Tag: Minnesota Golden Gophers Football

No one except for Gary Andersen and his inner circle knew this would be Andersen’s last home game as the head coach of the Wisconsin Badgers. The school and the football program did not know they would be searching for another head coach so soon. No one in college football expected the bloodbath which was about to happen in the 2014 Big Ten Championship Game against the Ohio State Buckeyes. It was a simpler time for Wisconsin before that disaster in Indianapolis.

Indeed, before a month of profound upheaval, the 2014 Wisconsin team created its best regular-season moment. The 2015 Outback Bowl was the best moment associated with that 2014 team, but the crowning regular-season experience was the game against Minnesota for Paul Bunyan’s Axe.

Unlike 2013 — and like 2019 — this was a division championship game against the Golden Gophers. Wisconsin entered this game 6-1 in Big Ten play (remember that the league didn’t play nine conference games at the time — that would come later), while Minnesota was 5-2. Nebraska finished 5-3 in the conference. This was the first year in which the Big Ten used its East and West Division alignment, a switch from the Legends and Leaders configuration of the previous three years. This switch liberated Wisconsin from Ohio State, and so in this 2014 season without the Buckeyes to worry about, it was important for every Big Ten West contender to announce itself as the program to beat in the division.

Wisconsin made the loudest and most effective statement against Minnesota, and the Badgers haven’t looked back since. They have won four of the six Big Ten West races and lead all Big Ten teams with six conference championship game berths, which is more than Ohio State’s five. The 2014 win over Minnesota was part of that process of becoming the most regular visitor to Indianapolis in early December.

It wasn’t easy.

Wisconsin stumbled out of bed and forgot to set its alarm clock. The Badgers fell behind 17-3 midway through the second quarter, gifting Minnesota short fields and exhibiting no cohesion on offense. Badger drives went three-and-out deep in their own end of the field. Mediocre punts set up the Gophers in great field position. Minnesota gained a 17-3 lead by scoring three separate times on drives no longer than 40 yards. A fumbled punt contributed to the tidal wave of mistakes which created a 14-point deficit. Could Wisconsin dig out of this “Gopher Hole”?

The answer came convincingly in the final two and a half quarters.

Wisconsin was able to shave 10 points off that deficit before halftime, calming nerves throughout Camp Randall Stadium with the Gophers leading 17-13 at the intermission. The comeback required the offense’s participation, and to be sure, the offense did its job. The 10-point rally late in the second quarter helped a lot. Corey Clement then scored on a 28-yard touchdown run to give Wisconsin the lead in the third quarter, 20-17. However, the comeback was piloted mostly by a defense which was placed in impossible situations in the first 20 minutes. When Minnesota no longer started drives in plus territory, the Gophers were stymied by the Badgers’ defense.

After Minnesota took that 17-3 lead, the Gophers gained a grand total of 82 yards on their next five possessions, one of which ended in a lost fumble. All these empty and brief possessions left the Minnesota defense tired against Clement, Melvin Gordon, and the rest of the Wisconsin offense.

Down 27-17 in the fourth quarter, Minnesota did scramble back to score a touchdown and create some tension in Camp Randall. Wisconsin led, 27-24. However, the cumulative effects of staying on the field for most of the previous two quarters caught up with the Gophers’ defense on UW’s next drive. Wisconsin marched 75 yards in six plays, never facing a third down. Wisconsin faced second and three, second and four, and then second and one on its easiest touchdown drive of the night. Joel Stave hit Robert Wheelwright on a 17-yard scoring pass with 4:41 to deliver the dagger.

Wisconsin 34, Minnesota 24. The Badgers won their 11th straight game against Minnesota, kept the Axe, and march on to Indianapolis.

This past season, the Wisconsin Badgers carried two losses into a late-November game against the Minnesota Golden Gophers in Minneapolis. A win would enable the Badgers to carry an especially powerful and sweet memory from the season, giving players and coaches a moment they would savor for the rest of their lives. Achieving that victory did indeed transform how the 2019 Badgers will be remembered.

The same was true for the 2013 team, which also took two losses into Minneapolis for a late-November battle with the Gophers. What was different about the 2013 team is that in the Big Ten’s Legends and Leaders Division setup, Wisconsin was not going to make the Big Ten Championship Game. The Badgers had been eliminated from that race. However, much of the other details were the same. A win against a good Minnesota team — the 2013 Gophers were 8-2 entering play on Nov. 23 of that year — would enable Wisconsin to not only keep Paul Bunyan’s Axe for yet another season; it would show that under first-year coach Gary Andersen, the momentum and identity of the program would remain just as Barry Alvarez and the fan base wanted. Wisconsin wasn’t playing for a division title, unlike 2019, but the stakes were still high for all the reasons mentioned above… and because Minnesota needed to be put in its place, just as it always needs to be for any good Badger.

The 2019 win in Minnesota featured a very strong defensive performance from the Badgers, but in 2013, the Wisconsin defense was even better. Chris Borland recovered two fumbles and forced a third. The Badgers’ defense shut out the Minnesota offense. The Gophers’ only score — their only points on that day — came from a pick-six of UW quarterback Joel Stave.

Borland’s remarkable day wasn’t confined to recovering or forcing fumbles, either (though he did tie the FBS record for the most forced fumbles in a college football career). The elite linebacker recorded 12 tackles, flying all over the field to stop Minnesota at every turn. Brendan Kelly joined Borland in the defensive feast by recording two sacks.

When it was all over, Wisconsin had forced three Gopher turnovers and limited Minnesota to just 185 yards. Stave threw for only 127 yards for Wisconsin, and the Badgers managed only 324 total yards… but it was way more than enough with Borland and his teammates pitching a shutout. Wisconsin’s identity did not change — and the level of the product did not (significantly) decrease — under a new coach, which is one of the cornerstones of this remarkable 30-year period of Badger football. The torch keeps getting passed, and the next coach in the sequence keeps the train rolling. Such was the importance of the win over Minnesota in 2013.

Yes, the Minnesota Golden Gophers are probably going to be very formidable in the coming decade. If you asked me, I would bet that as long as P.J. Fleck stays in Minneapolis, Minnesota will be the annual contender in the Big Ten West the Wisconsin Badgers haven’t yet faced.

Let’s keep this point in mind about Wisconsin’s history in the Big Ten since the conference went to a divisional format: The Badgers have not had an opponent which could consistently stand up to UW. This is a point of pride for Wisconsin football and everyone associated with it. However, nothing lasts forever. A rival is going to emerge at some point. It doesn’t mean Minnesota WILL be that rival, but Fleck certainly shows signs of being the coach — and creating the program — which will challenge Wisconsin at a higher level.

More on Wisconsin’s dominance in the Big Ten West: The Badgers — in nine seasons of Big Ten divisional play — have made six Big Ten Championship Game appearances. Wisconsin is fortunate that the Legends-and-Leaders format was changed to the East-West configuration. Ohio State was in the Leaders Division with Wisconsin from 2011 through 2013. You know that 2011 was the Luke Fickell season when Ohio State was a mess. You know that in 2012, Ohio State went unbeaten but was ineligible for the postseason.  The Ohio State engine has roared to five Big Ten Championship Game appearances in the past seven seasons, four of those appearances coming as a member of the East Division. The Badgers are glad to be on the other side in the West… and they have certainly taken advantage of it.

The other detail which has to be noted: The other members of the West — despite not having to play Ohio State and Michigan AND Penn State AND Michigan State on an annual basis — have not taken advantage. Wisconsin has pounced on this opportunity. The rest of the West has not.

In six years of East-West Division football in the Big Ten, Wisconsin has made four Big Ten title games, including this upcoming 2019 edition. Iowa has made only one showing in Indianapolis. The same is true for Northwestern. Nebraska made one Big Ten title game from the Legends Division in 2012, but none as a West Division member. It is striking that we are sitting here in 2019, at the end of the decade, and Wisconsin, Michigan State, and Ohio State are the ONLY Big Ten programs to make more than one appearance in Indianapolis in December. The only three.

At some point, someone — probably — will challenge Wisconsin in the West, but it hasn’t happened yet. So, with this in mind, one has to ask the question: Will 2019 Minnesota become a team akin to 2015 Iowa, which had everything break just right in one season and then didn’t have another big season in store the next year? It’s not a ludicrous question to ask with Minnesota. We saw the Golden Gophers score lucky, close, tenuous wins over South Dakota State, Fresno State, and other not-that-great teams early in the 2019 season. Imagine if those games had broken the wrong way. There probably would have been no stratospheric rise for Fleck’s Folks.

Yes, I do reiterate that I think Minnesota will probably become an annual challenger to Wisconsin. I think Fleck keeps proving himself in ways that are hard to ignore, and he will be bringing in his own recruiting classes. Nevertheless, one can make a convincing case that 2019 was Minnesota’s big chance to seize momentum… and Wisconsin knocked the Gophers off the train tracks. Moreover, consider this: Wisconsin had a banged-up defense and was playing Minnesota on the road… and won big. Next year, the Gophers come to Madison, and they will not be able to sneak up on UW the way they did in 2018. Wisconsin will know, entering 2020, that Minnesota is the main target in the Big Ten West.

Did Wisconsin punch Minnesota into irrelevance this past weekend? Probably not… but it’s certainly possible. Just ask 2015 Iowa, and just look at how Nebraska has never been able to settle into its Big Ten home.

The 2010s are about to end. There is only one more Big Ten football game to be played in this decade, and it will be played by the two best Big Ten programs in that decade. The Wisconsin Badgers and the Ohio State Buckeyes have made the most appearances in the Big Ten Championship Game since the event began in 2011. Wisconsin will make its sixth appearance in Indianapolis this weekend, Ohio State its fifth. As one decade ends and another one begins, one must ask: What are the biggest and most important questions surrounding Big Ten football this decade?

We will tackle this question more as this month of December continues at Badgers Wire, but for now, let’s acknowledge this point: The evolution of the Wisconsin-Minnesota rivalry is certainly one of the more fascinating and significant aspects of Big Ten football in the 2020s. That claim might not be greeted with universal agreement, but it is hard to displace from a top five list of important questions in the next decade of Big Ten football.

Consider, first, how stuck Nebraska currently is. The Huskers might get going eventually under Scott Frost, but it is just as evident that if Nebraska DOES improve, the process will not be immediate. Nebraska, at the end of the 2020 Big Ten season, will not be where Minnesota and P.J. Fleck are now… or at least, if the Cornhuskers do make that great leap, it will rate as one of the most remarkable turnarounds we have seen in the Big Ten. (Yes, more than Northwestern’s run to the division title last season.)

When Nebraska joined the Big Ten, many people in this conference wondered when the Cornhuskers would regain their top-tier status in college football. When the Big Ten moved from the Legends and Leaders divisional format to the East-West configuration we have now, Nebraska was the obvious team identified as a possible long-term challenger to Wisconsin in the West Division. It wasn’t Minnesota. It wasn’t Illinois, Northwestern or Purdue. Iowa was the only other program worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as Nebraska in terms of challenging the Badgers.

I think we can safely say that as the 2020s begin, Minnesota has replaced Nebraska in that conversation, with Iowa still being the only other West program which can credibly be seen as an annual threat to the Badgers and what they have maintained. That’s why Wisconsin-Minnesota is the hinge-point Big Ten West rivalry in the 2020s.

How these last two years — Minnesota ambushing one of Paul Chryst’s more mediocre teams in 2018, Chryst punching back in a higher-stakes battle in 2019 — shape this rivalry creates a juicy subtext to the 2020 season, the 2020 reunion between these teams, and this next series of years. If Fleck stays put in Minneapolis and doesn’t chase the big, shiny apple at Texas (if Tom Herman fails in 2020 and gets fired), the Badgers-Gophers rivalry, which was spiced up this past weekend, could grow in national importance in the coming decade. Wouldn’t that be something?

There is an old truth about sports worth mentioning after the Wisconsin Badgers defeated the Minnesota Golden Gophers on Saturday. Yes, we’re going to turn our attention to the Ohio State Buckeyes and the Big Ten Championship Game soon enough, but we still have a few things to say about the win over Minnesota, which will remain a highly satisfying memory through the offseason when it arrives in early January.

We begin with the old truth referred to above: Sometimes, HOW one wins a competition is just as important as the win itself. I strongly think this truth applies to Wisconsin’s 38-17 victory in Minneapolis. I also think a lot of Wisconsin fans can intuitively understand this statement, but let’s flesh it out just to make sure:

First, Wisconsin maintained its identity in this game. Jonathan Taylor didn’t run for 200 yards, or 150, or even 100, but Wisconsin’s offensive line was still strong. We saw Paul Chryst get the ball to fast receivers on handoffs, something he loves to do. We saw Jack Coan surgically pick apart an opposing defense with a passing game which never seemed to be taking undue risks. Wisconsin won within the structure of its offense. It didn’t have to be something it wasn’t in order to flourish in this game. Wisconsin won in bad weather, something it takes pride in. Winning in nasty conditions is something every Big Ten team enjoys doing.

Wisconsin maintained its identity in this game. What it also did was beat Minnesota to a pulp. This was a beatdown. It was decisive. It’s not as though this was a game in which a huge turnover or a series of lucky breaks enabled Wisconsin to survive a rough first half, after which the Badgers regrouped. Yes, the Daniel Faalele injury to Minnesota hurt the Gophers’ chances, but Wisconsin had less-than-fully-healthy players in its secondary, and the Badgers’ back line of defense still controlled Minnesota’s NFL-quality receivers. Wisconsin was just better, stronger, faster, tougher. No one can dispute that. It was a butt-kicking, and not a game in which the Badgers escaped or survived. They THRIVED.

Let’s say this game had gone down to the final minute, or let’s say this game was more of a pure track meet, and Wisconsin had improbably won by a narrow margin when playing a style of football it probably wouldn’t have preferred. In either of those hypothetical scenarios, P.J. Fleck and the Gophers could have said to themselves, “We lost Faalele, we played in bad weather, and we still gave Wisconsin a run, showing we could play the style of game we wanted to play. We just didn’t play our style WELL enough to win.” Minnesota could have taken a lot more confidence from such a turn of events… but that isn’t the turn of events we saw.

Winning this particular game in this particular way is as meaningful for the Badgers as the win itself. Given how much the win itself means, I’d say the meaning of the method — the way in which the Badgers battered the Gophers — matters quite a lot. It is the perfect emotional fuel to take to Indianapolis against Ohio State.

Saturday offered some amazing plot twists in rivalry games. Alabama scored 45 points without Tua Tagovailoa against a legitimately strong Auburn defense… and lost. Arizona and Arizona State, which was supposed to be a shootout, produced just one first-half touchdown. Arizona’s defense played one of its best games of the year… and the Wildcats still lost decisively. Weird things can and do happen in rivalry games.

The Wisconsin Badgers beating the Minnesota Golden Gophers wasn’t weird. The proven, tested, familiar Big Ten West powerhouse defeated the up-and-comers who had not encountered this kind of pressure before. That wasn’t weird. Wisconsin handled bad weather better than its opponent. That wasn’t weird, either.

What was weird: Wisconsin got 280 passing yards from Jack Coan and only 76 rushing yards from Jonathan Taylor. Coan decisively outplayed his opposite number, Minnesota quarterback Tanner Morgan, in the nasty conditions. Coan owned the stage and carried the Badgers’ offense.

If you know your recent Big Ten history (“recent” defined as the 21st century), you know that one of the more respected Big Ten quarterbacks this century is Ohio State’s Craig Krenzel. He won a national championship. He had a knack for making the huge play in the big moment. Recall the ugly game against Purdue when Krenzel hit Michael Jenkins with a downfield pass late in the fourth quarter to enable the Buckeyes to survive. Krenzel was a lot like Jay Barker of the 1992 national champion Alabama team: not great in terms of aggregate stats, but golden when all the pressure was on and his team needed a score in a do-or-die situation. That was Krenzel. He gained immortality as a result.

Let’s make one thing very clear here: Jack Coan wasn’t Craig Krenzel against Minnesota on Saturday. He was A LOT BETTER. This was not the “stumble around for three quarters and then make the huge play late” template Krenzel established. This was just a steady, strong performance the whole way. Let’s get something straight about Coan, who had been more Krenzel-ish in previous weeks: This game against Minnesota was not the cautious “game manager” style of quarterbacking we had seen for much of the 2019 season.

Yes, the 15-of-22 passing line isn’t all that surprising. Efficient, percentage passing figured — before this game — to be a part of the Wisconsin attack… but that’s precisely the point: This wasn’t a safe passing game — not entirely at any rate. Coan’s 15 completions weren’t for the 159 yards Bart Houston threw for on an 11-of-12 stat line in the 2017 Cotton Bowl win Paul Chryst gained over P.J. Fleck and Western Michigan. That day revealed a “safer” Wisconsin passing game, with tight end Troy Fumagalli being Houston’s main outlet.

No, Coan’s 15 completions went for 280 yards. That’s 18.7 yards per completion. Coan was much more than the guy who needed to complete third-and-six throws earlier in the season (and didn’t do so enough against Ohio State). This was a quarterback who took command of his team and his offense, dominating the positional matchup against Morgan, who was throwing off his back foot all day. While Morgan was rattled by Wisconsin’s pass rush, Coan shook Minnesota’s defense with surgical strikes. It was role reversal for the two quarterbacks. Given the stakes, it was clearly Coan’s finest hour and his best performance at UW.

Rising to the moment like this means everything for Coan and for Badger fans. That Coan could climb past his limitations and not merely deliver a clutch play, but a whole clutch GAME, dramatically reshapes his place in Wisconsin football history. He could lose to Ohio State this coming Saturday, and barring something especially dramatic — fumbling on the goal line down four points in the final minute — that won’t matter at all. Jack Coan will be remembered as “the guy who won the Big Ten West and put it all together in miserable weather, ruining the Gophers’ season.”

“The Jack Coan Game” is now part of the Wisconsin-Minnesota series. It won Paul Bunyan’s Axe. It won a division title and a plane ticket to Indianapolis. It won a rematch with a great Ohio State team. It gave Wisconsin a shot at the Rose Bowl while firmly knocking Minnesota out of the Granddaddy. It was all of those things… but most of all, it was the game in which a team and a quarterback hugely reshaped how they will be remembered in history. That might be the greatest thing Jack Coan and his teammates won on Saturday in Minneapolis.

Chicagoans refer to it as “Bear Weather.” The Minnesota Vikings used to revel in cold weather in the old Metropolitan Stadium in the 1970s. The Green Bay Packers knew how to tough it out in the Ice Bowl and so many other cold-weather situations under Vince Lombardi. More recent Packer teams quarterbacked by Brett Favre and then Aaron Rodgers handled the Carolina Panthers and Chicago Bears in cold-weather NFC Championship Games.

Disclosure: I have never lived in the Midwest. However, my folks are from Chicago, and as someone who lives in Phoenix, the markers of territory on an NFL Sunday are the Steelers bar over there, the Browns bar over there, the Bears bar here, and the Packers bar there. The Midwest is never very far away in Phoenix, and I have talked to enough Midwesterners over the years to get a sense of how (rightly) prideful they are in being tough and sturdy when weather gets nasty.

“None of this domed-stadium crap.”

“Real men play championship football outdoors.”

“If Alabama or these other SEC teams had to play bowl games in THIS WEATHER, instead of always getting to play under a dome in New Orleans, or in Miami, I wonder if the SEC would be so good in the playoff or the BCS.”

That last point is especially accurate and potent in underscoring the advantage Big Ten teams WOULD have if playoff games were either on campus or moved to cold-weather outdoor sites in the North. SEC teams always have the advantage of playing in warm-weather or “weather-neutral” (dome) environments. Big Ten teams never get the benefit of playing games in THEIR preferred weather — not against Clemson or other Southern teams. Big Ten teams only play cold-weather games within the conference.

Therefore, it was only fitting that the Wisconsin Badgers and Minnesota Golden Gophers played in a wintry mix on Saturday. Minnesota fans probably thought their team was strong enough and good enough to handle the bad conditions, but as soon as the weather got nasty, so did the Badgers. It was beyond obvious that Minnesota’s offense functioned better in calm conditions. If you look at any photo gallery of the game, via a newspaper or website, you can see the pictures being bright and clear in the gray but precipitation-free first minutes of the contest. That’s when Minnesota grabbed a 7-0 lead and had the ball at the Wisconsin 35 with a chance to go up two scores.

P.J. Fleck — in a cautious decision he ought to regret all offseason — punted. It was the last time Minnesota enjoyed the true upper hand, because then the weather deteriorated… and so did the Gophers. Wisconsin had the sled dogs and the mashers and the snowplows. The Badgers threw the ball more sharply, hit harder, covered receivers more vigorously, and did everything with more confidence and toughness.

Minnesotans culturally like the fact that TCF Bank Stadium — unlike the Vikings’ new home, U.S. Bank Stadium — is outdoors. Again, the old Metropolitan Stadium was a point of pride for Minnesotans, given how often the Los Angeles Rams turned into icicles when playing the Vikings in NFL postseason games in the 1970s. Minnesotans want the bad weather. They want opposing teams to come to the great North and suffer.

It had to be painful for the Gophers and their fans to see — so clearly — that U.S. Bank Stadium or the old (now gone) Metrodome would have helped Minnesota in this game. A fast track in perfect weather conditions would have serviced the Gophers’ passing attack, much as an SEC team or Clemson regularly thrives in conditions which present no discomfort whatsoever.

Wisconsin, though, enjoyed the miserable weather. It made Minnesota miserable. You can tell who is relishing a bad weather day and who is trying to survive it. The decisiveness with which Wisconsin punched Minnesota in the teeth was noticeable, unending, and pervasive. Everyone on Wisconsin got in on the fun. No positional unit fell short of the coaching staff’s hopes for this game. It was easily Wisconsin’s most complete game this season. You could cite the Michigan game, but that game was over very quickly. This was a much tougher ask against a better team, on the road, at the end of the season, with a division title on the line… and Wisconsin dug very deep throughout its roster to Badger and batter the Gophers into submission.

The weather outside was frightful, but the Badgers were delightful. They created this primal scene after the game: Wisconsin players roared in a spirit of conquest, holding Paul Bunyan’s Axe aloft and partying well into the evening in Minneapolis:

We should all have this much fun. Wisconsin turned bad weather into a time for a celebration. Sounds pretty Midwestern to me.