Is Minnesota for Real? It May Not Matter

If the Minnesota Golden Gophers aren't the most improved team in college football this season, who is? Through seven weeks of play, Tim Brewster's squad is enjoying the sort of success that always seemed to elude his predecessor Glen Mason. The Gophers are now 6-1 with a signature road win over Illinois and their sole loss coming in Columbus.

Nobody was complaining about the Gopher offense last season. They just weren't up to the task of bailing out the nation's worst defense week after week. Statistically this season's Gopher offense is mid-pack by almost any measure. The difference is on the other side of the ball.

It's not that the Gophers have moved way, way up. It's that the Gophers had nowhere to go but up. Their defensive statistics this year aren't the stuff of dreams, but the Gophers are allowing, on average, about 130 fewer yards and 19 fewer points per game than they were a year ago. New defensive coordinator Ted Roof didn't work out as a head coach at Duke. Both Duke and Minnesota are happy for that.

Anybody can post good results against a squishy schedule, however. The Gophers hung in against their most challenging opponent to date (Ohio State) but failed to win. That raises the question of whether the Gophers can stand up against the other challengers in the Big Ten.

Oh, wait. They don't really play any of the other challengers in Big Ten. Northwestern comes to the Humpty Dump on November 1. That and the season-ender with Iowa (also in the Giant Rubbermaid Container) are their only remaining games against teams with a winning record right now. They have road trips to ill-fated Purdue and totally-lost Wisconsin. No Penn State. No Michigan State. And they get Michigan at the Dome in exactly the right year. They could win out. They probably won't lose out. A worst-case scenario has them wrapping up at 7-5; the dream scenario has them 11-1 and bound for something like the Capital One Bowl.

You're not buying them as an 11-1 team this year? Neither am I. I could see them going 9-3, which would be about equal to Glen Mason's 2003 season, his best in Minneapolis. Even if you're skeptical about the 2008 Gophers, though, you'd better beware of next year's edition.

Why? Because graduation barely touches this team. Brewster loses three starters on defense and a whopping one on offense after this year. Quarterback Adam Weber leads the Big Ten in completion percentage. He trails Juice Williams by 65 yards of passing. His touchdown/interception ratio is almost as good as Daryll Clark's (9/2 for Weber against 10/2 for Clark.) Weber is a sophomore this year.

Minnesota's top three running backs? Freshman, sophomore, freshman. Receiver Eric Decker has a 219-yard edge on Arrelious Benn for first place in the Big Ten. Decker is a junior. Offensive line? Two juniors, two sophomores and one freshman. The defense will have to replace two linebackers and defensive end/beast Willie VanDeSteeg next season. Otherwise, everybody comes back.

As we all have learned from the stock market in recent weeks, past performance is no guarantee of future results. Still, I wouldn't count on Brewster's 2009 team to take a huge step back. He landed a top-twenty recruiting class last year and is already off to a good start this year. Not only that, but the Gophers will break in TCF Bank Stadium next September. If they can carry even some of this year's momentum into next year, the days when you could disregard the Gophers are numbered--and it's not a very large number, either.