2025 Gophers Position Previews: Running Backs

On the other side of this interminable heat, humidity, and rain is a precious thing in Minnesota: fall. To get you ready for it, Ski-U-Blog is again previewing this year's Gopher football team, one position group at a time. The second post in this series covers a deep running back room.

Likely Starter

When I put these previews together, I usually start with the newcomers first. Counterintuitively, seeing a player for the first time, watching a hopefully representative video sample of their abilities, forming an opinion, and synthesizing my findings is easier than writing about the players who have been on the roster.

Former backups stepping into meaningful roles are obviously difficult to analyze because, as an outsider, I often can only go off the information I had when they first arrived to campus. That might have been a year ago, or it might have been three or four. While I do my best to offer insight, I must be honest about my limitations.

Contrastingly, there are the players everyone knows. Those cases are hard in a different way. What can one say about Darius Taylor that is novel? If you watched even a couple of Minnesota games last season, you know what Taylor is.

His style is well-established. There are faster, shiftier, stronger, and more explosive running backs, but what makes Taylor stand out is how multidimensional his game is. He is a power back, capable of breaking tackles and keeping his balance through contact, but he also can cut and accelerate into the open field.

When you combine these skills with his intelligence and background as a receiver, you get one of the most well-rounded, all-around best tailbacks in the country. If Taylor leaves for the NFL after the season, he should close his Minnesota career with his first all-conference selection.

2025 Gophers Position Previews: Receivers and Tight Ends

On the other side of this interminable heat, humidity, and rain is a precious thing in Minnesota: fall. To get you ready for it, Ski-U-Blog is again previewing this year's Gopher football team, one position group at a time. We start today with the receivers and tight ends.

Likely Starters

Minnesota's biggest incoming transfer this fall might be Javon Tracy. Tracy totaled seven touchdowns and 818 yards on 57 catches at Miami (OH) last season, earning a place on the All-MAC first team. He was a versatile, every-down player for the RedHawks, splitting his time practically 50-50 between the outside and the slot.

Over his two seasons as a regular, about a fifth of Tracy's targets were beyond 20 yards, according to Pro Football Focus. But where he did the majority of his work was over the middle, turning short throws into significant gains. Bowling Green star Harold Fannin Jr. was the only MAC player who averaged more yards after the catch than Tracy's 7.3.

He is a slippery player, the kind of receiver that can squirm his way out of trouble or shake a cornerback on a slant or quick out. While transfers coming up from the MAC are not always instant successes, Tracy is clearly talented. He comes to Minneapolis with two years of eligibility and, once he acclimates to the higher level of competition, should be an invaluable part of the Gophers' offense.

My Ten Favorite Gopher Football Players

This year marks a decade since I arrived in Minnesota. I have loved my time here dearly, making close friends, experiencing new things, and coming to the conclusion that there is no place on earth that I would rather live out my days than Minneapolis.

Coincidentally, this means I have watched 10 seasons of Golden Gopher football. Excluding 2020, I have been a season ticket holder that whole time and have missed only two home games. The last was my freshman year of college, when I was too sick to see Minnesota defeat Illinois in the brutal cold of early November. I have gone to a number of away games since first driving down to Kinnick Stadium in 2017, and I have written in varying amounts about this program over the last six seasons. The Gophers are my favorite team in my favorite sport, and spending Saturdays in the fall on campus with friends is my favorite pastime.

In the name of celebrating my 10 years with the Golden Gophers — and because it's a relatively easy piece of offseason content — I have assembled a list of my 10 favorite players to come through this program. I saw each one of them in a game at least once; though I have great admiration for the players that came before, they are before my time. Even those I just missed, like MarQueis Gray or Brock Vereen, are only marginally greater a part of my experience as a fan as the guys who were in college when I was born, like Tyrone Carter or Tutu Atwell.

First, here 10 honorable mentions:

Shannon Brooks, Running Back (2015-19)

Max Brosmer, Quarterback (2024)

Carter Coughlin, Linebacker/Rush End (2016-19)

Winston DeLattiboudere, Defensive End (2015-19)

Daniel Faalele, Tackle (2018-21)

Jah Joyner, Defensive End (2020-24)

Jordan Howden, Safety (2018-22)

K.J. Maye, Wide Receiver (2012-15)

Tanner Morgan, Quarterback (2017-22)

Nyles Pinckney, Defensive Tackle (2021)

Ten names is far fewer than I wanted to have even on the list of cuts. Both the above players and several others I have watched all deserve additional comment for the mark they have made on the program and on my experience as a fan. However, I need to exercise some restraint. Time for the full list.

10. Peter Mortell, Punter (2011-15)

Peter Mortell can stand for the wave of Gopher specialists in the mid-to-late 2010s that had just the right kind of charm, running the now-dormant Gopher Specialists Twitter account, holding charity drives, and ultimately establishing Mortell's Holder of the Year Award. This cadre of dorks was endlessly positive and self-aware about their unglamorous jobs while using their platform to help others. Mortell specifically has a reputation for being as nice as they come. For those who followed the program at the time, he was a specific kind of icon.

9. Ko Kieft, Tight End (2016-21)

A lumbering Iowan with a flowing red mullet (until it was a rat tail), Ko Kieft looked the way he played. His game was never technical, and his two career college touchdowns do not undersell his receiving abilities. Kieft was just a cinderblock with legs, a battering ram who functioned essentially as an extra lineman to go along with the Gophers' frequent packages of six-, seven-, and even eight-man lines. His play was viscerally entertaining and highly effective, resulting in frequent pancakes.

YouTube's stock of blocking highlight reels for 6th-round tight ends
is a bit short, so here is a sample of Kieft's work in a GIF. He is lined up
behind the right tackle, pulling across the formation.

Digesting Norwich City's Precarious Moment

In my time following Norwich City, it has never been dull. The Premier League era's definitional yo-yo club has changed leagues seven times in the last dozen seasons, going up and down and up and down again with dizzying frequency.

Despite the joys of promotion seasons, this cycle is uniquely disillusioning in sports. I have never seen this team survive a season in the Premier League, and they have had four tries at it while I've been paying attention. As England's top flight becomes more of a cartel (run by a six-team cabal), increasing the distance between its longtime members and those hoping to re-establish themselves as even minnows in the big pond, I doubt I ever will see Norwich string together more than a couple seasons in the top division of the pyramid.

It is true, though, that the Canaries have a little more financial might than before, having recently changed hands from longtime stewards Delia Smith and Michael Wynn-Jones to Milwaukee Brewers owner Mark Attanasio. By merit of appearing in the Premier League a few times during its global boom, the club has gained international fans like me who will pay to stream their matches, order a yellow-and-green scarf, or even fly across oceans to visit the Fine City. Whatever one's opinion on foreign investment and foreign fandom, they are necessary to compete.

What's more, the team does have some talent. Josh Sargent, for my money the Championship's best striker, led the United States' front line at the 2022 World Cup. Midfielder Marcelino Núñez will be at the next World Cup, should Chile make it out of CONMEBOL qualifying. Borja Sainz led the league's Golden Boot race for most of this season.

In his first full season in charge, sporting director Ben Knapper made the squad dramatically younger over the last two transfer windows, shipping out Championship veterans for some intriguing prospects. They genuinely might have the next James Maddison or Emilano Buendía on their hands. Maybe a couple of those young players even become the next Alex Tettey or Wes Hoolahan, beloved and essential regulars who stay for years rather than leaving for bigger clubs.

However, no one feels so optimistic at the moment. Knapper recently fired the Dane he had charged with leading this project, Johannes Hoff Thorup. Over Thorup's last 10 matches, Norwich picked up just 6 points, including losses to inferior sides such as Oxford United, Plymouth Argyle, and Portsmouth. After threatening the playoff places in February, they will finish right in the middle of the table, closer to the relegation zone than the top six despite having the league's second-highest goal total. It looks like it could be some time before Norwich go back up again.

The Films I Watched in 2024

After sports, my favorite hobby has long been watching movies. I won't try to define the reasons, or to explain why I have watched so little television by comparison, or ramble on about the beauty of film or whatever. There is no need when I provide no shortage of words over the rest of this post.

But I will say that, starting during the pandemic, I have tracked every film that I watch over the course of each year, and a couple years ago started bucketing them by how much I liked them. I will never get on Letterboxd, as I do not need another social media platform in my life. However, my brain demands that I organize trivial things. My vanity requires that I write my opinions. Hence, this post.

If you want the short version, you can find in this table all 60 films without commentary, sorted by tier.

Click to enlarge.

The long version, then, begins below. This post goes in reverse order from the table, starting with the one film I write off as worthless and ending on my ten favorite things I watched in 2024. Until the last section, the films are alphabetized within each tier.

Just Trash

Crash, dir. Paul Haggis (2004)

I added the "Just Trash" tier to my lists last year after watching Network (1976), a film that verbosely proclaims its own importance, intelligence, and righteousness at every opportunity. Crash, by comparison, is humbly earnest about its creator's faults: Paul Haggis, who is white, wrote the screenplay as a guilty reflection on his own racism a few years after being carjacked by Black men in Los Angeles.

To a degree, the thought is noble. A rich white man, however, is not the person the world needs writing parables about prejudice. "We're all a bit racist, but we're also all human" is not a profound thesis to an adult audience, or should not be. The premise is flawed from the start. The best-case scenario for this kind of movie is still at least a little overwrought and simplistic.

Yet even by sympathetic standards, Haggis' failure is spectacular. In the months since watching this film, its awfulness has haunted me to the point of costing me sleep. Crash tosses aside character growth as easily as it rushes to redeem its worst characters, fights racism with racist stereotypes and omnidirectional hate, uses ham-fisted symbolism, and in general does not seem to understand its own theses. It is utterly unsalvageable, only offering some perverse unintentional comedy to those not expecting its preposterous and incoherent turns.

Did Not Enjoy

The Raid, dir. Gareth Evans (2011)

The reason that this tier is called "Did Not Enjoy" instead of "Bad" or something similar is that sometimes a movie has some kind of merit but is just not my thing. The Raid is fairly good at what it is, which is to say an endless stream of impressively choreographed fight scenes and basically no plot or character depth. It's not my kind of action movie but can easily be someone else's.

Previewing Virginia Tech

Overview

Record: 6-6 (4-4, 8th in Atlantic Coast Conference)

"Second-order" Record: 7.1-5.9

SP+ Overall Rank: 24th

If it feels like Virginia Tech has stagnated over the last decade and change, it's because they kind of have. Since 2012, this once prominent program has won eight or more games just three times, finishing now seven regular seasons at 6-6. Head coach Brent Pry, a former Frank Beamer graduate assistant and as Appalachian a man as they come, arrested the late slide of Justin Fuente's tenure but has subsequently only spun his wheels. His program recruits like a middle-of the road ACC team and so far plays like it.

The Hokies' stats largely justify their record, showing a little bit of talent but a fair amount of averageness and some outright problems, particularly with passing and defending the pass. While it takes some bad luck to go 0-5 in one-score games, Pry is still looking for a signature win. By the Massey Composite, the best team the Hokies beat in 2024 was No. 38 Georgia Tech.

The week after the first National Signing Day, Pry fired three coaches, including defensive coordinator Chris Marve (whom he coached at Vanderbilt). A handful of starters have announced their intentions to transfer, and others still are sitting out the bowl against Minnesota to protect their NFL Draft stock or recover from injuries. These departures may tilt what most projection systems consider a coin flip the Gophers' way.

Offense

Quarterback Kyron Drones had a difficult season, missing three games because of injuries and averaging just 7.0 yards per pass attempt. Drones looks doubtful to appear in Charlotte. Redshirt freshman William "Pop" Watson III, one of two players who filled in for Drones during the year, is the presumed starter over redshirt senior Collin Schlee.

Watson made his first meaningful college appearance against Duke, relieving an injured Schlee after a quarter. After Watson had a decent couple of drives, the Blue Devils sacked him seven times. Pressure was often immediate, but he also had opportunities to throw the ball away.

Shortly after this sack, Watson threw an interception on a quick out to the opposite sideline. He finished 12-for-25 for 146 yards.