Big Ten Football Preview: Minnesota

Alternate Title: A View To A Coach Kill

Mercifully, the Tim Brewster era is over.

Minnesota wasn’t always a punchline. Sure, they’ve never been a great program — they rank 57th of the 120 FBS schools according to Sports-Reference’s ELO School Ratings, but in the first decade of the new millennium, coach Glen Mason turned Minnesota into a bowl contender on a yearly basis. From 1999 to 2006, Mason’s gophers only missed out on the postseason once (2001). The run also included Minnesota’s best season since Penn State joined the Big Ten, the 2003 season in which Laurence Maroney and Marion Barber combined to rush for 27 touchdowns.

But the greatness of Barber and Maroney has been substituted for the mediocrity of Adam Weber and Eric Decker, and since Mason left the program prior to the 2008 season, the Gophers have only won 17 games. Fifteen of those victories came prior to the unceremonious dumping of Brewster following a 28-17 loss to Purdue, only one week after a 41-23 rout at the hands of the Badgers. The big story of that game was Brewster’s (and a litany of pundits’) anger at Bret Bielema’s attempted two-point conversion with a big late lead. A year later and Brewster is unemployed and Bielema is one of the top young coaches in the country. Lesson? Win games, complain about irrelevant gamesmanship issues later.

2010 Season

2010 was an unmitigated disaster for the Golden Gophers, and we need look no further than the non-conference portion of their schedule. First, Minnesota struggled to defeat the Sun Belt’s Middle Tennessee State, winning by a mere 24-17 despite the fact that MTSU’s MVP, quarterback Dwight Dasher (no, he’s not the star of a corny 1950s football drama), was injured. Then, they took a 41-38 defeat to FCS South Dakota, followed it up with an understandable defeat at the hands of USC, and then closed the out of conference slate with a loss to a surprisingly good Northern Illinois team, all coming at home. Maybe the latter two games could be understandable for a down team in the Big Ten, but the former two are downright unacceptable.

The Big Ten conference slate wasn’t much better, especially prior to Brewster’s exit and the introduction of interim coach Jeff Horton. Brewster’s Gophers went winless in the Big Ten, but Horton salvaged complete disaster with a victory at Illinois and then at home against a completely demoralized Iowa Hawkeyes team. Still, it was not the way senior quarterback Adam Weber hoped to end his career. He did throw for 20 touchdowns against just nine interceptions, but there was little in the way of efficiency, as he only completed 55% of his passes and averaged a mere 7.3 yards per attempt.

DeLeon Eskridge emerged as a decent running back, compiling over 700 rushing yards, but 4.3 yards per attempt isn’t much to get excited about. Da’Jon McKnight led all receivers with 48 receptions and 750 yards and will return for his senior year. The defense was horrendous, allowing 33 points per game, ranking 98th out of 120 FBS teams.

Strengths

• Youth-Turned-Experience:  The Gophers are returning eight starters on defense and some key offensive players in WR-turned-QB MarQueis Gray, RB Deleon Eskridge, WR Da’Jon McKnight, TE Eric Lair, and OLs Chris Bunders and Ed Olson. Given the improvements seen at the end of the Big Ten season (turning in decent victories against Illinois and Iowa), it isn’t inconceivable that the team was growing together as a unit and could turn that experience into on-field production in 2012.
• Schedule: They do have to go to USC, a difficult game in the non-conference slate, but they miss both Ohio State and Penn State in the Big Ten season. It’s not like they miss Wisconsin and Nebraska or anything, but those are two likely upper-half-of-the-conference teams.
• Coaching: Jerry Kill took only three years to take Northern Illinois to the top of the MAC and even brought NIU into the AP rankings last season. Specifically, he developed one of the better offensive units in the NCAA, scoring 38 points per season. The highly athletic Gray could fit right into Kill’s explosive-style offense. Kill’s instincts probably won’t be seen until he’s able to recruit the players he knows will fit into his schemes, but he should have a positive impact from the start all the same.

Weakness

• Talent: Time to beat a horse well past the point of death. This is a team that lost to South Dakota at home. South Dakota went 4-7 in FCS (I-AA) competition, its third year in the league.  They went 1-3 in the Great West Conference. The Coyotes scored 41 points in Minnesota; they only scored more once, 48 against Northwestern Oklahoma State. They couldn’t put even a third of 41 up on UC Davis (13), Northern Iowa (14), or Southern Utah (13).  When Directional State has your number, you’re bad. It is impossible to reconcile Minnesota’s place on this schedule while giving them credit for having Big Ten quality talent on the field.

Expectations

The Gophers once again have a manageable non-conference schedule outside of USC, but last season shows nothing is guaranteed. Still, Jerry Kill should manage to wring home victories out of New Mexico State, Miami of Ohio (not a cupcake necessarily; they did reach the MAC championship game), and North Dakota State (even if they did beat South Dakota by 22 points last season). That leaves them with only three wins necessary to pull out a bowl berth, and if they could bring back two from last season’s Big Ten schedule, three could be possible in 2011. But they will have to fight just to make a bowl, this is for certain.

As with Indiana, the Gophers are building for the future. Jerry Kill is the kind of coach who, given his wildly successful three-year run in DeKalb, could bring success to Minneapolis as well. But right now, the talent just isn’t there. The Badgers should pick up their record eighth straight victory in the battle for Paul Bunyan’s axe, and the Gophers should be ecstatic just to reach a bowl this season.