The Gophers made a halftime adjustment last week that helped limit the damage Robert Woods was doing to the defense. They're making another one this week they hope will keep New Mexico State from trying the same strategy.
Woods gouged Minnesota's defense for 177 receiving yards and three touchdowns last Saturday, leading USC to its 19-17 victory. The Gophers weren't surprised by the Trojans' decision to feed their star sophomore receiver pass after pass -- "What'd he have, 64 passes thrown to him?" cornerback Troy Stoudermire joked -- because it was what they would have done, too. They just didn't expect Woods to inflict such pain.
"We were not going to let them run the football, so we had extra men in the box" at the line of scrimmage, said Gopher defensive coordinator Tracy Claeys. "Their response was to snap it and throw it out to him real quick. Sometimes those short ones can get frustrating, but hey, it'll keep you in the ballgame as long as you tackle."
"I'd rather keep the ball in front of us than have them throw it back behind us," added coach Jerry Kill. "We were concerned about going over the top," so the defense didn't play tight on Woods.
Quarterback Matt Barkley threw to Woods seven times during the Trojans' first drive, completing five of them -- but none longer than 10 yards. He went deep to Barkley in the second quarter, completing a 43-yard strike into the end zone, one of the few big letdowns by the defense all day.
"A player as explosive as he is is bound to get his catches," said sophomore cornerback Brock Vereen. "If they really want to get him catches, he will. But we just wanted to make sure the big play was contained."
For the most part, it was. But by halftime, Woods had caught 11 passes, and Claeys made a change. "We tightened down a little bit. It wasn't major, we just moved a couple of steps to try to make the quarterback have to decide -- 'Is he off enough to throw it out there, or is he too tight?' Claeys said. "You'll notice he threw it out there a couple of times and we got the hit on him right away."
"We started playing five yards off instead of seven, and that's a big difference," Stoudermire said. "It changes what the quarterback sees."
Woods still had six more catches in the second half, but didn't get free for another touchdown.
"We started mixing things up a little bit, and we'd wait till they came to the line of scrimmage [to line up]," Kill said. "Troy pressed a lot more. Brock pressed a lot more. We gave him some different looks to where he couldn't settle in there. Probably should have done it earlier, but [we were] a little bit scared of that ball going over the top and getting easy scores."
The Gophers were pleased with the results, but Claeys said the cornerbacks were still making a mistake he'd like cleaned up on Saturday. He wants his coverage team to force a receiver inside, away from the sidelines, after a catch, in order to get more help with the tackle.
"I figured out we gave up almost 50 yards of foolish yardage because we just didn't keep leverage on the ball. We've got [linebackers and safeties] running over and we don't get the ball turned back inside to make the tackle, so instead of a 3- or 4-yard gain, we had some 11- or 12-yard gains," Claeys said. "On those short throws, we let the ball get outside of us a couple of times, and if we keep it inside, we're going to get a few more punts."