2022 Gophers Position Previews: Quarterbacks

The sixth season of the P.J. Fleck era at Minnesota begins Sept. 1 against Jerry Kill's New Mexico State. Ski-U-Blog will have previews of the Gophers' notable players in each position group. Today, we move on to quarterback.

Likely Starter

For better or worse, Tanner Morgan is still here. Since flipping from Western Michigan the day that Minnesota officially hired P.J. Fleck, Morgan's hair has migrated from the top of his head to around his jawline, and all but three other members of that 2017 recruiting class have moved on from the U of M. No other Big Ten starting quarterback from 2018 is still where they were then. Morgan has beaten Wisconsin twice, lost to Iowa four times, and never missed a start since a weird Friday night victory over Indiana in 2018. By the end of the year, he can take over for Adam Weber as the program's record holder in career yards and touchdowns.

The fact that Morgan is using his sixth season of eligibility is as clear an indication as any that he probably won't play a down in the NFL. To even have a chance, he'll need to make up for or fix his flaws, and bounce back from a pair of disappointing seasons.

It will forever be uncertain how much of Morgan's steps backwards can be attributed to since-fired co-offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Mike Sanford Jr. The Gophers' offense under Sanford was, compared to under Kirk Ciarrocca, essentially the same car with a few new parts and a faulty engine. An optimistic view of Ciarrocca's return says that Morgan will regain some of his old form, but the truth of a soon-to-be-fifth-year starting quarterback is that he probably is what he is.

What Minnesota needs Morgan to be is a calm hand who executes the Ciarrocca offense's simple reads, takes care of the ball, and every so often makes a big-time throw. In 2019, with two elite receivers, he showed he could do that. The last two years, Morgan has not been universally bad, but he has tried to force more and more balls into windows he can't, never quite learned to look off a defender, looked away from open receivers, and never remedied the inconsistent accuracy that Rashod Bateman and Tyler Johnson often bailed out. Morgan threw a career-high nine interceptions last year, and played some of his worst games as a Gopher.

As I've done each of the last two preseasons, it's time to look at the data behind Morgan's frustrating 2021 season.

Click on any image in this post to enlarge it.

Every throw Morgan threw last season is in the above scatterplot. However, while there are some things to be gleaned just by eyeballing it, it's hard to analyze all of those points at once. Here are those throws bucketed into 10 zones: three zones at each of the short (0 to 9 yards), intermediate (10 to 19 yards), and deep (20-plus yards) levels, and one zone for all passes behind the line of scrimmage. The zones are colored based on how they compare to Morgan's overall completion rate of 59.8 percent.

That's a lot of red, and all of it is beyond 10 yards downfield. Morgan was okay on his easy throws but unremarkable at at best on the throws that make a quarterback good or bad.

It appears that Morgan's struggles influenced the direction of the Gophers' offense. On the following density plot, we can see that Morgan's favorite place to throw was roughly between 5 and 10 yards, between the right hash and the numbers.

Two years ago, Morgan distributed his passes evenly across the field, which itself was a departure from how he heavily targeted the middle in 2019.

This shift to the short right area suggests a conservative shift in Morgan's approach and in Sanford's playcalling. Right-handed quarterbacks can sometimes be worse at throwing left because their bodies, by default, face right when they drop back. That basic geometric reality can affect playcalling.

Since 2019, Morgan has been basically as good throwing right (60.2 percent completion rate) as going left (61.8 percent) between the short and intermediate parts of the field.

But while his stats don't align with the idea that he's any worse going left, it's clear going right has always been his preference. In Morgan's time as full-time starter, the 2021 season showed that preference most extremely.

Meanwhile, his target rate between 0 and 9 yards also hit a new high. In his first year under Sanford, Morgan's deep passes moved to the intermediate level. Last year, the deep ball came back partially, and the intermediate ball was significantly de-emphasized.

This trend indicates that Sanford was trying to make things easier on his quarterback, except to take intermittent shots downfield. That doesn't suggest a ton of trust.

Those shots downfield, as they've been under both Sanford and Ciarrocca, were directed to the sideline or the back corner of the end zone. Last season, only about a fifth of Morgan's throws 15 or more yards downfield went over the middle.

When asked to go deep, Morgan can hit the throws. Sometimes. Minnesota's proficiency on deep balls was one of the things that carried their offense in 2019, and that route was practically their only source of explosive plays in 2021. But Morgan does not consistently put enough force on the ball even when it has the distance.

This touchdown to Chris Autman-Bell, which went 41 yards from the line of scrimmage, was a good pass for a college quarterback. Autman-Bell needed to slow down ever so slightly to make sure he caught it, but not so much that Iowa's cornerback could catch up after getting burned by Morgan's pump fake. Morgan did his job here.

Then there were throws like the following, which resulted in a big play but could have turned into a touchdown for Michael Brown-Stephens if Morgan hit him in stride. That Brown-Stephens could still catch it owed far more to how open he was than to the execution of his quarterback.

There were also some misses, where Morgan either couldn't put the ball on target or an underthrow allowed the defender to make a play.

Ultimately, Morgan's arm is one of his limitations. Over the last two seasons, his completion rate on deep throws is 34.5 percent. (Pro Football Focus had last year's national average a smidge above that.) A more creative offensive scheme could probably help improve that mark — calling fewer max-protect fades would reduce contested balls and force the defense to account for more receivers downfield, as an example. But the truth is that he's been very middling in this regard without both of Bateman and Johnson to target. There's nothing exactly wrong with being just middling. There's just a clear ceiling on Morgan as a deep passer.

For Minnesota to have greater success throwing in 2022, the personnel around Morgan all need to step up: his playcaller, his receivers, his rebuilt offensive line. But most of all, Morgan has to be more reliable. His decision-making and accuracy need to be more consistent from week-to-week, or else the Gophers will again be one-dimensional on offense.

An oft-repeated Fleckism is "change your best." In Morgan's final season, it might be more important that he change his worst.

Key Backups

One of Athan Kaliakmanis or Cole Kramer will be Morgan's backup this season.

Kaliakmanis, the former 4-star prospect, saw more second-team snaps than Kramer at the open practice I attended. His high school tape shows he is plenty comfortable improvising when the pocket breaks down (and sometimes when it doesn't), and he can throw on the run. He had enough burst as a runner for scrambles or designed runs to work at that level, too.

As a passer, it's unclear whether deep throws will be a challenge for him. Kaliakmanis can, however, put enough zip on the ball to keep timing routes on time or to squeeze it through a tight window.

Unlike Kaliakmanis, Kramer will definitely get into games by design this year. After the Gophers toyed with using running backs in the Wildcat last season, Kramer took over that duty. The "Krispy" package, as it has been dubbed, is the sequel to Seth Green's "Green Line," with its central character getting a few snaps a game to plunge into a melee along the line of scrimmage in a short-yardage situation. It appeared on 7 percent of Minnesota's snaps last year and worked more often than it maybe should have.

What makes the Krispy package different from the Green Line, theoretically, is the threat of a pass. Green, originally signed as a quarterback, got that chance a few times in 2018, threw an interception against Iowa, and then attempted exactly one pass each of the following two seasons. Kramer, unlike Green, has stuck as a backup quarterback, which can keep opposing defenses from packing the box. If the other team does sell out against the run, Kramer can go over the top.

As for Kramer's traditional quarterbacking skills: We don't have enough information. Neither he nor Kaliakmanis was terribly impressive in the spring game. At this point, it's hard to separate the two players on the depth chart from the outside.

In any case, whoever becomes the second choice for 2022 will not necessarily become the starter in 2023. There's ample time for each to make his case in that battle.

Notables Unlikely to Contribute

Now that Samuel Pickerign has moved to tight end, and with Lonenoa Faoa no longer on the roster, the only other quarterback left is 3-star signee Jacob Knuth. The South Dakota native will not factor into the 2022 season unless a lot of bad things happen, but depending on what happens in the 2023 quarterback competition, Knuth might become the team's top backup. The possibility of a transfer ahead of him on the depth chart means Minnesota should add multiple quarterbacks before next season.