Midweek Review: Minnesota 35-14 Indiana

A hiccup in the first quarter of the Gophers' trip to Bloomington had the feeling of foreboding, but it soon turned out to be nothing. Facing a depleted Indiana team, Minnesota settled into the game and made quick work of the hosts. Now all that's left is a visit from Wisconsin after Thanksgiving — but first, it's worth reexamining a rare comfortable win.

1. The running game carried the day.

It wasn't flashy, nor was it anywhere near Minnesota's best rushing performance of the season. It was just a consistently good afternoon from the Gophers' offensive line and running backs. Ky Thomas led the way with 105 yards and two touchdowns on 26 carries. It was another day where he demonstrated his balance and vision, shuffling away from would-be tacklers and picking up extra yards by spotting areas into which to run.

Once again, the Gophers did not regularly run their way into the opposing secondary. Though 20 carries gained at least 4 yards, just six went for at least 10 yards. It was a performance of respectable efficiency rather than of explosiveness.

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

Notably, the last two games, the Gophers have kept their personnel on the lighter side (by their standards). After using six or more linemen on more than a third of snaps for most of the year, against Iowa and Indiana, Minnesota did so on 18 percent of snaps. By decreasing the frequency with which they've used heavy sets, they've attempted to force defenses into lighter personnel and lighter boxes.

Another way they've done this is by lining up with an empty backfield before shifting the tailback into position for a handoff. In the following example, even after adjusting their front, Indiana presented a six-man box against Minnesota's five-man line and tight end:

When you also consider the toss plays that showed up in Iowa City last week, it's clear that co-coordinators Mike Sanford Jr. and Matt Simon have recognized the need to create more space for their running backs and to get them into that space. That doesn't constitute as big of a philosophical shift as this offense needs, but it does represent adaptation. For that, the team's offensive braintrust deserves credit.

2. Tanner Morgan mostly drove the bus but succeeded on a handful of difficult throws.

Sanford mainly kept things easy for his veteran quarterback. Eleven of Morgan's 20 throws traveled within 6 yards downfield, and only five went farther than 13 yards. If not for a few balls being knocked out of receivers' hands — partly the product of Morgan throwing into tight coverage — he could have finished with a nearly sterling completion rate. He instead settled for 70 percent, having had an all-around okay day.

Morgan's most impressive pass was his longest, going 32 yards in the air to Dylan Wright on a slot fade. It was also Wright's first catch in two weeks after barely featuring against Iowa.

Though it was hardly a show-stopping performance, Morgan played as well as was needed.

3. Chris Autman-Bell continues to excel in contested-catch situations.

Morgan's favorite target, meanwhile, made a couple of stellar plays. Maybe Autman-Bell's second touchdown should have been waved off for offensive pass interference, but there was nothing wrong with his first. As Reese Taylor blanketed him, Autman-Bell found a way to open up his body and secure a brilliant catch, maintaining control by pinning the ball to his chest as he fell to the ground.

According to Pro Football Focus, Autman-Bell has caught 52 percent of contested targets in his career. That's not as high as one might think based on his ability to make catches like those on Saturday, but it is still well above average. Last season, wide receivers caught 43 percent of contested targets.

The top tenth of receivers with at least 10 such targets converted at least two-thirds into receptions, but individual single-season samples are too small to consider terribly informative. What we can fairly guess based on his career numbers is that Autman-Bell is probably among of the Big Ten's top active jump-ball targets, even if he may not be one of the nation's best. He's given Minnesota's passing game a valuable and uncommon weapon.

4. Brevyn Spann-Ford continues to have a solid year.

Earlier in his time as a Gopher, Spann-Ford was a seldom-used part of Minnesota's offense. When he was in the game, he'd often be flexed out on passing downs rather than on the line to block, and he'd seldom get the ball. With Sanford's arrival, it seemed likely Spann-Ford would get more opportunities as a receiver, and that made him an intriguing breakout candidate. In 2020, that didn't turn out. He made just one catch.

After the Northwestern game, I wrote about how the tight end position as a whole hasn't seem a significant increase in targets. But for Spann-Ford, that hasn't been true. He's made 20 catches on 23 opportunities, a mark four times greater than his career total entering 2021. Saturday demonstrated how he has become an important part of the offense. On 3rd-and-6 from the red zone, Sanford called a screen for him, which set up Minnesota's first touchdown.

Closer to the end of the half, Spann-Ford drifted across the field on a crosser as Indiana defenders stayed focused on the wideouts, catching the ball alone and then hurdling safety Raheem Layne.

Spann-Ford's receptions have been an average of 6 yards beyond the line of scrimmage, which has therefore made his job accruing yards after the catch. He's done so well enough to be considered a reliable safety blanket, averaging 5.5 YAC per catch and becoming a frequent option for Morgan when trying to get a quick pickup against soft coverage. In addition, Spann-Ford has significantly improved as a blocker. Having been finally presented opportunities to make an impact, he's taken advantage.

5. Indiana's first drive briefly put the Gophers on upset watch again.

It's one of the risks of playing with a plodding pace on offense in every game. The Gophers saw it against Miami, they saw it against Bowling Green, and they saw it against Illinois. If the other team is worse than you, they want fewer possessions to minimize the odds of an expected result. If you fail to score with the few possessions you allow yourself, then suddenly every subsequent drive means more. And even if your defense slips up only a couple of times, you're suddenly on the verge of an improbable, entirely preventable loss because you wanted to "shorten the game."

Knowing how this approach had backfired in the past, it was easy to get a little nervous when at the end of the first quarter, Minnesota had had the ball just once and was down a touchdown. With their one possession, the Hoosiers made the Gophers' defense look totally unprepared for the running threat of quarterback Donaven McCulley. Coordinator Nick Sheridan called a number of designed runs for the true freshman, and McCulley found space.

As J Leman pointed out on the broadcast, part of Indiana's approach was spreading out the Gophers to get favorable box counts. On the above play, Thomas Rush was intentionally left unblocked on the back side edge. This meant the Hoosiers had six blockers to deal with three linemen, nickelback Justus Harris, and linebacker Jack Gibbens. By the time Mariano Sori-Marin got involved enough to block, coming from farther outside than Rush, McCulley had a clear lane, and IU still had one blocker for every man. There's no better way to make your offensive line's job easier than by swinging the math in its favor.

McCulley eventually scored on the same play out of the same formation (albeit after briefly dropping and recovering the ball). The Hoosiers had averaged 6.6 yards per play en route to the end zone, and the first quarter was all but over. The Gophers were in an early hole, having shown no signs of being able to defend what their hosts showed them. Though neither team had possessed the ball for more than one drive, swaths of Minnesota fans surely went to their doomy places, remembering how the team had previously fallen quickly into negative game states against inferior competition and never recovered. Would the trip to Bloomington end the same way?

6. Minnesota quickly tightened up defensively.

Well, obviously, the answer to that question is no. We've gone over how the offense picked things up and never stopped, but the defense deserves ample credit as well. While the full group of starters was in, Minnesota did not allow another point. Following that first successful drive, McCulley gained 22 yards on his remaining (non-sack) carries. The Gophers looked like themselves, allowing the fourth-lowest rushing success rate of their season.

Though there were good individual performances — Justus Harris might have had his most noticeably strong performance as a Gopher — they were part of playing strong team defense. As an example, take this run from midway through the third quarter. Once again, McCulley ran a sweep out of an empty backfield. This time, though, the Gophers' linemen held their gaps, stretching the play to the opposite numbers, giving the rest of the defense time to swarm to the ball. The Hoosiers then punted.

Though Minnesota only stopped four runs at or behind the line of scrimmage, the defense corrected its early mistakes and kept Indiana from posing any further threat on the ground.

7. Indiana's passing attack was hopeless.

McCulley, a true freshman who was not supposed to see the field this year, may one day prove to be a reliable FBS passer. At this point, he has not shown that he is one. His completion rate is below 50 percent, and he's been pulled multiple times for Grant Gremel, who has also been poor. The two combined for just 77 yards, with McCulley throwing two bad interceptions. The first, right before halftime, was a misguided attempt to turn a busted play into a gain. The second, later on, was actually a decent idea: Malachi Holt-Bennett had beaten Phillip Howard Jr. on a go route. The pass, however, was woefully underthrown. Howard caught it easily.

Minnesota's rush had a hand in IU's passing woes. According to PFF, McCulley wasn't blitzed once, yet he was pressured seven times on a dozen dropbacks. Gremel faced a few blitzes and was also pressured more than half the time. The Hoosiers' line has been a problem for some time, but their quarterbacks took far too long to throw as well. Those two factors combined to ensure that the Gophers were regularly in their face, preventing the passing attack from generating any rhythm.

8. M.J. Anderson and Rashad Cheney Jr. played their last games as Gophers.

Sunday, we got the news that Anderson, a 5-technique defensive end who had shown plenty of potential, would transfer. The next day, the same news came regarding the defensive tackle Cheney. Each departure creates holes in Minnesota's depth chart for 2021, but more pressingly means Minnesota will field an even younger, less experienced defensive line next year.

Anderson seemed in line to start, assuming Esezi Otomewo left after the season. For now, Jalen Logan-Redding appears most likely to take Anderson's snaps as a reserve. He has not made a tackle this season. Logan-Redding, Jah Joyner, and possibly four-star signing Deven Eastern will compete for the top spot on the depth chart next fall.

Defensive tackle has fewer obvious answers. Trill Carter is a lock for one of the starting jobs, but the next-most experienced tackle on the team will be the behemoth Logan Richter. Carter can play either nose or 3-technique, but Cheney looked like a proper pass rushing tackle that could slot in alongside him as a starter or at least rotate into certain situations. Finding someone to specifically fill that role will be difficult. Former end prospect Gage Keys may have gained enough weight by the fall to take snaps on the inside, and Eastern may bounce between spots on the line. Like Eastern, Jacob Schuster and Luther McCoy will be in their second years in the program and have yet to appear in a game, which makes it difficult to foresee how they'll figure into the competition.

Either way, these two transfers could create a more difficult transition for a unit that has been one of the team's greatest strengths this season but is set to lose lots of experience at the end of it.

9. Fleck still doesn't know when to pull starters from a blowout.

Backup quarterback Zack Annexstad has played in two games in 2021. Each time, he saw one drive.

Notably, Minnesota has held a three-touchdown lead in the fourth quarter four times this season.

If that doesn't add up, it shouldn't. The Gophers keep their starters playing too long in games they've won. It was the case in 2019, when they more regularly blew out opponents, and it remains a problem now. Not a problem that has ever resulted in disaster, mind you, but a legitimate one nonetheless. Why did Morgan or the starting offensive line need to play a single snap of Minnesota's last three drives? What good is it to put important players at risk of injury when there is nothing more for which to play? Why not give young reserve players live reps so that they are somewhat more prepared when they become the team's new regulars, or should someone ahead of them on the depth chart suffer an injury? There is no benefit to the way Minnesota handles these situations currently.

10. In a game of far lesser importance than a week ago, Fleck made correct decisions.

Fleck sure likes to get passive-aggressive when called out for poor coaching. In his postgame press conference, he invented and then bemoaned a false "conservative"-"aggressive" dichotomy as "stupid," then later half-jokingly called out the Star Tribune's Chip Scoggins for criticizing Fleck's 4th-down decisions against Iowa. He again failed to give an acceptable explanation for why he was so risk-averse in that game and can be so risk-averse in general, citing vaguely the idea that different game states and opponents affect decision-making. It was plainly dumb.

But whether Fleck has ever thought to make and follow a data-driven 4th-down chart (which would at times tell him to kick), he did the right things this time. Even after being turned away near the Hoosiers' goal-line on the Gophers' first drive, he went for it on 4th-and-short later in the game, trusting an offense practically built for short-yardage situations. The Gophers pushed the ball at the end of the first half when gifted an extra possession with 23 seconds left, coming away with a touchdown. Fleck only retreated when the game was too far out of reach for his choices to matter. (Never punt from the opposing 33-yard line, kids.)

Every coach in FBS would put his team at an advantage if he became more willing to go for it on 4th downs and viewed the "aggressive" decision as the sensible, default one. It doesn't mean becoming Presbyterian head coach Kevin Kelley, who famously never punts. It just means realizing that the majority of coaches put themselves at a disadvantage by focusing on the risk rather than the reward, and then acting upon that realization.

That goes for Fleck as well. The frustrating thing is not that Fleck is never as aggressive as he needs to be. It's that he does the right thing one week, often against an inferior opponent, and often turtles in bigger games later. If Fleck coached every game like this one, and like others before it where he's made the right decisions, he would win more games.

Next Game

The Gophers can somehow win the division if a couple of other results go their way, but neither Iowa-Nebraska nor Indiana-Purdue will matter if they cannot beat the Badgers. Without a Rose Bowl bid on the line, and with neither team likely standing a chance against Big Ten East favorites Ohio State, there isn't quite as much juice to this matchup as in the 2019 edition. Being a battle for Paul Bunyan's Axe, however, it does not need greater implications to be important.

Wisconsin's early struggles this season were directly tied to the disappointing performance of quarterback Graham Mertz. Across the Penn State, Notre Dame, and Michigan games, Mertz completed 51.6 percent of his passes, averaged less than 6 yards per pass, and threw six interceptions.

However, as the season has gone on, and as the Badgers have faced worse competition, Mertz has not needed to play as big a role. The Badgers have run on more than 70 percent of snaps since Week 5. Mertz's 19 dropbacks against Nebraska (on 47 snaps) stand out as an outlier. The Badgers not only haven't needed to pass in second halves because they've been ahead; while games are still in question, they avoid passing. Not that that is new — that's just Wisconsin.

It's been effective. Even with injuries eating into the team's running back depth, the Badgers have succeeded at running the ball. The offensive line has excelled since having an underwhelming first few weeks, and the team's backups at running back have turned out to be easily good enough to start. After the departure of Jalen Berger and season-ending injuries to Isaac Guerendo and Chez Mellusi, true freshman Braelon Allen has taken off as the Badgers' starting tailback. The 238-pounder played both running back and linebacker in high school and was listed as a safety when he signed for UW last December, but he's fit right into the offensive lineup.

Allen has been one of the nation's most explosive ballcarriers. Per PFF, more than half of Allen's yards have come on carries that gained at least 15 yards; such carries make up around an eighth of his total attempts. He gave Nebraska demonstrations of his explosiveness in 71- and 53-yard increments this past weekend. Here is the latter, which put the game out of reach:

Those bursts are the primary — if not sole — source of Wisconsin's explosiveness this season. Mertz does not go deep often, and de facto No. 2 back Brady Schipper has not shown himself to be a big-play threat in his limited sample of college carries. It is imperative that Minnesota keep Allen out of the secondary as much as possible. If that means opening up space for Mertz to go downfield, that might be a bet worth taking (to an extent). Though Danny Davis, Kendric Pryor, and Jake Ferguson can cause problems, it seems unlikely that Paul Chryst will trust his quarterback enough to open up the passing game.

As has been the case with Wisconsin's defense, meanwhile, the way to win is by going over the top. The Badgers are capable of giving up big passing plays; by collegefootballdata.com's passing explosiveness metric (which is not adjusted for opponent), they rank 54th in FBS. Here's Penn State's Jahan Dotson demonstrating this weakness to almost comical effect:

Of course, measurements of explosiveness largely capture how successful successful plays are rather than how frequently a team gets burned. And that's where the problem always lies when facing the Badgers: They rarely get burned.

The secondary has allowed a completion rate of 55 percent and the 3rd-lowest passing success rate in FBS. Breakdowns like the above often leave a mark, but they're too rare for any opponent to count on getting. All four members of the Badgers' starting secondary have defensed (intercepted or broken up) six or more passes. PFF credits corners Caesar Williams and Faion Hicks with each allowing a sub-50-percent completion rate. Wisconsin's handsy coverage may draw flags (not as many as are deserved) but continues to produce results.

Then there's the problems the Badgers create at the line. While they lack an pass rusher like Zack Baun or T.J. Watt, outside linebacker Nick Herbig and inside linebacker Leo Chenal have caused problems for opposing offensive tackles. The two have 13.5 sacks between them, and Wisconsin's sack rate is 17th in the country. So to beat the Badgers, you have to go deep... but they won't give your quarterback time for longer plays to develop. It's the conundrum Jim Leonhard's defense presents every year.

As always, those seeking safe passage on the ground will not find it. Wisconsin's run defense is one of the best in the country, allowing 3.0 yards per non-sack carry (2nd in FBS, only behind Georgia) and a 32-percent success rate (1st in FBS; via collegefootballdata.com). The triplet of Matt Henningsen, Keeanu Benton, and Isaiah Mullens is hard to move off the line, and Chenel and Jack Sanborn make a mean pairing in the middle of the UW defense. Only Georgia might have a better college front seven.

A year ago, Minnesota took Wisconsin to overtime largely through their play-action game and by pulling from the deep recesses of the playbook at important times. That game also didn't have to go to overtime; the Gophers squandered scoring opportunities and were predictable on early downs, refusing to counter the Badgers' adjustments. Those are problems not foreign to this season's Gophers. Saturday would be a good time to break free of those issues. Sanford can't be too vanilla, and Fleck can't be content to take field goals.

Perhaps above all else (aside from quarterback play): Minnesota's lines have to hold up on both sides of the ball. Maybe all five of the Gophers' five top offensive linemen will play their final home game for Minnesota on Saturday, reaching a combined 199 starts. This is the kind of game that demands their their size, skill, and experience to matter. The defensive line, much improved and well-stocked with depth, must put up a fight, stay disciplined, and keep the players behind them clean. This visit from the Gophers' biggest rivals presents the biggest test for each unit this season.