2023 Gophers Position Previews: Quarterbacks

If you can believe it, football is almost here. Seriously. For the third year running, Ski-U-Blog will have previews of every position group entering Minnesota's season. We move on to the quarterbacks.

Likely Starter

One game can do a lot to alleviate some uncertainty in a player — not that Athan Kaliakmanis' first few appearances as a college quarterback inspired overwhelming doubt in his abilities. But the truth was that entering the Wisconsin game, Kaliakmanis had posted a completion rate of just 46.6 percent and thrown four interceptions to one touchdown (which came late in a big loss at Penn State). In his most recent start, a loss to Iowa, he completed fewer than half of the just 15 passes the coaches trusted him to throw.

Since he was a redshirt freshman pushed into duty by Tanner Morgan's injury, for Kaliakmanis to struggle with consistency was both understandable and a problem. If he didn't turn things around, he would go into his first full season as starter still needing to show more than just flashes of proof that his pedigree as a prospect was merited.

Then the Gophers went into Madison. In a surprise, they let Kaliakmanis lead the way, and he came through. He stood in the pocket and delivered a series of deep passes, even in the face of pressure. At points, his throws were perfect.

Kaliakmanis finished 19-of-29 for 319 yards and two touchdowns, including a game-winner to Le'Meke Brockington with less than 4 minutes to go. Minnesota defended their claim to Paul Bunyan's Axe.

P.J. Fleck picked Kaliakmanis to start the Gophers' bowl game a month later. That ended in injury, but Kaliakmanis came back to play in the spring game. He enters 2023 not without real questions to answer but still with the potential to become one of the Big Ten's top quarterbacks.

Below is the passing scatterplot for Kaliakmanis' debut season.

Click to enlarge any image in this post.

And for comparison — because much of this preview concerns how the new starter differs from the old one — here is the scatterplot for Morgan's final season.

Morgan had nearly 50 more attempts, so you can't pick out all of the differences at a glance. Here, I've divided their passes into 10 different zones, broken down by depth, to provide a better glimpse of their tendencies.

With the redshirt freshman, the Gophers unlocked more of a deep passing game and de-emphasized screens and swing passes. Kaliakmanis' target rate behind the line was half of Morgan's, whose deep- and intermediate-range targets rates were each 5 points lower as well. Coordinators Kirk Ciarrocca and Matt Simon treated Morgan like a game manager, and they viewed Kaliakmanis as a more dynamic option.

The reason is obvious: Kaliakmanis has a far better arm. The speed he puts on the ball makes the intermediate throws a lot easier, and the distance he can throw it lets go routes go a little farther. Note the distance of the three central dots in Kaliakmanis' scatterplot: Morgan hardly ever tried the deep middle as Minnesota's quarterback. It's now a viable portion of the field to attack with Kaliakmanis.

The above play displays another one of Kaliakmanis' strengths. He is highly impressive facing pressure and unafraid to deliver while taking a hit. On multiple occasions last season, he found a way not only to get rid of the ball as the rush closed in, but to deliver an on-target pass to an open man. (That open man was often Brevyn Spann-Ford.)

That kind of composure and quick release is are for such a young player. It will serve him well in a conference that often produces great pass rushers.

As will his mobility. Morgan became better at navigating the pocket and scrambling as he got older, but he was never a major running threat. Kaliakmanis is. Each quarterback had 27 non-sack carries last season, and Kaliakmanis outpaced Morgan by 75 yards.

So with these ways that Kaliakmanis has a higher ceiling than Morgan, his output should have been vastly superior as well, right?

Recall what we were saying about each player's target rates by depth? How Kaliakmanis's arm strength makes medium and long passes more worthwhile because he's more likely to get the ball to his target, and to do so on time? None of that is untrue, but by completion rate, Morgan was comparable or better at every level of the field.

Morgan was never a totally reliable college passer. His accuracy and decision-making could be inconsistent, especially when trying to mount a quick drive or come back late in games. His limitations were obvious, and they became more obvious when the situation demanded he overcome them.

But he mostly could be the game manager that the coaches asked him to be. Morgan had bad games, certainly, but he was relatively stable and knew the system well. Last year, he averaged basically the same yards per attempt (8.6 to 8.5) as Kaliakmanis and slightly more net yards per attempt, which takes into accounts sacks (7.9 to 7.6). Going off these basic stats, the difference between the two purely as passers came out to basically a wash.

Kaliakmanis is still young, and he deserves some benefit of the doubt for being a work in progress. We should still acknowledge the negatives. He can wow you in flashes, but he's not yet consistent.

Minnesota's offense doesn't have that many concepts in it. The quarterback has to be so good at executing the staples of the offense that they become routine, and he can put the ball wherever it needs to be depending on what the defense gives. That means making sure only the intended target can get his hands on a well-covered slant, for example, even if putting the ball in front of the receiver maximizes yards after the catch.

That small error was far more costly than it normally would be because of an unfortunate bounce, but it illustrates how Kaliakmanis needs to work on his placement on shorter throws. It's a huge boost that he can pull off plays like the pass to Daniel Jackson at the top of this post. He still needs to clean up stuff like this.

That's a relatively easy throw to an open receiver. It wasn't catchable. Sometimes, Kaliakmanis needs to take a little bit of velocity off these throws, and sometimes, he just needs to be more accurate.

The good news is that the building blocks are all there. It's not that we haven't seen Kaliakmanis do the simple things properly at all. It's not that he looks scared or impatient in the pocket, or that his arm is weak, or that he was a turnover machine as a redshirt freshman. (Three of his four interceptions more than 20 yards downfield, after all.) He just hasn't put everything together on a down-to-down basis.

His underwhelming spring game suggests it may be a while longer before he does. But by the time Kaliakmanis is done in maroon and gold, he could be a star.

Key Backup

As you can see, Cole Kramer's 2022 was a good deal less busy than Kaliakmanis'.

Kramer was much more of a traditional quarterback last year. Eight passes is more than he'd attempted in his first three seasons combined, and the Gophers just about scrapped their Wildcat (or "Krispy") package for Kramer. Between 2021 and 2022, the number of snaps where they deployed that package decreased from 59 to just six. He still carried the ball a bit, but not much. He is, evidently, just the backup quarterback now. Kramer can still run, though, which makes him closer to a plug-and-play analog for Kaliakmanis.

Notables Unlikely to Contribute

There are two other quarterbacks on the roster, and they are both true freshmen: Drew Viotto and Max Shikenjanski, the latter of whom is a walk-on from Stillwater.

Viotto, arriving to campus already weighing 230 pounds, attended high school in Michigan but is from Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. This makes him the first Canadian quarterback to make the Gophers' roster this century. (Rosters from before 1998 on the athletic department website are missing position and hometown data, so I cannot see for certain who or when the most recent one was.)

Viotto's big frame includes a zippy arm. The velocity he puts on intermediate throws will play at the college level. His size also means that he's not a running threat like the two players in front of him on the depth chart, even if he seems to navigate the pocket well. Viotto needs to quicken his delivery — he frequently pats the ball before throwing — and may not put his full body into his passes consistently enough. These are not unfixable problems.

If Kramer does not use his last year of eligibility, or decides to use it somewhere other than Minnesota, Viotto is presumably the leading candidate for the second-string job in 2024.