Gophers Notebook: Illinois 27-26 Minnesota

This is the way it goes sometimes. With a roster in transition, competing in a Big Ten West that is muddled and mediocre to the point of caricature, Minnesota was going to play some close games this season. Against Nebraska and Iowa, they made just enough plays and got just enough breaks to pull through at the end. Against Illinois, however, they came up just short.

It wasn't exactly like the disaster in Evanston, where their head coach's longstanding faults held them back for the umpteenth time, but one where familiar issues sprung up at the worst moments to cost Minnesota a win in the end.

The third quarter did not go as well as the Gophers would have wanted, with Illinois scoring on a long touchdown to take the lead and Minnesota's offense unable to continue its solid first-half performance. The game was not tied but entered a state of stalemate. For nearly 20 minutes, the 1-point margin remained. Neither offense had more than two sets of downs on a drive. The two defenses, despite taking steps back in 2023, came to rule the game.

It was the kind of game typical for the West, where one big play may decide the outcome. The Gophers looked to have gotten multiple such plays.

On a 3rd down in their own territory, the Illini came out in 11 personnel, with an empty backfield. Their best receiver, the shifty ex-quarterback Isaiah Williams, lined up in the slot. That meant linebacker Ryan Selig had to run with Williams. Williams ran a shallow route and beat Selig easily, picking up the conversion — until Cody Lindenberg swooped in and punched the ball free.

To that point, by win probability added, this fumble was the second-biggest play of the game. Two plays later, Minnesota took the lead.

Illinois still had another chance. Luke Altmyer threw it away to Tyler Nubin.

The game was in the Gophers' hands. With Illinois down to two timeouts, Minnesota might have just about extinguished their last hopes by picking up one 1st down.

Two 3-yard runs by Jordan Nubin put them in decent position to do just that. Bret Bielema spent a timeout. The Illini loaded the box with one ultra-deep safety, expecting the ball to stay on the ground.

In their game against Louisiana-Lafayette, Minnesota faced a similar situation. It's not a one-to-one comparison, mind, but similar: late in the game, trying to kill clock against a team selling out to stop the run. Offensive co-coordinator Greg Harbaugh made an inspired call: a pop pass. Daniel Jackson was all alone and took it to the end zone.

Harbaugh went back to the concept against the Illini. The look was there. After initially presenting a normal look in 12 personnel, the Gophers shifted to an unbalanced line, with left tackle Aireontae Ersery coming over to the right and tight end Nick Kallerup filling Ersery's spot next to the left guard. Illinois' eight box defenders moved over, expecting Minnesota to run behind the extra beef — after all, that's what P.J. Fleck's Minnesota has always done.

The defense was ready to rally to a ball that wouldn't be there. With an accurate throw, Kallerup would have an easy conversion in the short seam.

Athan Kaliakmanis missed. Maybe he saw the deep safety closing in on Kallerup, or maybe he thought a lineman was about to arrive in his lap. Either way, he rushed, and he missed. Instead of putting their opponents' backs to the wall, Minnesota had to punt.

Nevertheless, it was a successful punt. Illinois had less than 3 minutes to drive 84 yards.

The Gophers swallowed a 1st-down run. A holding penalty and a short completion set up 3rd-and-long. Anthony Smith stripped Altmyer of the ball — Minnesota's fifth sack of the game and second causing a fumble.

The ball dribbled just out of Jalen Logan-Redding's reach to a U of I lineman, keeping the game alive. Even so, the Illini faced 4th-and-11 without any timeouts and without their starting quarterback. Danny Striggow, arriving practically simultaneously to Smith, delivered a huge hit that knocked Altmyer out of the game when he landed hard on the turf.

In stepped John Paddock. Paddock, a graduate-transfer from Ball State, is arguably the most proven backup in the division. He is still a backup. Paddock only averaged 5.7 yards per pass attempt in his lone season as the Cardinals' starter. While he led the MAC in attempts, he also "led" the MAC with 14 interceptions. He has his flaws.

But when safety Darius Green didn't drop deep enough to take away Williams' seam route, Paddock had the window he needed to pick up the 1st down.

Green lined up on the near hash on the above play. All game, the camera was
zoomed in too much.

Another pass brought the Illini just beyond midfield. Barry Lunney Jr., Illinois' offensive coordinator, called for a variant of the "Dagger" concept: The outside receiver, Pat Bryant, ran a 10-yard dig, flexed tight end Griffin Moore ran into the flat, and Williams had a deep post from the slot.

Normally on Dagger, the post or seam route from the inside is meant to occupy the deep safety, creating space for the inbreaking outside receiver or the checkdown in the flat. But just in case the offense gets the right look, the quarterback has the option to go over the top.

Running this concept with trips to the field side meant that the safety that would normally trail the post, Aidan Gousby, was responsible for a lot of acreage. At the snap, Gousby was just outside the right hash. On a post to a receiver coming from his side, the ball would end up on the left hash.

The Gophers were also playing Tampa 2, a variant of Cover 2 that requires the middle linebacker to drop back into a pocket between the two deep safeties. This meant that Lindenberg had to carry Williams before handing him off to the safeties. This was a mismatch. Paddock had the post if he wanted it.

Lindenberg did a decent job keeping up with Williams until he hit the top of his zone, but he may have handed him off too early. Gousby had to account for the dig and had too much ground to cover, his reaction was a hair late, and he took a bad angle. Bad camerawork means we don't know exactly what boundary safety Nubin was up to, but it appears he didn't get deep enough because he was keeping an eye on the receiver to his side. Regardless, when Paddock threw, Nubin couldn't make up the distance on Williams. Williams had an easy catch on a ball that hit him in stride.

A backup quarterback entered an emergency situation and drove 85 yards in three plays. Kaliakmanis, without time in the pocket or open receivers, couldn't lead a 1-minute drill. And that was it.

It didn't matter that Minnesota had outplayed Illinois for the first half or pushed them as close to the death as a team possibly could. They didn't close it out. Kaliakmanis, who has had an impressive couple of games overall, again missed his man when he needed to apply a softer touch. The opposing team took advantage of gaps in Minnesota's scheme (gaps which exist in every scheme, to be clear), and the underclassmen in the secondary didn't execute at key moments. The Gophers got into a 50-50 game, and the small moments that decide 50-50 games didn't go their way.

Until Illinois' last three plays, however, Minnesota's defense had a performance that would be worthy of a win. That's admittedly a massive "however," and the Gophers have definitely played better over 60 minutes. The Illini's first touchdown was the product of another defender getting overly aggressive and not dropping deep enough into coverage, this time Devon Williams. Altmyer faked to his left for a swing, and Williams left Tip Reiman all alone on a slant.

There was also the third touchdown, where the Gophers' two best defenders couldn't track down Kaden Feagin on the perimeter. Lindenberg either didn't recognize the swing pass as it developed or didn't want to take the cheese after the Illini had scored faking a swing earlier. (Lunney is good at this.) Nubin, for his part, wildly misjudged the play and took himself out of position. Williams couldn't shed his blocker. The officials missed a hold on Justin Walley on the outside, but I'm not sure Walley would have caught up and made the tackle without the hold.

Illinois was also 5-of-5 converting 3rd- and 4th-down runs with 2 yards to go or fewer, also called "power" run situations. Those spots have been a weakness for Minnesota this season.

But the truth is that the U of M defense had a mostly okay afternoon, at times peaking high. Illinois' rushing attack was not that effective, gaining 2 or fewer yards on 42 percent of their carries and only twice gaining 10 or more yards. Against a fairly efficient but not overly explosive offense, they mostly prevented long drives and chunk plays. The times they did break were just especially costly. They also faced a short field to open the game thanks to Sean Tyler's fumble. The catastrophic ending still happened, but this was far from an end-to-end horror show. There were real positives.

The most impressive aspect of the day was the performance of the defensive line. The easy guy to point to would be Jah Joyner: Joyner's day elevated him to 5th on the team in havoc plays (pass breakups, interceptions, tackles for loss, forced fumbles). He's always been an adept pass rusher, though. He easily led the team with 32 pressures a season ago, according to Pro Football Focus, and he's on pace to lead the team with 33 pressures in a 13-game season.

The key difference this year is that about a fifth of Joyner's pressures have ended in sacks. In 2022, despite all those pressures, Joyner recorded 1.5 sacks. He dramatically underperformed an average pressure-to-sack rate (16 percent or so) and entering the season was a regression candidate — the good way. Joyner is still getting into quarterbacks' faces but is just finally reaping his just reward.

It's been other players who have made Minnesota's pass rush a greater threat, however. On Saturday, there was Smith, who has immediately proven he can play in any situation and recorded his first collegiate sack. But the veterans Striggow, Logan-Redding, and Kyler Baugh also made an impact, combining for nine pressures per PFF's tracking. Here, a spying Striggow forced Altmyer to break from the pocket and into the arms of Baugh and Logan-Redding, who had maintained their rush lanes against the mobile quarterback.

Most teams facing Altmyer this year have sent the house, trying to force mistakes. The Gophers hardly blitzed at all, sitting back to avoid getting burned downfield and to contain Altmyer's mobility. For the most part, it worked. His average depth of target was only 6.4 yards, and the Gophers were able to bring him down five times despite seldom sending more than four rushers. They just could've used a sixth sack when Paddock was in the game.

With all that said: While Minnesota's defense allowed the winning score, the fact that their offense stalled in the second half is the bigger reason for the Gophers' defeat. Minnesota's three first-half possessions gained 193 yards and produced 17 points. Their eight second-half drives yielded 79 yards and 10 points, with all their scoring coming on short fields. They were cruising, and then they were immobile.

There was no one reason. Fleck noted in his Monday press conference that the Illini started giving more two-high looks while cramming underneath defenders into the box. In the first half, there was space to run the ball on the weak side of the formation.

In the second, the Illini were ready for it.

The two deep safeties also seemed to make Harbaugh less confident in plays that attacked Illinois' heavy preference for man coverage. Against Cover 1, an offense has more one-on-one opportunities because the lone deep defender can be occupied by another route or get caught in traffic. If you beat man coverage at the line with just one guy in center field, there's a lot of space to exploit. Especially if the linebackers blitz:

When the Illini brought fewer rushers and kept two men deep, the corners had more help, and Kaliakmanis had nowhere to go. Combined with stickier coverage and Kaliakmanis just not being as sharp (aside from a beautiful corner touchdown to Jackson), it meant the Gophers' passing game lost its effectiveness.

It didn't help that Jer'Zhawn Newton came back from his first-half targeting suspension, even if his influence was not as total as feared. As said, there was no one reason. Sometimes, the other team makes the right adjustments; sometimes, it's just execution; and sometimes, it's both. A tough Illinois front won out, and an inconsistent Minnesota faltered.

With all the problems on display Saturday and the crushing nature of this loss, I think it's worth reiterating a point I've made in different ways this season: Every program will have reset years, and this is one of them. With so many players stepping into bigger roles, including at the most important position, there was ample potential for problems.

A mediocre season was entirely foreseeable. Furthermore, having a mediocre season does not have to bely deep-rooted, terminal issues that mean the end of a good run.

When two of the most prominent Gophers outlets suggest that Fleck should just fire somebody, and that he and Joe Rossi will never be able to outrun this result, it's necessary to remind people to just chill out. I am very willing to criticize Fleck for the Chotskies-esque day-to-day operation of his program or for his gameday coaching — which I have done innumerably on this blog since 2019 — but find it absurd to get existential about his tenure at this moment. That conversation should be saved for next fall, when we should expect to see experience translate into better performance. The roster has already shown signs of improvement in places.

For now, a tough loss can just be a tough loss. The Gophers played a team ranking only 12 spots below them in SP+, and they lost by a point. They remain a game away from bowl eligibility. They could very well defend their claim to Paul Bunyan's Axe against an injury-hampered Wisconsin.

If you expected Minnesota to win the West in 2023, I don't know what to tell you. You shouldn't be happy with just making a low-level bowl, but the reality is that once in a while, you have to accept it. A year from now will not be one of those times. Right now, though? This is the way it goes sometimes.