The Elite, The Meh & The Ugly – Maryland

Homecoming was a party for the Gophers

The Minnesota Golden Gophers (5-3) won their third straight game on Saturday with a 48-23 rout of the Maryland Terrapins (4-4) during Homecoming at Huntington Bank Stadium.

The Elite

Max Brosmer. If you pop the hood on the Gophers’ three-game winning streak, you don’t have to look hard to see who is driving it: Brosmer is 67-of-89 (75.2%) for 682 passing yards with six touchdowns and no interceptions during that three-game stretch. This offense runs through the quarterback and Brosmer has been every bit the field general it needs. He was prolific against Maryland, finishing 26-of-33 for 320 passing yards and four touchdowns. Minnesota has not seen quarterback play like this since at least the 2019 season with Tanner Morgan under center.

Daniel Jackson and Elijah Spencer. We can’t talk about the quarterback without talking about his top two wide receivers, as both Jackson and Spencer came to play on Saturday. The pair combined for 15 receptions for 216 receiving yards and four touchdowns. It feels like Jackson is starting to heat up, and Spencer is beginning to live up to the potential the coaching staff saw when they brought him in in as a transfer from Charlotte.

Pass protection. Credit where credit is due: The Minnesota offensive line kept Brosmer clean all game and afforded him the time he needed to pick apart the Terps’ secondary.

The Minnesota pass defense. Maryland quarterback Billy Edwards Jr. entered the game ranked 10th in the country in passing yards, averaging more than 300 yards per game. He had his worst game of the season Saturday, completing only 54% of his passes as the Gophers limited him to 201 passing yards and kept him out of the end zone while forcing two interceptions. It started up front, where the Minnesota defensive line was consistently disruptive and got their hands into passing lanes. The Gophers’ secondary was up to the task of bottling up the Terps’ elite wide receivers, contesting catches and bending on occasion but never breaking.

Justin Walley. The senior cornerback had an outstanding game against the Terps, leading the team with three pass break-ups and recording the first pick six of his career.

Playing for points before halftime. There were 28 seconds left on the game clock in the second quarter when Maryland’s kickoff went out of bounds, giving the Gophers the ball at their own 35-yard line. Every Gopher fan expected the team to take a knee or run the ball to let the remaining time expire, as head coach P.J. Fleck is wont to do. Instead, Minnesota marched 49 yards — including a terrific 23-yard catch in traffic by tight end Jameson Geers down the seam — to set up a 34-yard field goal. Who is this head coach and what did he do with P.J. Fleck?

Goldy the Gopher. As per usual, Goldy’s Halloween costumes were on point. I know that his dance performance as Deadpool to the tune of NSYNC’s “Bye Bye Bye” was a fan favorite, but my personal favorite was when he dressed up as Paul Atreides from Dune and rode a sandworm.

The uniforms. Minnesota wore white throwback helmets with maroon jerseys and white pants. For my money, it’s the sharpest look they’ve had all season.

Matt Krohn-Imagn Images

The Meh

The Gophers’ ground game. To their credit, Fleck and offensive coordinator Greg Harbaugh Jr. never tried to force the the run game. They’ve recognized that the strength of this offense is the passing game and have adjusted their play-calling accordingly. That said, it’s hard to watch when this offense does try to run the ball. Darius Taylor’s 51-yard touchdown run helped them save face in the box score, but outside of that run, the ground game was stuck in the mud. There was a point in the second quarter when Taylor was dropped for a six-yard loss twice in the same drive.

The Ugly

Fourth quarter injures to starters. There has been quite a bit of hand-wringing over Fleck’s decision not to pull his starters earlier in the fourth quarter, which led to Aidan Gousby and Jah Joyner both suffering apparent injuries. Fleck addressed it in his postgame press conference:

“Well I wanted to be able to take them out right around the four or five minute mark. You’re counting possessions. And again, listen, Andy, with all due respect, we have to play 60 minutes of football. You get a point where you want to do that.

“I’ve also watched Illinois come back on us last year. I’ve also watched Northwestern come back on us last year. You watch these things that stay. My heart is only so big, right? They say it’s like your fist. And deep within all these pieces of your heart are memories that have left it damaged, scarred. And when you’re playing a team… You saw them: Touchdown, touchdown.

“I would love it to pull them out early, but my job is to find a way to go win a football game and teach them to go finish games. So yeah, it looks like we’re all good. That’s that’s a good thing.

“But it’s not like you have to sit there and say, okay, I’m risking something. You’re playing football. We pulled them out with about two minutes to go, they ended up getting a touchdown. But we also have a lot of people who are rotating, and you could say the starters were rotating a lot of players, even on the offensive side.

“They just went down to score. They are three possessions [from taking a lead]. Three possessions when you have some onside kicks. Next thing you know… My job is to find a way to go win football games. That’s what I believe. It’s football. You’ve all been around me before. I’ve pulled starters in fourth quarter. I’ve pulled starters at the end of the third quarter.

“This one, we’ve got to find ways to be able to finish football games. We didn’t finish against North Carolina. We didn’t finish that football game. You go back and you look at Michigan, we didn’t start fast. We’ve got to get used to playing 60 minutes of football in a game.”