Yes, that’s a real headline. Yesterday the Minnesota Golden Gopher football program released their 2019 Outback Bowl rings and included…
Yes, that’s a real headline.
Yesterday the Minnesota Golden Gopher football program released their 2019 Outback Bowl rings and included in the design is a commemoration of their Big Ten West victory last season–a co-victory which was actually a defeat as the Badgers defeated the Golden Gophers late in the season and won the division.
— Minnesota Football (@GopherFootball) July 22, 2020
Also included: ranking No. 10 in the end-of-season poll and hosting College Gameday for the first time.
In case the message above wasn’t clear: Minnesota and Wisconsin had the same conference record last season so they were (technically) co-champions of the Big Ten West. As Badger fans know, though, the tiebreaker is the head-to-head matchup which was won 38-17 by Jack Coan and the Wisconsin Badgers.
Championship rings are fun and are a great commemoration of success, I’ll give them that. They did win the Outback Bowl against Auburn, host College Gameday and finish the season 11-2, this all is true. But it’s hard to look at the Big Ten West champion part of the ring and not immediately go to the fact that it was the Badgers–not the Golden Gophers–that faced off with Ohio State in the conference championship last season.
The scheduled kickoff for the Wisconsin Badgers’ 2020 football season is now only 47 days away. Yes, there are still question marks…
The scheduled kickoff for the Wisconsin Badgers’ 2020 football season is now only 47 days away.
Yes, there are still question marks about what the schedule will look like and if September 4 is a realistic date to start the season. But from what we know now, the Badgers and the rest of the conference will play a conference-only schedule and (hopefully) a conference championship and bowl season.
A lot about the season and each team’s chances changed when the Big Ten altered their schedule, so I went through the top teams in the conference earlier this week and analyzed how their stock was affected by the change. Long story short, the elimination of out-of-conference games has a profound affect on the season outlook of many of the conference’s leading programs.
Today we’re going a little more into the weeds and making three bold claims and one guarantee about what is to come during the altered season.
First, the three bold claims:
No. 1: The Indiana Hoosiers will finish the season No. 3 in the Big Ten East and with a better record than Michigan
Indiana Hoosiers quarterback Michael Penix Jr. (9) looks to pass during the first quarter against the Maryland Terrapins at Capital One Field at Maryland Stadium. Credit: Tommy Gilligan-USA TODAY Sports
I never thought I would ever type those words out, but when you look at each team’s schedule and different preseason situations it makes a lot of sense.
First, Indiana has only four challenging games on their schedule: at Wisconsin, vs Penn State, at Ohio State and at Michigan.
Michigan, on the other hand, has five: vs Wisconsin, vs Penn State, at Minnesota, vs Indiana and at Ohio State.
What’s the difference between those schedules? Most of Indiana’s tough games are on the road in what will likely be empty stadiums and most of Michigan’s will be at home in front of an empty stadium.
So the playing field is leveled a bit to start.
Second, and the biggest reason the Hoosiers are trending upward while Michigan is going the opposite direction, is Indiana welcomes back Michael Penix Jr. after an 8-5 2019 season while Michigan needs to groom Dylan McCaffrey to take over the starting job after going 9-4 last season.
Having talent and experience return at the quarterback position is pivotal this year as the preseason is already different and shortened in addition to the fact that out-of-conference “cupcake” games that are usually important to preparing a quarterback for conference play are no longer on the schedule.
I’m buying Indiana’s stock with Penix Jr. under center, a veteran offensive line and an improving defense and selling Michigan’s with a new quarterback and a gauntlet of a schedule.
Next…one of the Badgers’ division rivals who will be taking a step backwards this season
Kirk Ciarrocca leaves PJ Fleck, creating uncertainty in Minnesota
The Wisconsin Badgers woke up on the feast of Stephen and noticed that the Minnesota Golden Gophers — who will try to spend the 2020s bumping the Badgers off their perch atop the Big Ten West — don’t have an offensive coordinator for the time being. Kirk Ciarrocca, who has been with P.J. Fleck at Western Michigan and Minnesota, left the Gophers to join James Franklin at Penn State.
Coaching moves aren’t guaranteed to succeed or fail, but on the surface of things, the fact that Fleck will have to change coordinators after several years with a trusted lieutenant seems suboptimal for the Gophers. More than the loss of continuity on his staff, though, Fleck has to deal with the reality that Ciarrocca generally developed wide receivers:
Biggest thing that jumps out to me looking at Kirk Ciarrocca's offenses from a numbers perspective is WR production.
Penn State has had one 1000-yd season from a WR in Franklin's tenure.
In same time frame as an OC, Ciarrocca has produced seven such seasons.
The Badgers saw Ciarrocca’s offense before Ciarrocca went to Minnesota. Wisconsin played — and contained — Ciarrocca’s offense in the 2017 Cotton Bowl when P.J. Fleck was at Western Michigan. Watching Ciarrocca stay in the Big Ten Conference is not a good thing for Wisconsin. Watching Ciarrocca leave the Big Ten West, however, is definitely a good thing for the Badgers. Minnesota needs every ounce of leverage it can get in its burgeoning battle with the Badgers for Big Ten West supremacy. Maybe Fleck will somehow find a coordinator on par with Ciarrocca. Yet, given how successful Fleck has been the past several years with Ciarrocca by his side, this surely isn’t what Fleck had in mind for his offseason. It is not what he planned or hoped for.
Could Fleck successfully adjust? If he is the caliber of coach many people think he is, he will… but we don’t know just how good Fleck is. We are only beginning to get a fuller measure of him, and given how thoroughly he got schooled by Jim Leonhard and Paul Chryst a month ago, anything which disrupts Minnesota’s momentum is a genuine threat to a sustained Fleck ascendance in Minneapolis. Stay tuned for Minnesota’s hire of a replacement for Kirk Ciarrocca. The Big Ten coaching carousel season just became a lot more interesting.
Some thoughts on how PJ Fleck of the Minnesota Golden Gophers and Paul Chryst of the Wisconsin Badgers must handle Saturday’s game.
In November, the Minnesota Golden Gophers – who are preparing to face the Wisconsin Badgers on Saturday — have played two very big games: one against the Penn State Nittany Lions, the other against the Iowa Hawkeyes. Both games were hugely affected by game-management decisions. In one, Minnesota’s opponent made the game-management mistakes. In the other, P.J. Fleck made the game-management mistakes. The Gophers beat Penn State and lost to Iowa.
As Minnesota prepares to face Wisconsin in a battle for the Big Ten West Division championship, it is worth noting the large role game management has played in Minnesota’s month of November. If Saturday’s showdown is close in the final minutes, both Fleck and Paul Chryst will need to make sound and responsible chess moves. Fleck in particular has to bounce back from a brutal showing against Iowa two weeks ago.
Here was the situation: Minnesota was trailing Iowa 23-13 late in the game and had first and goal near the Iowa goal line. The play clock, however, was running down, and Fleck called one of his remaining timeouts. On third or fourth down near the goal line, one can make the argument that saving five yards is crucial in the attempt to score the touchdown, thereby necessitating the use of a timeout. That is not an ideal move to make, but it is reasonable and defensible. Calling that same timeout on first or second down is not. There are too many chances to score from the 6- or 7-yard line to justify using a timeout, especially when it is clear that a team will need to get the ball back late in the game (barring the recovery of an onside kick).
Fleck’s use of a timeout – Minnesota did score a touchdown and then failed on the conversion after the touchdown to remain down by four points, 23-19 – cost the Gophers 45 seconds they otherwise would have been able to retain on Iowa’s subsequent possession. Minnesota got the ball back after an Iowa punt, but with 45 fewer seconds than it otherwise would have had. The Gophers lost, 23-19, in part because Fleck did not properly value a timeout.
A few weeks earlier, Fleck’s opponent made the game-management blunders, influencing the shape of the battle in the second half. Penn State’s James Franklin went for two in the third quarter of a game his team trailed, 24-19. There were many plot twists left in this game, but Franklin chased a point well before the fourth quarter. When Penn State failed and Minnesota then scored a touchdown for a 31-19 lead, that point loomed large. Minnesota led by 12, not 11, which meant that when PSU was down 12, a field goal did absolutely nothing for the Nittany Lions.
Sure enough, Penn State got into a red-zone situation where – had it trailed by 11 points – a field goal would have trimmed its deficit to eight, a one-score game. Down 12, Penn State had to go for it. The Nittany Lions failed. Penn State did scramble back to score a touchdown and create a 31-26 game. PSU drove deep into Minnesota territory in the final minute, but got intercepted on a dangerous, risky throw. Had Franklin not chased the point at 24-19 in the third quarter – which meant he would have kicked a field goal later – Penn State might have had 30 points, and would have had at least 29, in that final minute. There would not have been a need to make dangerous throws in range for a winning field goal. Having to score a touchdown, though, necessitated a more aggressive approach. It blew up in Franklin’s face.
Game management – not just making individual decisions in certain moments, but understanding how decisions need to be stacked together in a big-picture view of how a team gains a path to victory – helped Minnesota beat Penn State. Game management helped Minnesota lose to Iowa. When P.J. Fleck and Paul Chryst match wits on Saturday, they will both need to be on their game… in the realm of game management.
Recalling the 2017 Cotton Bowl (January, not December) between Paul Chryst’s Wisconsin Badgers and P.J. Fleck’s Western Michigan Broncos.
The Cotton Bowl had two games in 2017: One was played in late December, when Ohio State defeated USC. The other one was played on January 2 of that year, when the Wisconsin Badgers defeated the Western Michigan Broncos, 24-16. Western Michigan was the Mid-American Conference champion, the first (and still only, to date) MAC champion to win the Group of Five championship and play in a New Year’s Six bowl. The coaching quality of PJ Fleck emerged that season, when WMU went unbeaten in the regular season and earned its big date with Paul Chryst and Wisconsin in Arlington, Texas.
This was the first really big game between Fleck and Chryst. Their second really big encounter is this Saturday, as the Minnesota Golden Gophers try to win the Big Ten West for the first time and deny the Wisconsin Badgers a rematch with the Ohio State Buckeyes in Indianapolis in the Big Ten Championship Game.
Last year’s Fleck-versus-Chryst game didn’t sizzle. I say that not because Wisconsin was on the short end, but because Wisconsin didn’t have a very good team. Minnesota was also trying to find its bearings under Fleck and gain an identity as a program. This 2019 meeting, on the other hand, is a clash of quality teams and a battle for a division championship, maybe even a ticket to the Rose Bowl (with Penn State being in the mix for that latter prize as well). It is worth looking back on the first especially significant encounter between Fleck and Chryst on a national stage.
One key note to make about that (January) 2017 Cotton Bowl was that Chryst went into battle against Fleck and offensive coordinator Kirk Ciarrocca (who accompanied Fleck in moving from Western Michigan to Minnesota) with Justin Wilcox as his defensive coordinator. The Western Michigan-Wisconsin Cotton Bowl is therefore not a renewal of the assistant coach battle (and Broyles Award semifinalist showdown) between Ciarrocca and current UW defensive coordinator Jim Leonhard.
Yet, even though so many faces were different — Wisconsin had T.J. Watt and Vince Biegel on defense, Corey Clement and Troy Fumagalli on offense — a few details of this game are certainly worth noting in connection to what we will see this upcoming Saturday in Minneapolis.
Jan 2, 2017; Arlington, TX, USA; Wisconsin Badgers running back Corey Clement (6) and head coach Paul Chryst and tight end Troy Fumagalli (81) celebrate the win over the Western Michigan Broncos in the 2017 Cotton Bowl game at AT&T Stadium. The Badgers defeat the Broncos 24-16. Mandatory Credit: Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports
The third-down conversion rates for both teams were impressive. Western Michigan was 5 of 11, Wisconsin 7 of 11. The Badgers won this battle, and it certainly mattered in propelling them to victory. However, Western Michigan’s ability to convert a reasonable percentage of third downs enabled the Broncos to stay close. Time of possession in this game was a virtual tie: 30:05 for Wisconsin, 29:55 for Western Michigan. The Broncos kept the ball from the Badgers long enough to keep the game close. Western Michigan did cover the 8.5-point Wisconsin betting line. However, Western Michigan — with receiver Corey Davis on its roster — needed to hit the home-run pass to beat Wisconsin, and that did not happen against Wisconsin and Wilcox’s defense.
Davis had six catches for only 73 yards — 12 per catch — and was outgained by Wisconsin’s best offensive player that day. Fumagalli made sensational grabs in that contest, accumulating 83 receiving yards and powering the Badgers’ offense on a day when Clement was held to 71 yards by Western Michigan’s resolute defense.
I don’t need to tell anyone that Minnesota is more physical and skilled than that 2016 Western Michigan team. The Gophers are a much more formidable version of Fleck’s first great team in his coaching career. Nevertheless, the game flow Wisconsin established that day against Western Michigan is something Chryst and his staff will certainly want to replicate against Minnesota. If you offered Chryst a deal in which his team would get a 14-0 first-quarter lead, and get an 11-of-12 passing line for 159 yards — as Bart Houston delivered on that day — from Jack Coan, he will take it. He would sign on the dotted line. Sure, he wouldn’t like the part of the deal in which his lead running back gains only 71 yards, but the 7 of 11 number on third downs would likely lead him to accept this larger package of circumstances.
Strong third-down conversion rates, supremely efficient situational passing, and a two-touchdown first-quarter lead — with the opposing offense, coached by Fleck and Ciarrocca, not hitting a long downfield pass play — give Wisconsin and Paul Chryst a roadmap for how to play this game Saturday. The biggest concern and question mark: Can Jim Leonhard get a Fleck-busting defensive performance which was every bit as impressive as Justin Wilcox in the 2017 Cotton Bowl? More precisely, can Wisconsin’s back seven defend the RPOs and other delights the Fleck-Ciarrocca brain trust has in store for the Badgers in Minneapolis?
