TDG Profile: Mike Dunbar

by GopherNation on Aug 18, 2008 1:15 PM CDT in Gopher Football Comment 24 comments

One year ago Gopher fans had many questions surrounding the offense.

How would an offense with run oriented personnel execute the spread offense?
What is the spread?
Who is Mike Dunbar?
Is Adam Weber capable of leading an offense, much less a spread offense?

I think many of these questions were answered last year and heading into 2008 the offense is one area where Gopher fans have few questions and high expectations.

To find what we can expect from Mike Dunbar in his second year as the offensive coordinator I think it helps to look back at his previous track record. Dunbar has been running the spread at the Division I level since the early 90's and has been setting records at every stop.

A common misconception about the spread is that many think it is a pass heavy offense. In truth there are many variations of the spread. Teams like Texas Tech throw the ball more than 75% of the time, but the famous Rich Rodriguez spread at West Virginia ran the ball 70% of the time finishing third in the nation in rushing and producing two 1,000 rushers. At times Dunbar's version of the spread has been labeled the Spread Coast offense. This of course references a spread version of the West Coast Offense. During his BCS years, Dunbar has nearly been 50/50 in run/pass and last year passed 51.1% of the time.

After seeing the Minnesota offense in 2007 I think we can expect to see two things in 2008.

First of all, I expect that we will see a running back finish as our leading rusher. Dunbar has been running the spread at the BCS level since 2002 and in each of his five seasons not at Minnesota his offense produced at least a 1,200 yard rusher. In his first season at Minnesota, the athletic quarterback, Adam Weber, was his leading rusher. I just don't see this happening again.

I know that we don't a stable of great backs, but if Dunbar was able to get 1,300 yard seasons out of two Northwestern running backs against Big Ten defenses there is no reason he can't get more production from either Jay Thomas or Duane Bennett.

Secondly I am very anxious to see how this offense progresses and grows in complexity in the second season of Dunbar and Weber.

I do not have a deep knowledge of complex offensive schemes but one thing I really enjoyed seeing last year was how certain plays were run early in games to set up the defense for a counter play in the second half. I expect to see more of this in 2008. Dunbar was working with an entire team that lacked experience in the spread and his quarterback was a redshirt freshman. I imagine the offensive gameplan was rather vanilla by Dunbar's standards and he must be excited to open chapter two of his playbook on Big Ten defenses.

Last year was a season of struggles and questions for head coach Tim Brewster, but the hiring of Mike Dunbar may have been the best move he made in his first 12 months on the job. Dunbar's offense is a key for recruiting offensive skill position players (read: MarQueis Gray) and should produce an offense that is fun to watch.

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the spread

In general, I hate the spread. It is too often an east-west, dinky dumpy, “fool you” offense which can not sit on a lead to save any D. But most of all, it requires great athelets at six positions. At Minnesota, our state is not gifted with tons of great atheletes. For us, they must be recruited from afar and those players are too often marginal students who have trouble settling in to this community and all its liberalism. I understand we need many top atheletes on D in order to stop the high speed O’s of other teams. The spread just requires us to find even more of those young men who are willing to come here from afar and have the ability to stay here.

Certainly, time will tell, but my guess is that we are going to become “Iowa North” with off the field problems by the ton.

by The Loon on Aug 18, 2008 3:39 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs

Agreed

As I said in a previous comment thread and will make a post on someday soon, I really appreciate what Wisconsin is doing. They are sticking with their formula and are holding out as the spread sweeps college football.

Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room.

by PJS on Aug 18, 2008 3:58 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs

BUT...

While I’m not sure if I’m completely on board with the spread yet. Arguments for it would be that with an offense like this it is much easier to recruit the athletic athletes. It will be much more difficult to get a Texas or Florida kid to come here and run the a more vanilla offense. And one wonders if in the current state of college football, can you compete on a national level with a traditional Wis type offense?

The spread just pulls defenders out of the box and gives you more space to take advantage of mis matches. I really like when the young Paterno said the spread is basically the wishbone. Depending on what version you run, it truly is an offense of reading the defense and taking what is your best available option. It isn’t gimmicky, it simply puts the offense in position to make a read and go with it.

Playing with the lead has much less to do with formations than it does play calling and execution. How well did the Mason double tight run offense hold leads in the infamous Wisconsin and Michigan games? And our ball control offense should easily have been able to hold the lead on a pass happy, free-wheeling, spread, Texas Tech shouldn’t it? When you have a tighter formation teams still can stack the run and stop it.

by GopherNation on Aug 18, 2008 4:12 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs

So, how good is the Dunbar spread at holding on to a lead?

And, if they stack the box, throw. I would have loved to see Weber as a QB in that formation.

Yes, we lost the Michigan and Wisconsin games, both times when we were affraid to run the ball on fourth down. I want an O that can impose their will on the opponants D. I was passed out shocked that we decided to punt with a true freshman in the Wisconsin game. The pass in the Michigan game was an audible by AAK. We are not going to agree on this in the next ten thousand years, but, a passing team is always going to drop some passes in a game and leave the O with second and long with more passes to come. The TT, MBIII, AAK team should have been a four run team nine times out of ten.

The test will come over time, but we have decided to give up our unique running game so that we can have the same O that every team in the BT is recruiting to stop. Can we really out recruit Michigan, Ohio State and Penn State for those guys and stay out of the NCAA jail? I think not.

by The Loon on Aug 18, 2008 5:05 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs

Not sure why...

… you keep bringing up the character of kids that we haven’t recruited yet and aren’t on campus yet. I mostly agree with you until you start suggesting that more athletic kids by and large have more character issues.

Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room.

by PJS on Aug 18, 2008 5:20 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs

spread does not equal passing team

Don’t pigeon hole the “spread.” As I pointed out in the post it is a very broad term and many teams run the ball out of the formation with great effectiveness. Winning games and holding leads has less to do with your formation and everything to do with play calling and execution. Your most recent comment completely proved what I am trying to say. The classic blown games (Wis, Mich and TT) were not the fault of the offensive system, they were the result of Mason’s judgment and lack of execution by the players involved. And we can all agree 2007’s 11 losses had more to do with a porous defense and a freshman QB than it did what system we were employing.

You are entitled to “hate the spread” but I would argue for reason’s for hating it are misguided.

by GopherNation on Aug 18, 2008 5:36 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs

We can agree on no such thing.

For every close game we lost, we won a close game. Get out your Gopher media guide and check it out.

As to why we lost 11 games last year, I have no doubt where the fault lies. The new coaches and thier systems were entirely at fault the years. In the previous five years the Gophers were 8-5 (3-5 in the Big Ten), 10-3 (5-3), 7-5 (3-5), 7-5 (4-4), and 6-7 (3-5) respectively. This was a combined 38-25 (18-22 in the Big Ten). From these “mediocre” results we have “turned around” to 1-11 and (0-8) in 2007.

In those previous “mediocre” years we played in bowl games every year and played such serious football programs as Arkansas, Oregon, Alabama, Virginia and Texas Tech.

Yet still, the Brewster apologist are spinning the tale that the above program (pre Brewster)caused the single worse season in the very long history of Gopher football that we got last year. That the team that lost in overtime to Texas Tech without Banks and Spaeth was so depleated by other graduates and felons that Brewster’s “greatest college football coaching staff ever assembled” could not win but one overtime game against Miami of Ohio in 2007 after MofO missed a 30 yard fieldgoal.

Absurd.

Instead it is obvious that Brewster and his all star coaching staff brough in new systems and attitudes that did a total face plant in year one. As the head coach, he failed.

Now, after 18 months, his apologists are saying that we can not be expected to win six (?) games against the easiest schedule I can recall in my forty plus years as an adult fan. Boys and girls, if we can not win six games against this schedule, how are we going to do in 2009 against Air Force, Cal, Syracuse and Penn State in 2009?

Time to cut the crud and allow Brewster what he said he wanted: the right to have responsibility for the product he puts on the field. This coach wins, or this coach losses, this year. His job, his responsiblity, his team. The one he wanted. The one he needs to win with.

Go Gophers!! Beat NIU!!! Now!!!!

by The Loon on Aug 18, 2008 8:15 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs

maybe you are right. Maybe Brewster stands no chance of winning. For your sake I hope you are right. For the rest of our sakes I hope you are wrong. Then we can bring back someone who can play the worst non-conference schedule in the country so we can get to 6 or 7 wins and play in the Sun Bowl. If this is what you want for this program, you just may get it. Until then Brewster will get his chance.

by GopherNation on Aug 18, 2008 8:31 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs

I'm sorry, who is the coach this year?

I recall no easier schedule than the one we have this year. If we can not win seven games with that schedule, what could you expect in 2009 with Air Force, Cal, Syracuse and Penn State on the schedule?

I hope we win every game we play every year. As an adult, I am, however, required to notice the realities of what happened last year. If I were to give advice to Coach Brewster this year, I would suggest he get on with the business of winning every football game he can win this year. My long experience with this program would strongly suggest to me that if he loses the Indiana game this year, the fans will really not see that as a good sign.

As for Mason, he will never coach here again. His days are gone. His wins were his wins. His losses were his losses. If Brewster fails here we will once again enter the market place looking for another new coach and we will be even more burried under the burden of our failures and dead coaches. But, for now, the job is Brewster’s and the excuses need to stop. Unlike last year, he has to put the big talk aside and get on with the job he is being paid to do. Win games. Now. If you think the fans are going to put up with much more of this “it is understandable that we lose most of our games” crud much longer, I think you are wrong. Indiana this year, Air Force next year. If I were a betting man, I would guess that there will be some mighty crusty comments after an Air Force loss next year.

So, Go Gophers!! Now, please.

by The Loon on Aug 18, 2008 10:15 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs

slow down

2009 is a year away.

Obviously if Brewster doesn’t show improvement fans will get restless, you nailed that one.

You keep bringing up new arguments against the Brewster staff. Do you have these sitting in a word file to copy and paste them when needed?

1. The spread sucks, it can’t sit on a lead to save a D. – Which is inaccurate and the old staff was equally as incapable of holding leads.
2. The spread will lead to recruiting troubles and we’ll be stuck with athletes who will end up in jail – completely unfair, speculative and let’s not forget what a handful of Mason recruited athletes from the Midwest were capable of last spring.
3. The infamous Wis and Mich losses were because of a freshman punter and AAK audible, but the 2007 debacle, “The new coaches and thier systems were entirely at fault.” – You can’t have it both ways
4. If we can’t beat Indiana in 2008 we’ll never beat Air Force in 2009 – I don’t even know where to begin.

by GopherNation on Aug 18, 2008 10:37 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs

Perhaps you will want to quote me on what I actually wrote, not what....

….write that I wrote. For example, I did not write 2, 3 or 4.

Also, I am not in favor of changing coaches every four, five, two, six, seven or ten years. Up until the building of the new stadium our biggest problem, by far, was our total lack of grit in our fan support. We are caught in the seemingly endless cycle of blaming our good coaches for not winning all the time and supporting our bad coaches because they have some new hype approach. It was very discouraging for me to see our ever fickle fans buy into all the hype last year and then leave the games in the third quarter. I go back to my original point. Our program is digging itself into a deeper and deeper hole with every loss and it had better stop very soon or we are going to have a very nice, new and empty stadium.

by The Loon on Aug 19, 2008 12:50 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs

Regarding the Brookhaven Trio.

So what did we learn from that debacle? No more Brookhaven Trio? Nope. A virtually 95% recruiting class from the same sort of background. OK, act surprised when the same sorts of things happen again. All kids with poor family backgrounds will screw up? Nope, I am not saying that at all. I am saying that a significantly higher rate of problems will come from a bad background than from a good background. All data shows that reality to anyone who is not blinded by “football mania” or PC religious beliefs.

by The Loon on Aug 19, 2008 12:57 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs

here is your chance to clarify...

what is your point, Loon? Do you just want to be right? We are going to be terrible then you can tell us all I told you so? I realize you and I are the only ones reading this thread now, but please tell me once and for all what your point is? Should we end the Brewster era now and start over, is that what you want? I want to understand what your point is.

Enjoy the next few years. If we are terrible you can continue to live in the Mason years and point it out to everyone how good we had it.

I am choosing to give the Brewster experiment a chance, cause really, we don’t have any other choice.

what you say here can, and will, be used against you

by GopherNation on Aug 19, 2008 1:59 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs

Gee, that only took 6 days.

http://www.thedailygopher.com/2008/8/12/592050/gopher-football-best-case#comments

A follow-up question for the mods
Does SBN have the capability of "banning" certain posters? I see this site as a potential terroristic mark for certain wing-nut posters of the Gopher Nation to use as their bully pulpit to spew their already known conspiracy theories and endless verbose diatribes.

I saw what happened to the Star Tribunes comments section when Chip Scoggins blogged and I’d hate to see it happen to an independent site run by two die-hard fans. I didn’t minds its ruination at the hands of the Star Tribune.

by norman dale on Aug 12, 2008 10:50 PM CDT reply 0 recs

Oh, yes.
… you are so advised. … if my signature didn’t make that clear already.

Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here! This is the War Room.

by PJS on Aug 12, 2008 11:02 PM CDT up reply 0 recs

Thank God.
The Strib blog is unreadable. Please, if anyone with the user name "David Allen Coe," "Loon," or "Wren" tries to sign up, ban them immediately.

by plinytheelder on Aug 14, 2008 4:52 PM CDT up reply 0 recs

"Tremendously...." - Tim Brewster

by norman dale on Aug 19, 2008 5:09 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs

If ....

…. things get out of line, or if commenters stray off-topic, we’ll resort to our moderator capabilities.

This thread, for example, has gone way off topic.

Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room.

by PJS on Aug 19, 2008 6:04 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs

I too never want anyone to disagree with the new, better course we are on!!!

Brewster rocks!!

by The Loon on Aug 19, 2008 7:43 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs

Disagreeement ....

…. is all good. As long as it’s civil. And this thread has been that!

I’m personally giving this new course a chance, because, well, what is done is done and Brewster has done well the one thing he was said to be able to do well: recruit. If he can improve some fundamentals—tackling for starters—this new course could work.

Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room.

by PJS on Aug 19, 2008 7:48 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs

You and others decided, without my support, to change coaches.

You were warned by me and others that going to the bottom of the Big Ten was a real possiblity and that in doing so you would undo what respectability we had earned over the previous ten years. I will not even bother to list the other twenty promises that were listed at the time you were set on making a change. All broken by now (“we will close down the borders”, etc. etc.)

OK, you won. We are the bottom program in the Big Ten and clearly seen as such by the national media.

What do I want now? Nothing. I can see no way we are going to get out of the current mess. I expect a sequence of off the field problems, over hyped recruiting classes full of ever more questionalbe charecters, eventual NCAA disaster and another coaching change where we start over from an even worse position. As I have posted dozens of times, I think you deep thinkers have dug us into one hell of a mess and I am certain Maturi has no idea where to go from here. Either Brewster starts winning games here without getting caught by the NCAA or I will need to out live Maturi’s years here. Then I will get to start all over again from the bottom of an even deeper hole for the eighth time as a Gopher fan.

I don’t want any of this mess you guys have made. But I am certain more losses will not help.

by The Loon on Aug 19, 2008 5:21 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs

Norman Dale

sorry, it is my fault for engaging Loon. I’m not going to ban someone just because I disagree with him/her. I just wanted to know what is point is. It never really came out, but I’m not going to ban someone as long as it’s civil.

what you say here can, and will, be used against you

by GopherNation on Aug 19, 2008 10:03 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs

It won't stay civil once the true Brewster thought police figure out ....

…I’m posting here. They know the rules. Majority views rule, opposing views can be silenced through name calling. Go after the guys wife or children, you know the drill.

by The Loon on Aug 19, 2008 10:27 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs

Dunbar and message boards

First, I like Dunbar’s offense. I expect that he will run the ball quite a bit more than people think. Regardless of offense teams do not win championships without defense. We have always been suspect on D. If we can hold teams to under 21, then I am not terribly concerned about what kind of O we run. We have not done that very often in the past.

Loon, you should consider politics, as you really do stay on message. While I do not agree with you, why not give it a chance? Let’s see what Brewster can do. If he fails, then we move on with a new stadium on campus. While I respect what Mason did, he had his chance and we were never going to get to the next level.

I too hope this can be a board where posters do not go after families, as that has happened to me in the past and it is not enjoyable.

I will be hopping in the car for a roadtrip from the East Coast to MPLS where I will drink with a some friends who love beer and the GOPHERS as much as I do. The return will include a stop at BGSU the following week. Should be fun. Hopefully the drive is uneventful.

by Kelly Leeks on Aug 20, 2008 3:42 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs

This is a good point.

Dunbar offenses actually have a pretty consistent record of producing good RBs, and giving them plenty of carries.

by plinytheelder on Aug 21, 2008 2:13 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs

Thanks Pliny

I saw your comment above. Lets just not go down the road of assuming the conversation. I think we are in touch enough and reading every comment that anything inappropriate will be shut down asap. I don’t want to see that any more than you do. I’m sure the Star Trib wasn’t interested in moderating comments on a detail level, but we will (at least until we get hundreds of comments per post!)

Loon and anyone else can put their thoughts here. But all effort will be made to keep things on topic and appropriate. I think PJS addressed it immediately and appropriately.

what you say here can, and will, be used against you

by GopherNation on Aug 21, 2008 2:47 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs

Cheers, I’m sure you guys will keep everything under control. Just thought I’d send out a bit of a “report” on the strib site – I like this site a lot so far and would hate to see it go down that road. But you’re right, that one isn’t really moderated, whereas I think you guys are doing a great job moderating this one. Thanks again.

by plinytheelder on Aug 21, 2008 8:40 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs