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. We close our discussion of the offense with the line.
Likely Starters
We'll start with the easy stuff.
John Michael Schmitz, the lone returning starter from 2021, is one of the best linemen in college football, and he's the right kind of lineman for Minnesota's zone-heavy scheme. As discussed last year, a typical Minnesota offensive lineman under P.J. Fleck and position coach Brian Callahan has been significantly heavier than the average college lineman. But the Gophers have run zone effectively because those giants get a good first step off the snap of scrimmage and move well laterally. Being able to reach a defender's outside shoulder and force him away from the play is crucial.
Recent Gophers linemen have been able to do that with regularity, and that has included Schmitz. He has a strong base and active feet, two traits that allow him to gain leverage on opposing players and open holes.
To see more of Schmitz's power and footwork, watch the following play. He got popped by Leo Chenal at the snap, but Schmitz kept his balance and drove Chenal downfield into a pancake. Chenal got good penetration but didn't blow up the play because Schmitz held his ground and recovered so well; what forced Mar'Keise Irving to reverse field was unrelated.
Though Schmitz makes his mark as a run blocker more often, he's also an effective pass protector. Pro Football Focus credits him with allowing a pressure on just 2.0 percent of opportunities to do so, as well as zero sacks, over his whole college career.
If Schmitz can win the Rimington Trophy as the nation's top center, he'd be the second Gopher to do so, following Greg Eslinger in 2005. Five of the last seven winners were selected in the first two rounds of the NFL Draft, including Iowa's Tyler Linderbaum most recently. It's uncertain whether he'll go that high, but it seems like a lock that Schmitz will follow Daniel Faalele into the NFL.
To Schmitz's left will be Axel Ruschmeyer. When a couple of starters sat out of the 2020 season, the line had to be reshuffled, and Ruschmeyer ended up filling in at left guard. He was the team's worst offensive lineman that year. Not terrible, but clearly the weakest part of an otherwise veteran line. According to Pro Football Focus, he allowed three sacks, the highest total on the team. That's not a distinction a guard wants, considering the best pass rushers on the opposing team typically line up over the tackles.
Like any Gopher offensive lineman, though, he was always was a better run blocker than pass blocker. Because of that — as well as some apparent development — Ruschmeyer was much more trustworthy in 2021 as the team's favorite supplemental blocker in a jumbo set. He took nearly five times as many snaps outside the tackle than he did at his natural position, guard, and even played fullback. And he was almost always asked to run block.
The thing about Ruschmeyer's season was not that he often caught the eye or flattened anyone. He just consistently did the required job at a decent level. This was a successful block:
This was a successful block:
And this was a successful double team into a successful second-level block:
You do that enough times, and you become the team's highest-graded run blocker by PFF. I, for one, don't think Ruschmeyer is as good as that distinction suggests. But such a high grade does indicate reliability. There's value in just not screwing up very often, even if you don't make a major impact. If Ruschmeyer can be just adequate again (and if his pass sets have improved since 2020), left guard is one position the Gophers don't have to worry about.
Michigan transfer Chuck Filiaga will slot in at right guard. At 330 pounds, he certainly has the dimensions to fit in.
Like Ruschmeyer, Filiaga is more competent than dominant. He is not a nimble man. He is a slow puller, which would hurt him more if he'd transfer to Wisconsin but will still cause problems if the Gophers ever want to run counter to the left. Michigan also does not run a lot of zone, so it's worth asking how effective Filiaga will be this scheme.
What one might expect more of are plays where Filiaga uses his size and plows a defensive lineman off the ball. I did not see many instances of that in my scouting. He may knock a smaller defender over in the open field or while coming across the formation, he can clean up the back end of a play, and he will hold his ground, but a true impact blocker he is not.
What Filiaga is is an intelligent pass blocker. He looks for work and knows when to hand the work off to someone else to address a more urgent situation. He may get beaten by a quicker rusher from time to time but in general will not be a liability. According to PFF, Fliaga's career pressure rate allowed is 4.3 percent, which is close to the average for an interior lineman in 2021 (4.6 percent). He should make a fine if unspectacular addition for his one season in the Twin Cities.
At the two tackle spots, there is less experience, starting with redshirt sophomore Aireontae Ersery on the left. Observers have liked Ersery in camp, but Fleck has spoken well of him since the Kansas City native was pressed into action as a true freshman in 2020. Ersery, playing on the right side that day, didn't have a flawless game that day, but he showed he has the right physical traits to work in the scheme and had a few impressive moments.
I wish ya'll could have seen my reaction when I watched Aireontae Ersery reach a 3-tech. Keep in mind, Ersery didn't start playing football until his sophomore year in HS.
— Daniel House (@DanielHouseNFL) December 15, 2020
The true freshman played well and is super athletic. His future is very, very bright. #Gophers
📺: FS1 pic.twitter.com/2X2fu3lA6H
Ersery appeared in just one game last season, coming on at the end of the win over Northwestern. His spring game ended in the first quarter as well, so we haven't seen him much since that Nebraska game. But the talk around him is positive, and the left tackle job is his.
The story is different on the right side, where there's a real contest. When Quinn Carroll announced his transfer to Minnesota, many surely penciled him in as a new starter for the Gophers. Once the highest-rated recruit in the state, the Edina product picked Notre Dame over Minnesota but hasn't played much college ball. One major reason has been injury: Carroll tore his ACL in his first fall camp. Since then, by PFF's tracking, Carroll took just 52 offensive snaps.
Carroll was still in South Bend completing his bachelor's degree during spring ball, so we haven't seen him in maroon in gold outside of practices. However, since he was at such a high-profile program, we can watch all 52 of those snaps on YouTube.
Carroll only entered games during garbage time with the Irish. In 2020, he showed more bad than good. The game against Pitt, in which he played a career-high 22 snaps, was particularly ugly. Carroll whiffed frequently in the run game and had serious troubles against the pass rush.
His 2021 tape is better, even if sample size disclaimers apply. He was a bit cleaner and a lot meaner, finishing blocks with aggressive pancakes on a few occasions. His six snaps in pass protection suggested, though, that that area of his game still needed refining. These two plays were on the same set of downs:
But again, we have gotten a very limited glance at Carroll's skill set. It may say something that he decided to transfer instead of staying at Notre Dame to compete for one of the two open starting tackle jobs.
Another competitor at right tackle is Martes Lewis, who is the same weight as Filiaga but an inch taller (6 feet, 7 inches) and better moving. In the spring game, Lewis got off the ball well and demonstrated deft feet. He had two bad moments on back-to-back plays — a hold and then letting Austin Booker spin outside of him for a pressure — but in general stayed in front of rushers and didn't make a lot of mistakes in pass protection.
Lewis may need more consistent pad level as a run blocker. That is not an uncommon problem for someone his height, though, and I don't think it will be a killer. It seemed like he got the most first-team snaps when I attended the team's August 6 open practice, and I like enough of what I've seen on his limited tape to think he has a strong chance of starting the opener.
That said, at the time of that practice, J.J. Guedet was still working back from an offseason surgery, presumably addressing whatever injury held him out of this year's spring game. Guedet has received a few opportunities here and there, most prominently as part of the makeshift unit fielded at Nebraska two years ago. He was only an extra left tackle in that game but did an alright job when required.
Guedet's most recent tape of any significant amount is the 2021 spring game, where nothing about his performance stuck out as especially good or especially bad. As discussed above, not standing out can be a relatively fine thing. However, like others mentioned so far, Guedet doesn't move people off the line as much as one would like. His feet can stall out, and his stance can become narrow or tall. It's not a debilitating, every-down flaw, but it is a flaw. Based on what we've seen from the outside, Guedet is not such a standout player that the job was his to lose. Returning from an injury, he's probably playing a little bit from behind this camp.
Key Backups
Whichever two players lose the right tackle battle could see action as the sixth and seventh linemen in heavy personnel packages. We could also see tackle rotate depending on the players' strengths. As a comparable example, in 2021, just over two thirds of guard Curtis Dunlap Jr.'s snaps were on run plays. While deploying anyone in such a fashion would make the offense more predictable, it's not like Minnesota offenses under Fleck have ever run away from tells like that. Fleck himself said a rotation is possible.
Nathan Boe could also feature in a super-sized line. The redshirt senior from Lakeville has done so before over the last couple of years. Being a bit smaller than his peers (it's all relative — he's officially 300 pounds), Boe typically lined up on the weak side of an unbalanced line. He has filled in for Schmitz a couple of times but not looked terribly impressive in those spots. Against Nebraska in 2020, he had some problems blocking Damian Daniels and Ben Stille. Not that that's something to be ashamed of; those are good players, and Boe was a backup.
There's also Karter Shaw to consider. A year ago, I thought Shaw might factor into the 2022 offensive line, but that seems less likely now. The Utah State transfer had been solid in the Mountain West, and more development seemingly could have made him into a fine guard or center in the Big Ten. His talents very well might have reached that level, but Shaw hasn't played a meaningful down and has evidently not threatened to take a starting job from Ruschmeyer or Filiaga. He might get a chance in unbalanced sets or in the event of an injury.
Tyler Cooper is another a backup guard. Cooper has played in two college games, so an evaluation is difficult. He held his own in pass protection against Logan Richter and Deven Eastern in the spring game. Whether he can do that against fleeter rushers remains to be seen.
Notables Unlikely to Contribute
Between Tyrell Lawrence and Cameron James, the Gophers have two more massive underclassmen waiting in the wings. Lawrence, a redshirt sophomore, checks in at 355 pounds. Both he and James measure more than 6-and-a-half feet tall.
At 260 pounds, redshirt freshman Logan Purcell is in a cluster of similarly long tackles who need to put on more weight. Tony Nelson, a Tracy native, and the Wisconsinite Jackson Hunter took third-team snaps at the first open practice, taking snaps that would have been Lawrence and James' had they been available. None of the three are ready for the field.
True freshman guards Cade McConnell and Ashton Beers will also need to develop. The most veteran of the interior linemen we haven't already discussed, Jackson Ruschmeyer, is a redshirt sophomore who has yet to see the field. He will in all likelihood not be needed but could appear for mop-up duty, the way his older brother Axel got his first snaps for the Gophers.
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