a 32-point blowout.
Grade: F
OFFENSE, Overall – 49 points by the offense, and all anyone can talk about is inconsistency. Either we’re all just spoiled, Spaulding Smails-level whiners”¦ or the Gophers just got lucky this week.
Grade: B-minus
DEFENSE
Against the Run– I’d like to take a moment to admire the following stat-line, which I will put in boldface type to make sure nobody misses it:
25 attempts, 59 yards, three forced fumbles, five tackles for a loss.
How can we ask for anything else from the run defense? This is not a situation in which statistics are covering up the real truth, either. If anything, the Gopher run defense was even stronger than this. Heck, if we throw out the two longest Ram runs (ten and eleven yards, both on sort of fluky plays), the stats get even better. By the third quarter, people around me were starting to wonder if Sonny Lubick was actually paying any attention. (I guess you want to establish the run even if you’ve been having success throwing the ball and you’re down by four touchdowns.)
Grade: A
Against the Pass– This area was a bit more worrisome. There were times (especially towards the end of the second quarter) when Colorado State couldn’t miss through the air. When they did miss, it usually wasn’t because of tight Gopher coverage or acrobatic pass breakups ““ it was usually bad throws, or dropped balls.
For the second consecutive week, the Gophers injured the opposition’s starting quarterback, but before CSU starter Justin Holland had limped off, he’d thrown for 211 yards and a score. Backup Caleb Hanie threw for 151 more and two more touchdowns, albeit against a Gopher second string that was so awful that coach Mason threw up his hands and put the first team back in with five minutes to go. Nevertheless, a more accurate quarterback could have had an absolute field day against the Gopher secondary. Even the one interception was a result of a receiver falling down and the ball careening off of Brandon Owens’ hands into the waiting arms of Mike Sherels (who should get a mention for getting both this pick and recovering two fumbles, a nice three-turnover haul.)
On the day, the lack of pass defense didn’t really hurt the Gophers too badly. On another day, it could be a very different story.
Grade: C
Return Game
A week after being the weakest unit on the team, the Gophers managed to dazzle against the CSU kicking game. Dominic Jones had a 53-yard punt return that set up a Gopher touchdown and really served as the final turning point in the game ““ the Rams were never serious contenders again. The unit also blocked a punt for the first time since 2002 and took it in for a touchdown, a note that was really the final nail in the Colorado State coffin.
The return game was everything you could want ““ they made a difference in the game and swung the momentum in the Gophers’ favor.
Grade: A
DEFENSE, Overall – If we could somehow go back a hundred years and eliminate the forward pass from the rules, the Gopher defense would have been spectacular. (The offense probably would be better off, too.) As this isn’t likely to happen, we can only hope that the run defense continues to stay strong, while we bite our fingernails with worry about the state of a pass defense that gave up 362 yards through the air.
Grade: B
OVERALL
It’s easy to look at the score early in the fourth quarter of this one ““ Gophers 49, Colorado State 10 ““ and start referring to the 56-24 win as a “œblowout that wasn’t as close as the final score indicated.” To do so, though, forgets the first twenty or twenty-five minutes of the game, in which the Gophers led only by a combination of luck, CSU penalties, and run defense. It was quick to turn into a rout, but it could have gone much differently. But on the other hand ““ they won by 32 points and gave up two late touchdowns. What else can we ask for? (Maybe a pass defense or a pass offense, I guess.)
Grade for the Golden Gophers vs. Colorado State: B
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