As I look forward to this weekend against Idaho State, I figured that since we were all using Sam Houston as a measuring stick of where this team was, I would go back and do a little analysis of the prior game against Washington. As that was only the second game of the season, there wasn’t much information to know where we stacked up, how good Washington was, and how we fared (aside from the obvious fact that we lost). This interpretation will evolve as the year goes on depending on how UND plays and how Washington plays, but there were some stats that stood out to me.
As has been noted previously UND did compete through the majority of the game. For the sake of this discussion, let’s throw out the 4th quarter. How did we stack up against Washington (prior to our defense getting gassed) and their other competition thus far? Not too bad … though the obvious struggle was that we simply could not score. If you sustain at least of few of those drives you take a lot of pressure off of the D and give them some rest. Tough enough to ask our FCS corners (who were already bouncing back from injury) to keep up with top end FBS receivers, but by the 4th quarter this was just not going to happen. Especially when you start to look at the depth of their receivers vs our corners. Q Pounds went from 1 catch for 13 against Auburn to 3 catches for 96 against UND to not on the stat sheet against Utah. Overall, this reiterates that our defense has looked far better than last year, closer to 2016 (except for the absurd TO margin in 2016), but we continue to have the same problem of not generating enough offense to give our defense a rest and play at a high level for a full 4 quarters. I think UND did a far better job of this against Sam Houston (shout out to Evan Holm in the 4th), and I would expect to see a continued improvement in this area throughout the year, as we are not playing against Washington caliber teams week in and week out.
A few other areas I wanted to look at were how we kept up with their top players (Browning/Gaskin) compared to Auburn and Utah:
Utah seemed to limit Browning’s passing yards, while he still passed for around 300 against Auburn (similar to UND), the caveat being that by the end of the UND game we also saw Jake Haener play a few series. Overall, as has been noted, our secondary simply could not keep up with their receivers, not in skill and certainly not in depth. We had flashes, but the difference became more and more apparent as the game went on, and players got tired. The positive is our boys had to play against top tier talent and stuck with it for 3 solid quarters (took two INTs from Browning), I think we already saw some payoff from this against Sam Houston (a la Evan Holm), and I expect to see these guys continue to trend the right way.
Then there is Myles Gaskin, who I am sure, along with Washington’s fans, figured he would have a field day against a little FCS team who couldn’t stop the run last year. We limited Gaskin to 53yds on 15 attempts (and a TD), this is a week after going 17 for 75yds against Auburn, and a week before going 30 for 143yds (and a TD) against Utah. Huge pat on the back to UND for turning around that run defense from last year. Amazing what can happen when all of your starters are playing and not injured. Now I don’t want to totally skew what the status show, because Washington did still rush for 195 as a group, but our ability to stop Gaskin, forced Washington to go to other guys. Some of those yards also came in the 4th quarter, which as has been stated was a disaster; defense was toast and just could not keep up any more.
And how about that John Santiago guy? Auburn as a team rushed for 147 against Washington …. Utah as a team rushed for 123 against Washington …. John Santiago (Yes, just John) rushed for 139 against Washington (and UND as a whole rushed for 161 against Washington). This speaks volumes to our RBs and the relentless effort of Santiago. It will be interesting to see at the end of the season, where UND's rushing performance is compared to the other teams on Washington's schedule. I think it also shows just how well our O-Line has play (compared to the expectations). There we so many questions surrounding the O-Line prior to the season, and no we do not have all the answers, but it has been better than expected.
Anyway, these stats should all be taken with a grain of salt. Stats can be viewed several different ways, and everything is certainly situations and not always directly comparable; but I wanted to share my observations.
Feel free to drop your thoughts, just figured I would do a little analysis and generate some chatter leading up to the game on Saturday!
-Auburn as a whole rushed for 147 against Washington
-John Santiago by himself rushed for 139 against Washington (UND went for 161)
-Utah as a whole rushed for 123 against Washington
