Jerry Kill later softened his words, hoping to take pressure off his players. But the Gophers football coach's raw feelings poured out immediately after last week's 10-7 victory over Kent State.
"Offensively, we're a mess right now," Kill told Big Ten Network. "As long as we play good defense, we've got a chance to win. But we're going to have to get on track offensively here, or we're going to be in trouble."
For longtime Gophers fans, that's the primary concern heading into the team's final nonconference test Saturday against Ohio (3-0). Defenses like this don't come around Dinkytown very often. The Gophers have fielded a top-25 scoring defense only three times in the past 52 years.
As good as this year's defense looks, the Gophers (2-1) are in danger of squandering it, unless the offense rises from the ranks of the nation's worst. The Gophers rank 122nd out of 128 FBS teams in scoring offense, at 16.7 points per game.
What happens if the offense doesn't improve? Rare in these touchdown-heavy days of college football, but defense-driven teams come along in the Big Ten every so often, with mixed results.
Penn State had the nation's seventh-best scoring defense last year but ranked 113th in scoring offense. The Nittany Lions had a woeful offensive line that couldn't protect heralded quarterback Christian Hackenberg and went 7-6.
In 2012, Michigan State had the nation's ninth-best scoring defense but ranked 110th on offense. Andrew Maxwell was inconsistent at quarterback, and coach Mark Dantonio wasn't ready to turn things over to then-freshman Connor Cook. The Spartans went 7-6, needing a late-season victory over the Gophers just to become bowl-eligible. That was the only season in the past five years Michigan State hasn't won at least 11 games.
"It is difficult," Dantonio said. "We lost some extremely close games that year. … We maintained a strong defense, and once we got into the '13 season, we played much better offensively, and great things started to happen."