Midweek Review: Nebraska 23-30 Minnesota

Minnesota's bowl chances are a lot higher after beating Big Ten west rivals Nebraska Saturday. The Gophers never trailed, but it ended up anything but easy thanks to a second-half Huskers surge. Though much of that was down to execution, better coaching in the second half might have made the game more comfortable in the end. Regardless, it was a solid win in many ways, beginning with the Gopher offense's dominant first half.

1. Mike Sanford Jr. had his best half as the U of M's playcaller.

From the start of the game, the Gophers broke from their usual tendencies. On their first play, instead of handing the ball off, Tanner Morgan threw a quick hitch to Chris Autman-Bell out of a six-lineman set. On the next 1st down, Morgan threw again. When his pass fell incomplete, the Gophers didn't try to just make 2nd-and-manageable and run the ball; Morgan threw a slant that picked up 10 yards for the conversion.

As the Gophers continued driving down the field, they used six different personnel groupings on 14 snaps and never ran on more than two plays in a row until within the red zone. When faced with 4th-and-1 from the Nebraska 5-yard line, P.J. Fleck didn't hesitate in leaving the offense on the field. Then, sub-package quarterback Cole Kramer finished off the drive with his first college completion, finding a wide-open Brevyn Spann-Ford in the end zone.

Minnesota kept Nebraska off-balance throughout the first half, and it was centered around throwing the ball. Half of the Gophers' 36 plays were passes (including one sack and one scramble). They passed on nearly half of their 1st downs. They ran the ball just three times out of six-lineman sets (on 10 such plays), which marked a dramatic departure from the team's usual strategy. Most of Minnesota's opponents can safely focus their attention on the run because of the Gophers' overconfidence in their ground game. The Cornhuskers, however, had to contend with the passing attack.

Morgan justified the extra trust by putting forth his best showing in ages, going 14-of-16 for 171 yards and two touchdowns in the first half. He threw screens and short routes, yes, but he also completed intermediate passes and was dead-on on difficult throws, like this corner route to Mike-Brown Stephens:

The execution was there from Morgan's supporting cast as well. Minnesota's pass protection was excellent all game. Autman-Bell, Morgan's favorite target, appeared fully healthy and played like one of the best receivers in the conference. He eventually finished with 11 catches for 103 yards, including this astonishing touchdown over Quinton Newsome:

The first half acted as a demonstration of what Minnesota's offense can be and far too often is not. It was varied. The coaches had faith their experienced quarterback and talented receiver group to lead the way. Though it didn't come off, Sanford even deserves credit for calling a reverse flea-flicker. He didn't fall into predictability or stubbornly lean on the established "bread-and-butter" of the offense. He looked like as good a playcaller as one could want.

For a little over 30 minutes, anyway.

2. After Morgan threw a couple of early second-half interceptions, the Gophers retreated.

One can be generous with Morgan's first pick. He underthrew Brown-Stephens enough for Cam Taylor-Britt to catch up to the ball, but there are probably a lot of college cornerbacks who wouldn't make him pay like Taylor-Britt did. It was a poor throw rather than an inexcusable one.

Then there was the second pick. You cannot wave away that one.

You can imagine what Morgan tried to do: go over Deontai Williams and hit an open Autman-Bell for what would have been another big gain. But if that was his goal, Morgan didn't put nearly enough arc on the throw, and it might have been just short of his receiver anyway. This was an inexcusable throw.

From that point on, Minnesota turtled. Morgan threw four more passes the rest of the game.

To go with their ground-only approach, Minnesota leaned on heavy personnel again. In Nebraska's postgame press conference, JoJo Domann guessed that the Gophers went to an unbalanced line on three-quarters of their snaps in the second half. It was technically only 69 percent, but that number creeps up to 81 percent when you only count plays after Morgan's second interception. Though they never used a seventh lineman or second tight end during that stretch, which presented a slightly greater passing threat than in past games, Minnesota's intentions were still clear: The Gophers were going to try and push through the Cornhuskers rather than go over them. The result was one second-half touchdown.

Even granting that one of the Gophers' later possessions began at their own 1-yard line — which is a spot where most coaches should be more creative and aggressive — they should not have completely abandoned their first-half approach. Minnesota's offensive braintrust overreacted to two bad moments from Morgan, and that played a major part in keeping the game competitive. For all the praise Sanford deserves for breaking from tendencies and going for the game in the first half, he deserves a ample criticism for reverting back to bad habits at the first sign of adversity.

3. Minnesota's rushing attack was fine, but below its normal standards.

Since closing out the Purdue game, a couple of events made it look like it would harder for the Gophers to run the ball. Trey Potts' season ended after an undisclosed injury that required hospitalization. Guard Curtis Dunlap Jr. decided to transfer. While losing neither player will tank the team's run game, it sure doesn't help.

Knowing that, we entered Saturday expecting to see a rotation between running backs Mar'Keise Irving, Ky Thomas, and Bryce Williams, with guard Axel Ruschmeyer elevated to the sixth lineman role for heavy personnel sets. Overall, the results were okay enough.

You can find explanations for each stat here.
line yards and success rate are via
collegefootballdata.com.

Against a defense that doesn't allow many big runs, the Gophers only broke off a couple. They weren't overly efficient, either; excluding Williams' 56-yard touchdown, Minnesota averaged 3.8 yards per attempt, and Nebraska stopped seven runs at or behind the line of scrimmage.

The Gophers' blockers did put forth a good performance again, though. Ruschmeyer looked better in his return to significant playing time than he did for most of 2020, most notably laying the final pancake on Williams' score. John Michael Schmitz and Blaise Andries each continued their runs of good games, with Schmitz doing what he needed to quell disruptive nose tackle Damion Daniels. The Gophers weren't overwhelmed at the line, but the Huskers rallied to the ball and mostly kept the ball from reaching the second and third levels.

4. The Gophers neutralized Adrian Martinez as a runner.

Consider this: In the 36 games that make up Martinez's career at Nebraska, he has failed to run for double-digit non-sack yards twice. The first time, against Bethune-Cookman in 2018, it was because he did not have one carry. The second time was Saturday, when the Gophers held him to 2 yards on six attempts.

In both his postgame and Monday press conferences, Fleck explained how the Gophers held Martinez in check as a scrambler. As Fleck put it, to keep Martinez from breaking from the pocket, Minnesota's linemen had to stay disciplined, not go too far into the backfield, and rush through their blockers (rather than around them) to maintain their rush lanes. If a Gopher pass rusher overran Martinez, that would have allowed him room to escape the pocket. If it came to that, there was often a spy (or two) sitting at the line to give extra cover.

Additionally, Minnesota rarely sent more than four rushers. Defensive coordinator Joe Rossi banked on forcing a quarterback who often takes a while to throw to sit in the pocket longer, hopefully keeping him from burning the Gophers as a runner and maybe creating coverage sacks. And the plan worked exactly as intended.

According to Pro Football Focus, nearly three-quarters of Martinez's dropbacks lasted 2.5 seconds or longer, which was one of the highest marks among FBS passers last week. It's how the Gophers totaled 13 pressures and converted two of them into sacks. See Esezi Otomewo's safety for how it worked.

The Gophers, dropping into cover 2, effectively occupied their zones and gave Martinez nowhere to throw the ball. That gave the line time to collapse the pocket around Martinez, who tried to buy himself room but ended up throwing the ball away for intentional grounding.

To show how Minnesota's spies worked, here's an example from earlier in the game.

Boye Mafe did overrun Martinez on this play, but as the quarterback tried to break free, Donald Willis and Thomas Rush were there to dissuade him from taking off. The two of them, plus Nyles Pinckney, closed in and forced a hurried pass that bounced off of Willis but was unlikely to result in a 1st down anyway.

The Huskers' quarterback may finish the year with 1,000 non-sack rushing yards. As a runner, he has been the primary source of his team's explosive plays. That the Gophers made Martinez's legs a non-factor was a major accomplishment that was crucial to securing the win.

5. While throwing the ball, meanwhile, Martinez made an impact but was inconsistent.

One of the keys to the Cornhuskers bouncing back from their Week 0 fiasco at Illinois was the emergence of Martinez as a passer. He was always a good scrambler, but over the past month, his accuracy was much more reliable, and he connected on more deep passes than he had at any other point as a college player. Martinez became the Big Ten West's best quarterback.

He didn't look like it Saturday. He finished 18-of-33 with 241 yards and one late touchdown, in addition to the aforementioned two sacks. It wasn't that Martinez was dreadful; he connected on some vital intermediate and deep passes and protected the ball. But the inconsistent accuracy that plagued him in the past returned, and he delivered multiple throws where he and the intended receiver had different ideas on where the ball was supposed to be.

It would be unfair to say his performance lost the game for Nebraska, but to put it bluntly, Martinez had to pass better than he did for his team to win.

6. Nebraska's Austin Allen kept sneaking into open spaces.

The Huskers' most productive tactic was involving their 6-foot-9-inch tight end off of play-action. Allen made five catches Saturday, and only one (his touchdown) was off a straight dropback or remotely contested. On the other four, Martinez threatened to either hand off or run. The following play didn't involve any fake to the running back, but the pulling lineman and Martinez's move to his right gave the impression that Nebraska was running the option. That drew the attention of Minnesota linebackers, who allowed Allen to drift past them on a corner route. He turned it into a 40-yard gain.

Running the ball well or often is not nearly as important to play-action success as once thought, but it is still important that play-action be married to an offense's run concepts. This was a smart design that created a lot of space for Martinez's tallest target, who ended up leading both teams in receiving yards.

7. In one of the game's most critical moments, the Gophers held their ground to keep the Cornhuskers out of the end zone.

After a 29- and 4-yard runs by Rahmir Johnson and Martinez, the Huskers had the ball 2 yards from the end zone with a chance to take their first lead. On 2nd down, Martinez handed off to Johnson, but Micah Dew-Treadway swam past the right guard to occupy the B gap and keep the ball inside. Meanwhile, Nebraska's tight end whiffed on Jack Gibbens, who met Johnson at the 1-yard line.

On 3rd down, Nebraska ran power with Martinez. The left guard pulled across and kicked out Gibbens to open a lane inside of him, but Jordan Howden made one of the plays of the game by filling the gap with a violent hit to stand up the quarterback right at the goal line. A handful of other Gophers gave the extra push needed to get Martinez down.

There was no overturning this, but while we're here: I think it's more likely
than not that the ball crossed the line.

On 4th down, Minnesota got some luck when Jaquez Yant stumbled at the mesh point, but Yant still would have scored if Tyler Nubin hadn't filled the C gap and stopped him just short of the end zone. If Nubin was a fraction of a second late, the Huskers would have led.

According to Game on Paper, Nubin's tackle was worth 15 points of win probability to the Gophers' cause — the second-most important play of the game, behind only Otomewo's safety. Between 3rd and 4th downs, Minnesota's win probability jumped from 42 percent to more than 63 percent. Not that you need it quantified: The Gophers badly needed a defensive stand, and the fact they got one was as vital to their chances as nearly any other sequence in the game.

8. While the Huskers ran for chunks of yardage, the Gophers created negative plays.

It would be slightly inaccurate to call Nebraska's rushing attack boom-or-bust, whether over the course of the season or in this game alone. While the Huskers aren't the most efficient team in the sport, their rushing success rate entering Saturday (via collegefootballdata.com) was a decidedly middling 42 percent with garbage time filtered out. They also usually make the line of scrimmage at least.

Saturday did look slightly closer to boom-or-bust than the Cornhuskers are accustomed to, however.

First, the boom: Three Nebraska runs gained at least 25 yards. Two came through misdirection, attacking the edge first with a reverse that Minnesota's backside defenders (Otomewo and Gibbens) picked up too late...

...and then with a perfectly executed guard-tight end counter away from trips.

Scott Frost called a great game and exhibited a lot of clever designs, often tied to or disguised as option concepts, that got the ballcarrier into space. That's how the Huskers often picked up bushels of yards at a time.

Now, the bust: The Gophers stopped eight runs at or behind the line of scrimmage, the most times they've done so in a game this season. While Minnesota was not perfect against the option (one of those big plays came on a pitch to Johnson), the team's linebackers made enough stops to keep NU from going back to it often. And the defensive line continued to show out. While Nubin made the tackle on this play, Pinckney and Trill Carter caused it by clogging the interior and forcing Martinez to look for a cutback lane that wasn't there.

Against an explosive rushing attack, the Gophers were almost certainly going to give up explosive runs, and they did. Even so, those gains weren't field-spanning backbreakers. Additionally, the the amount of negative plays the Gophers forced helped make up for the big gains. Between those factors and Martinez's minimal output scrambling, they kept the Huskers from running all over them.

9. Minnesota is giving up too much ground in prevent situations.

On their final possession, the Cornhuskers drove 75 yards in 60 seconds. While the first 15 of those yards were thanks to a questionable roughing the passer call, the rest came on just five plays. With the teams separated by 14 points and with so little time left, the game should have been out of reach. Instead, the Huskers cut the game to one possession and could have tied it up, had they recovered an onside kick.

Maybe Williams could have prevented this situation by stopping a few yards short on his 56-yard touchdown. (You may recall Mohamed Ibrahim doing something similar a year ago, and Fleck discussing with the media how the Gophers practice "down time.") But the real concern is how Rossi's defense has dealt with the ends of Minnesota's last two games. Two weeks ago, Purdue came within 27 yards of a game-tying touchdown before Nubin intercepted Aidan O'Connell with 47 seconds to go. They were too soft in these prevent situations. Two data points aren't enough to call this a trend, but the Gophers can't let it become one.

10. Fleck continues to be too risk-averse in tight games.

Before halftime, Minnesota got the ball with 51 seconds to go 80 yards, with a timeout remaining. Though I don't feel as strongly about it as I would if Minnesota had better field position or another timeout, I prefer trying to score in this spot. (If Fleck was more frugal with first-half timeouts, that would have helped.) There was enough time to at least try for field goal position, if not even come away with a touchdown. With the Gophers getting the ball after halftime, they could have made the deficit between 16 and 26 points before the Huskers touched the ball again. I will grant that kneeling is always better than running a draw between the tackles and needlessly risking injury. (Either go for it or don't — committing to neither is pointless.) But trying to score is almost always better than not.

Later, in the fourth quarter, Fleck twice punted from between the 40s on 4th-and-2 or shorter. In both instances, it was a five-point game. Nebraska had driven to within the Minnesota 10-yard line on each of the two possessions preceding the first punt, and then got as far as the 29-yard line on the drive before the second one. It looked unlikely Minnesota could win with the one-possession advantage they had at the time. If Fleck was trusting his defense to hold off the Huskers, that was the wrong choice. Just as his offense's approach needed to be more aggressive, so did his 4th-down decision-making.

Next Game

When the Gophers visited Maryland last season, it was a shootout that sent a few clear messages about where Minnesota's season was going: They were going to run the ball a lot, even after it ceased to benefit them; their special teams were inadequate; and their defense was not nearly good enough. The Gophers allowed 297 yards on just 30 carries thanks to poor fits, missed tackles, and explosive scrambling by Taulia Tagovailoa. Additionally, Tagovailoa added 394 yards as a passer. 

Minnesota's defense is obviously much improved. So, it seemed, was Maryland's offense, but it has a couple of big holes in it after leg injuries ended Dontay Demus Jr. and now Jeshaun Jones' seasons. Demus was the team's best player, and Jones was third on the team in catches and receiving yards.

The Terps' most dangerous weapon left, then, is Rakim Jarrett, who uses his speed to accumulate yards after the catch. Tight end Chigoziem Okonkwo, meanwhile, sat out of the 2020 season but has been a reliable safety valve for Tagovailoa in his return. After those two, the offense will rely on upperclassmen Carlos Carriere, Brian Cobbs, and Darryl Jones to play greater roles than they have for most of their time at UMD. Tagovailoa has been throwing shorter in 2021 than a year ago, which has led to a super-efficient passing game but few chunk plays. Without two of his top targets, he may play it even safer against Minnesota.

The Terps' run game, led by Tayon Fleet-Davis, has been similar in profile, if to a less extreme level: Per collegefootball.com, they rank 26th in rushing success rate and 96th in explosiveness (with garbage time removed). Perhaps because it is unaccustomed to taking shots, Dan Enos' offense hasn't done well in passing downs. It will therefore be important for the Gophers to put the Terrapins behind schedule with havoc plays on early downs.

When the Gophers have the ball, Sanford needs to let Morgan work. Though the Terps most recently got torched on the ground by Ohio State, that's been the outlier this year. Five Maryland linemen have made at least 3.0 tackles for loss, and senior safety Jordan Mosley has mostly cleaned up messes when called upon to do so. True freshman linebacker Branden Jennings (one of a handful of underclassmen getting regular snaps at the position) had a strong start to the season but missed the Iowa and OSU games with an injury. If he's back, that will give Maryland a boost — which is even more needed after the premature end to "Jack" linebacker Durell Nchami's year.

The real issue has been the pass defense. An early run of outmatched or incapable opponents has kept Maryland's allowed completion rate low, but most teams have still made what punches they land count, averaging 13.7 yards per catch. The Gophers should look to pick on sophomore corner Tarheeb Still in particular. Still had a rough game against them last year in College Park and has had a few more of them this season.

At a glance, it feels more likely that if either offense runs wild, it will be the Gophers' (assuming those running that offense unleash it). But one shouldn't count on that happening. While the Terrapins have proven that they aren't even a top-25 team, we probably knew that before their two losses. They have yet to stumble against a team without an elite defense (Iowa) or elite offense (Ohio State), and the week off may have allowed them to reset after those clobberings. And it's not like the Gophers haven't made games closer than they need to be. Minnesota deserves to be favored, and there's a chance the final margin is comfortable (for once), but the Gophers should expect a fight.