A season that started by appearing that D.J. Durkin had the Terps rebuild ahead of schedule has devolved into a a massive quarterback issue. It appeared that only Max Bortenschlager remained available among Maryland's scholarship quarterbacks, but it seems that perhaps North Carolina transfer Caleb Henderson will play this week after all. Nobody is really sure what Maryland has in him, but I think fans saw just about all they wanted to see from Bortenschlager, after an awful showing last Saturday. Whoever gets snaps is going to need much more from a line that couldn't block Central Florida a week ago, only picking up 42 rushing yards on 1.1 ypc. The dynamic Ty Johnson was held totally in check on only 25 yards on 11 carries, getting more than half of them on one 13 yard run. Minnesota had seemingly found their groove a couple weeks ago, and now just need to hope the bye week was beneficial and not a hiccup to their progress. P.J. Fleck seems to slowly be working more of a passing game into the attack, and in that regard these teams are very similar, and we might have a 2 and a half hour game. Both right around 20 pass attempts per game, these two teams pass the ball the least in the conference, but when they do, they pick their spots, and do it effectively. Even down to their third quarterback, Maryland leads the Big Ten in completion percentage, Minnesota is 6th; and they are 2nd and 3rd in yards per attempt, both just under 9.0. The difference is that Minnesota also plays defense, and so far Maryland has not. Maryland ranks in the bottom four of the Big Ten in scoring defense, total defense, rushing defense and passing defense. Their pass rush is solid, but they aren't creating turnovers, and there are too many gaps in the back seven when they don't get there. I don't envision the Gophers giving them many chances to get at Conor Rhoda, and the Gophers grind out another big time of possession edge.
MINNESOTA 34, MARYLAND 23
