Don't Say We Didn't Warn You; Ok, Fine, We Didn't Warn You

Say you've got this team, right? And this team was beyond awful last year. I mean, it was so bad, that I wrote that I had to call Woods Hole and rent Alvin to go find their record. We're talking bottom of the Mariana Trench bad. The statistics at the bottom of said trench?





2007 Rankings of the Minnesota Golden Gophers:

Total Defense: 119th
Turnover Margin: 115th
Time of Possession: 102nd
Red Zone Conversion: 72nd
Scoring Offense: 67th
Overall Record: 1-11

Ok, so you're not going to win very many football games when your defense is ranked as the worst defense in the nation. And you're not going to win very many football games when you're losing the ball to turnovers more than any team in the nation save 4.

But, as bad as Minnesota was last year, there were some statistics that indicated a modicum of success. Namely:

Total Offense: 48th (ahead of IU, Ohio State, Michigan)
Sacks Allowed: 6th (just 1/game)
Third Down Conversions: 36th (42.6% success)
TFL's allowed: 19th (63 allowed)

Ok, so the offense - when it wasn't turning the ball over - was actually pretty decent. Excellent protection for the QB, and they managed to stay on the field. This suggests that the problem was with a defense that was a sieve, and an offense that couldn't hang onto the ball. To be a successful football team, Minnesota had to put those"Mariana Trench" category stats into the "modicum of success" category.

This year, through 7 games:

Total Defense: 84th
Turnover Margin: 2nd (!!!)
Time of Possession: 21st
Red Zone Conversion: 28th
Scoring offense: 42nd

Ok, so the defense still isn't great. But the offense, which was competent last year, is finally holding onto the ball. Heck, sometimes the defense is actually getting it for them which must be a novel thing:

Brewster: OFFENSE, LET'S GO! WIN FIGHT!

Offense: Wait a second there coach. I didn't see the other team score a Touchdown yet. We're not supposed to go in until that happens.

The offense is holding onto the ball and converting in the Red Zone. I don't need to go into the flawed stat that is "red zone conversion" but hey - it's flawed for everybody, and at least the Gophers are doing it. The result: a 6-1 record.

We didn't warn you that the Gophers could be a good football team this year, and they're still not world-beaters. But they went from grossly incompetent to bowl-eligible by dramatically improving in just a few areas. The framework for success was there, and Brewster should be credited for maintaining that framework while improving on the key areas that held the Gophers back last year.