Minnesota Football: 3 Stars, 4 Quarters, 5 Thoughts Falls Down In Week 3

Sometimes being a blogger is hard; life often gets in the way of deadlines and even the best of intentions. It is especially hard when you are questioning your fandom. No, my fandom to the Gophers is as solid as ever, but my fandom of football has been put to the test. In the end, I'm still a fan, and I have some thoughts, so here you go, 3 Stars / 4 Quarters / 5 Thoughts!

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This week I watched the game at Joe Sensor's in Roseville and I took notes, a lot of notes. In fact I documented every play in the first half. Of course, at the end of the half I contemplated leaving, but no, I stayed until the end. Despite staying until the end, I couldn't really make myself write this weekend, I was glad for all of the chores my wife assigned me, including driving around 5 women to go shopping for 4 hours on Sunday (good thing too as it let me miss the Viking game). Then Monday game and work got busy, this on top of the cold I've had since Friday night. Thus, while I have thoughts, they will be abbreviated form what I normally do and certainly form what I had planned. On that low note, here they are!!! (APPLAUSE)

Three Stars

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To be honest, I considered using sarcastic stars for this segment, such as great job offensive line for owning the LOS, or great tacking fundamentals defense. In the end, that's not fair as the Gophers did try, and some of them did give good performances.

#37 Peter "MOAR" Mortell - His punting was great. When we turned the ball over by punting the ball, TCU was much less likely to score as they had a much longer field to travel.

#5 Damien "The Power Compels You" Wilson (LB - WR) - This guy knows what he is doing and does it in a convincing, albeit quiet, manner. Showed good fundamentals with good execution. I noticed missed tackles by other players, but I didn't notice Wilson missing tackles.

#88 Maxx "xxx" Williams (TE - SO) - Catching the only points of the game was good but his blocking was better (at least when I noticed). When our QBs are passing to Maxx, they look like good QBs.

Honorable mention to #4 Donovahn "Express" Jones (WR - SO) & #15 Marcus "About a Boy" Jones (DB - SR).

4 Quarters

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1st Quarter - Wow, we are being pretty aggressive on our play calling. I haven't seen this much passing since the Iowa game last year.

2nd Quarter - How did the Iowa game go last year? Crap. Dad, you want to leave at half? Nope? Double crap.

3rd Quarter - Resist the temptation to keep drinking. Well, at least I was successful at that.

4th Quarter - Hope Mitch isn't hurt bad, he almost looks like he wants to go back in. Maybe it's a good thing to lose during the non-con. Oh look, the Big Ten is burning, that should help keep us warm.

Five Thoughts

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1 - Don't be mad a TCU or their fans. TCU owned every phase of the game, especially the LOS. Bit surprised they kept going deep, but nothing to get upset about. TCU was fast, really fast, on their WR had some good hands.

2 - Despite what I said in the 4 Quarters section, I actually liked the play calling. Maybe a few more design runs would have been a good idea.

3 - What's with those semi-handoffs where both Mitch and Cobb hold onto the ball at the same time for 2-3 steps? I'm sure it's designed but it looks like a fumble waiting to happen. Please shred that page of the playbook.

4 - Hey, you're back! #35 Rodrick "Nugget" Williams Jr. (RB - JR) looked pretty good on the two runs I noticed him play; both big gains. It was good to see #82 Drew "Pull The Wool Over Your Eyes" Wolitarsky (WR - SO) make some catches.

5 - End positive. Seriously, maybe losing in the non-con is a good thing, have us better prepared for the Big Ten.

PS - I know I was really stretching with some of those "nicknames."