See, I told you there was nothing to worry about. I was never in doubt that Brian Callahan would figure out the offensive line, Greg Harbaugh Jr would call a great game to get the ground game going and
Danny Collins’ defense would keep Nebraska out of the end zone and putting Dylan Raiola on his back all night long. After the Purdue game, anyone paying attention saw this coming.
Right?
To be honest, this year’s Gopher squad has been the most difficult to project as I can remember. Ignoring the first two games, I felt strongly about how things would play out in four of the other five games.
- Ohio State – convinced we would lose badly – I was right
- Cal – conivnced we would pull away and win by double-digits – I was very wrong
- Purdue – convinced we would pull away and win by double-digits – I was wrong, but at least we won
- Nebraska – convinced we had too many issues to be figured out and we would lose by double-digits – I was very wrong
So three out of four…I wasn’t really even close.
There is an ESPN article that went up today wondering, of the teams vying for the national championship, who can we actually trust. And Minnesota isn’t remotely in that conversation, but I’m very much struggling with how much I can trust this year’s Gopher squad.
This is not a situation where from week to week you aren’t sure which team is going to show up. It is a situation where we are the team took seven weeks to figure out a couple of key situations and now we are heading to Iowa City wondering if some of these issues are fixed, or if it was a good game against an overrated team.
It was just a week ago when TMP was writing about the lack of a rushing attack and the lack of being able to stop the run on the defensive side of the ball. TMP was nervous. Nervous that this would continue into the Nebraska game, where it would be something we would not be able to overcome. This wasn’t negativity or giving myself some sort of an emotional hedge. This was from consecutive weeks of where the offensive staff was grasping at straws to find any sort of physicality along the line. And multiple weeks of being gashed on the ground by two teams with a combined Big Ten record of 0-8.
Nebraska was feeling confident. Nebraska has a strong running game. Nebraska has the type of defense where if we are forced to be one-dimensional (AGAIN), it would not be a great matchup.
But the Gopher football staff righted the ship…at least for one week. For the first time since week two, this Gophers dominated the line of scrimmage and the physicality of the game.
Now the question is…can they maintain this?
This staff has consistently shown that they get better throughout the season, especially the offensive line. My hesitations last week were due to the fact that typically we see improvement by week six. They went back to their original starting O-line and just focusses on getting them better. It worked. Now we need to see continued improvement.
Frankly, despite my snappy title, I do still have doubts. I’m more confident that things are moving in the right direction, but not confident that we will see a strong ground game against Iowa. Not confident that we will contain Kamari Moulton and Mark Gronowski.
I’ll be happy to be wrong again.
