| Everything was aligned this year for the Gophers to make their first trip to Indianapolis. Wisconsin dropped a pair of conference games in September, Minnesota had a senior quarterback, and already secured a win over their closest competition for the division title they had played to date (Purdue). Yes, they had a loss to Bowling Green. It was embarrassing, but unless you thought Minnesota was going to the Playoff, it really did nothing to impact their goals for the season. Then they went out and scored 6 points against Illinois. I have nothing against Wisconsin as a program, and no particular affinity for Minnesota. But I've seen the Ohio State-Wisconsin Conference Championship Game before. Just for a little diversity, I kind of want to see Minnesota or Purdue. Now Minnesota still has Iowa and Wisconsin on their schedule, but they have completely eliminated any room for error. So back to them scoring 6 points against Illinois. The Illini have the nation's #49 defense by SP+. Iowa is #3, and Wisconsin's #2 defense is two weeks away. So where are the points coming from? It has to start with getting the ground game going. The Illinois defense has been sneaky good (at times) against the run this season, and they were able to totally shut down a Minnesota run game which had weathered the loss of their top three running backs thanks to an elite run blocking line. Against the Illini, they mustered just 89 yards on 2.5 yards per carry. The whole offense fell apart around that. Tanner Morgan, who had been playing better, without the threat of play action, and short sticks, averaged just 6.7 ypa, with no touchdowns and 2 picks, his worst TD:INT ratio since...well, the Bowling Green game. It doesn't help that that great run blocking offensive line, is terrible in pass protection, particularly in obvious passing downs, where they rank #113 in sack rate on passing downs. The one upside is that the one thing Iowa's defense doesn't really do, is get after the quarterback. They are 93rd in the FBS in sack rate, at just 5.31%, and over the past three games, it drops to 3.54%. However, it's not like the Iowa offense is in much better shape though. Last week the Hawkeyes were back to their September turnover games, at +3 against NORTHWESTERN, and still only scored 17 points, and were outgained by the Cats. Tyler Goodson had his best game since they beat Kent, but nobody is buying that fool's gold. What I am buying is Alex Padilla, who came on to replace Spencer Petras, and looked good. Some of his throws were NFL good throws, and with a full week of first team reps, I think Ferentz has to turn to him. Throw in the fact that Chris Autman-Bell appears to be out for Minnesota, and I think Iowa can stack that box, force Tanner Morgan into situations where he gets turnover prone, and put their offense in favorable situations. |
