News & Articles

Over 5,000 rabid UMD football fans tailgated themselves into being prepared to watch their Bulldogs open the 2014 football season and could be excused for anticipating a dominating, lopsided triumph over Concordia of St. Paul. But it didn’t happen. The Bulldogs won, but the 20-13 triumph last Saturday required spirited bend-but-don’t-break defense to hang on.
It also required that UMD’s offense, pretty well shut down for the most part by the impressive Golden Bears, had to come up with four or five pivotal plays, the last of which was contributed in almost a defensive posture, to secure the final victory by keeping the ball out of Concordia’s hands.
UMD needed all those big plays, two field goals by Tyler McLaughlin, and some spirited defense to subdue Concordia’s junior quarterback Corey Cole, who was slippery all day -- almost elusive enough to pull off the Northern Sun Conference’s biggest upset on opening night.
For real football fans, though, that made it a much more exciting September evening than a blowout could have been, and nobody left disappointed. In fact, it was refreshing to see the Bulldogs pushed to the limit, where they had to hold their poise to hold off Concordia’s rally. The UMD offense has had its share of glory over the last decade of success, and it will dominate again -- maybe as soon as this Saturday at Augustana. But last Saturday, it was up to sophomore quarterback Drew Bauer and junior running back Logan Lauters to come up with just enough big plays to assure victory.
UMD coach Curt Wiese was not surprised at how tough the game was. “Absolutely not,” Wiese said after the game. “We knew they’d be well-coached and knew they’d have tough defense. They shut our running game down, and they took away some of the things Drew likes to do.”
Bauer likes to run, and he made a key read and adjustment before taking off to score himself for UMD’s only first-half touchdown. It was a masterfully deceptive quarterback draw, when Bauer faked a pitch and instead burst up the middle, running untouched for a 34-yard touchdown and a 10-0 lead. “Drew called that one at the line,” said Wiese. “He noticed the inside linebacker following the pitch, so he pulled the ball back and ran himself.”
Leading 13-3 at halftime, Lauters, whose alternating partner Austin Sikorsky was still on the sideline recovering from a summertime stabbing incident in downtown Duluth, ran an impressive sweep around left end to set up the only UMD touchdown of the second half.
On that one, Bauer took off on a sprintout to the right. As the Golden Bear defense hustled to cut him off, Bauer spun and lofted a perfect pass back to the left side of the end zone, where Taylor Grant was all alone for the touchdown reception.
“That’s a play you might only get away with once in the season,” said Wiese. “That was a big play all around, with Grant leaking out on the backside.”       
At 20-3, the game looked secure. But containing Cole proved a major chore. Bauer was 8-21 passing for 82 yards, and he ran 15 times for another 85 yards. Cole was 12-25 passing for 130 yards, and carried the ball 18 more times for 177 of Concordia’s 232 rushing yards. That made him the leading rusher in the game, over the 165 yards Lauter accumulated in 14 rushing tries.
Cole ran 4 yards for Concordia’s only touchdown, midway through the fourth quarter, and his playmaking arranged Tom Obarske’s second field goal of the game, a 37-yarder with 3:38 remaining to close the gap to one touchdown.
It was then that Lauters struck again, speeding through the Golden Bears on a 46-yard jaunt that put them deep enough into Concordia territory that the Bulldogs could run out the clock. For Lauters, two runs added up to 96 of his 165 yards, and the one that basically ended the game was easily as big as the two that set up UMD’s touchdowns. “That was like a game-winning drive, because it gave us the opportunity to close the game out,” said Wiese.

John Gilbert has been writing sports for
over 30 years. Formerly with the Star Tribune and WCCO. He currently hosts a daily radio show on KDAL AM.

All Football, All the Time

The first week of NFL football has come and gone, and our own Minnesota Vikings were among the most impressive teams in the league’s first official action. It was written here that I haven’t been as optimistic about the Vikings chances since Brett Favre turned them into a Super Bowl contender.
Several very logical things happened to the Vikings this season. First, a new coaching staff with new ideas, and some new players as well, and new ideas of how to play offense and defense. I think the world of Teddy Bridgewater, but he can patiently wait for his turn to be quarterback while Matt Cassel continues to play so well in support of his starting job.
The odds-makers made the St. Louis Rams (St. Louis RAMS?) the favorite by 3-4 points. Experts they may be, but they’ve underestimated the importance of quarterback play, which I thought was impossible to do. Sam Bradford is out for the season for the Rams, and the Vikings have solved their quarterback issue with Cassel and Bridgewater. In fact, it would have been a brilliant move if the Rams had offered something good -- a player or a draft choice -- to obtain Christian Ponder from the Vikings. He may not have done the QB job well enough with the Vikings, but he is a promising young quarterback who has a couple years of experience in the league.
At any rate, I wrote here last week that I expected the Vikings to go to St. Louis and beat the Rams, and maybe by as much as three touchdowns. It was 34-6. That’s four touchdowns. A rout, by any NFL standard.
This week, the New England Patriots come to Minnesota, and everybody is assuming the Patriots will win. Now that the Vikings have beaten the Rams, critics are saying that the Rams were not competitive. Some of them are the same critics who favored the Rams to beat the Vikings. Those experts have predicted a return to Super Bowl championship for the Patriots, and they hold Tom Brady up to the heights as perhaps the NFL’s best quarterback.
I think the Patriots are aging, and that there are several charter-member new-breed teams that play a more compelling game, and have great young quarterbacks whose time has come. The Patriots were undone by the underdog Miami Dolphins 34-20 last weekend, and they trailed 23-0 while being outgained 222-67 at halftime, which should make them extremely hungry against the Vikings. But the Vikings should also be pumped to play before their home fans at TCF Bank Stadium and show that the romp over the Rams was no fluke.
While in Louisville Monday to test-drive the new 2015 Lincoln Navigator, I was talking to a fellow auto journalist friend from Chicago, and a huge Bears fan. He said the Vikings were just like the Bears, needing a quarterback to be respectable. I countered that the Vikings fix was different, because no other team has Adrian Peterson. A successful quarterback with the Vikings need only be competent half the time -- the half when he’s not handing off to Peterson.  
Cassel was the picture of efficiency as the Vikings beat the Rams, and overlooked in the process was the outstanding play of the Vikings defense. I don’t care what NFL team you’re playing, if you can hold them to six points, you can win every game. My guess is the Vikings won’t be able to hold New England’s offense down, at least not as totally. But I also believe the Vikings offense will find several ways to score on the Patriots.

Other observations during
Week 1 of the NFL:

• The team I don’t want to be this week is the one that has to play the Green Bay Packers. True, the Packers stunned their fans by getting soundly whipped at Seattle last week in the NFL’s first “Monday Night Football on Thursday,” but cheer up, Packer backers -- the Packers weren’t that bad. Seattle is just that good. I take pride that I picked the Seahawks last August, 2013, to win the 2014 Super Bowl, long before bandwagon-jumpers got on board. The Seahawks, remember, made the extremely good Denver Broncos and Peyton Manning look hopelessly out of it in the Super Bowl, and they will make almost every team they play look mediocre with that Russell Wilson offense, Marshawn Lynch running the ball, and that suffocating defense. The Packers have had a week to recover, and they must be sky-high to over-achieve and erase that miserable start.

• Matt Stafford looked amazingly good directing the Detroit Lions past the New York Giants, outduelling Eli Manning and hitting Calvin Johnson for three impressive touchdowns. The Lions defense, often a question mark, intercepted Eli three times and ruined the Giants night. Meanwhile, the Chicago Bears reverted to pre-competent form and Jay Cutler bobbled away a winnable game to the Buffalo Bills.

• The New Orleans Saints are still an elite powerhouse, with Drew Brees deserving all the praise in the world, but the Saints are absolutely vicious on defense, proving they learned nothing from the “bounty” days when they tried, and succeeded, to put Brett Favre out of the game against the Vikings. A close look at the Saints playing a game-full of defense would be the perfect video for the league to scrutinize if they want to make the game less violent. But beware of Atlanta. The Falcons beat the Saints 37-34 in overtime, as Matt Ryan threw for 448 yards on 31-43 passing, and Matt Bryant kicked the tying field goal on the last play of regulation, then connected from 52 yards out to win it after the Saints fumbled on the second play of overtime.

• How could Philadelphia fall behind 17-0, and then roar back, and, while being routed, rout Jacksonville 34-17? Much like Saturday’s classic, where Michigan State rose up from an 18-7 deficit at Oregon to bolt to a 24-18 halftime lead, only to wilt in the face of the Ducks and quarterback Marcus Mariotta, who scored  throttle the Spartans 46-27.

• With all the wild results, what a shame for football that the primary story over the last week is the video from the elevator in that Atlantic City casino that the NFL office finally saw. It shows Baltimore star running back Ray Rice finishing an argument with his fiance, Janay Palmer, with a knockout punch last February. The video then shows Rice pulling Palmer’s unconscious body out of the elevator. Palmer, incredibly enough, refused to press charges and dropped charges against Rice, and then married him. But the graphic video was ugly enough that the Ravens terminated Rice’s contract. He is done. Unless, of course, some NFL team is desperate enough to pretend they can rehabilitate Rice and give him “another chance.”