Sawvel Who?

Three posts in one day! Your boy's either got a methamphetamine problem, a lot of extra free time lately or, potentially, both.

I, like many of you, I'm sure, was gnashing the hell out of my teeth and tearing at my collars when Fleck announced Robb Smith as the new defensive coordinator, letting God King of Defense Jay Sawvel loose. Sawvel and Snorlax gave us the best Gopher defenses we'd seen in the better part of a generation and the prevailing belief was that Fleck fucked up massively. He'd bring in his crazy-ass run-pass option offense and we'd score some points; but we'd be back to Year One of Brewball, where we'd score 40 and give up 60 and drink ourselves into a coma every Saturday night. It was a foregone conclusion. All hope was lost.


Well, three games in, and what do you know? The Gophers have the best rushing and scoring defense IN THE WORLD. This is over teams like Bama and Clemson! Tumescent! On rush D, our proud team is giving up 59 yards a game at a 2.81 yards per carry average. That's basically like not letting teams run as far as I am tall. (That's a complete lie, I am not 8'5". Still keeping them to under ten feet per carry sounds bad ass.) On scoring defense, we're giving up eight points per game. Eight! In last year's non-conference with God King and Snorlax, we gave up 21.8 points per game. Still respectable, but fucking eight it priapism worthy. Find something to hump, friends.

Yeah, Frothy, but what about the oppoFUUUUCK YOU. For the most part, no one has played anyone yet and you can only perform against the teams on your schedule. Is our defense better than Bama and Clemson? If they are, this guy's going to live in a cold shower. In all likelihood, though, no, we're not as good as them, and that's pretty fucking okay; because that's not really the point anyway.

The point is that our defense has performed very well through the non-conference season, despite being critically shorthanded in the defensive backfield. The world didn't end with the departure of Sawvel and it looks like the pieces are in place to at least be respectable on D. I suspect we won't learn much more this week against the delicious turtles from Maryland, as they'll be throwing their practice squad guy out there at QB; so we might get one more week of stats paradise before we have to go against what appears to be a real offense in, cough, Purdue.

Anyway, fuck the haters who carp about our opponents. For right now, we're the best college defense in the fucking solar system. Enjoy the shit out of it.