Sid Hartman: Maroon, gold run in tight end Williams' blood

The Gophers' victory over Michigan last weekend was only their fourth since 1968. The past three have been in Ann Arbor: 1986, 2005 and now 2014. That 1986 victory was particularly notable, because the Gophers were 25-point underdogs and shocked the No. 2-ranked Wolverines on a final-second field goal by Chip Loh­miller to win 20-17. It was Michigan's lone loss in the regular season as it won the Big Ten and reached the Rose Bowl.

The center on that 1986 team was Brian Williams, who is the father of Maxx Williams, the current Gophers standout tight end. The younger Williams played a key role in a victory that left the Gophers at 4-1 on the season and 1-0 in Big Ten play for the first time since 2009.

Maxx's entire family is tied to Gophers tradition. Brian lettered for the Gophers from 1986 to '88 before a long NFL career with the New York Giants; Maxx's mother, Rochele (Goetz), was a volleyball player with the Gophers from 1984 to '87, serving as team captain and receiving the Big Ten Medal of Honor in 1988; and his uncle Ron Goetz was a fullback and linebacker for the Gophers.

"I think just growing up in a sports family has a lot of influence," Maxx Williams said. "My dad played here, my uncle played here, my mom was here as an athlete, so just having that to fall back on and really talk to them about things they went through, knowing that I'm going through them now."

Maxx is certainly carrying on that tradition. He is only a sophomore but is already one of the most important players on the team. As a freshman in 2013, he led the team in receiving yards with 417 and tied for the team lead with 25 receptions and six touchdowns.

Williams has picked up where he left off this season and already has eight receptions for 161 yards and three scores, despite missing a game because of shoulder injury.

Williams said he talks to his dad after almost every practice and after most games. "He'll ask how I did or how I thought I did, and then I'll ask him how he thought I did," he said. "So then he just kind of talks to me like, 'Hey what do you think you can get better on?' Or, 'Hey what was going through your head today? Things all right?' Just trying to be there for me.

Williams said that even if he had a subpar game, his dad never lets him know it.

"Just says, 'Hey, good game.' Always," Williams said. "Even if I play bad he tries to make me feel good and says, 'Watch film tomorrow, give me a call, let me know how you played.' "

With Adrian Peterson and Kyle Rudolph not available to the Vikings, Cordarrelle Patterson was being counted on to continue his outstanding performance from the final five games of last season, when he accounted for six touchdowns (three rushing, three receiving).

The 2013 first-round draft choice had a 141-yard receiving game at Baltimore in that span, and in the final two games of the season he had 50 yards rushing and a rushing touchdown in each game. He became the first NFL player to have a 100-yard kickoff return touchdown, a 75-yard touchdown catch and a 50-yard rushing touchdown in the same season.

But with the Vikings offense slumping, if Patterson doesn't show some increase in production, the team could be in trouble the rest of the season starting with the Lions game next Sunday.

In Week 2 against New England he caught four passes for 56 yards but didn't carry the ball. In Week 3 at New Orleans he had four receptions for 61 yards but had just one carry for a loss of 7 yards on Teddy Bridgewater's first NFL play. Against Atlanta, when a lot of offensive players were having career days, Patterson had two catches for 38 yards.

After Thursday's game, Patterson told reporters: "I don't know what's going on with that, but I have faith in my coaches, and in [offensive coordinator Norv] Turner. I can't complain. I know things will turn around."

On Friday, coach Mike Zimmer addressed Patterson's lack of production.

"We need to get him more involved than what we are," Zimmer said. "Actually, I thought he did some good things last night. He didn't, obviously, catch as many balls as we would have liked or anything like that. I thought he improved in being a receiver last night."

He hasn't been as big a factor on kick returns, either, averaging 28.0 yards per return on 12 returns. He has had returns of 49 and 43 yards, but he has yet to return one for a score after doing it twice as a rookie, when he averaged 32.4 yards per return.

• Bridgewater is telling Vikings teammates that he will definitely be 100 percent for the Lions game and will participate fully in practice on Monday.

• Former Twins outfielder Delmon Young hit a bases-clearing, go-ahead double in the eighth inning of the Orioles' 7-6 victory over the Tigers on Friday. He now has 21 career postseason RBI on 32 hits. The winning run on that double was scored by another former Twins player, shortstop, J.J. Hardy.

• There is only one native Minnesotan on a baseball playoff roster: Angels rookie reliever Mike Morin, who didn't pitch in either of the first two games against the Royals. Morin was born in Andover but went to high school at Shawnee Mission South on the Kansas side of the Kansas City area. Cardinals reliever Pat Neshek went to high school at Park Center, but the former Twins standout was born in Madison, Wis.

• Kansas interim football coach Clint Bowen played defensive back for the Jayhawks from 1991 to '94 under coach Glen Mason, before Mason became coach of the Gophers. "A lot of kids like football," Mason told the Lawrence Journal-World. "But there are really few kids who love football. Clint was one of those guys. When you progress through the ranks the way he did from graduate assistant, you don't make those incremental advances unless you're a good coach."

• This is Kevin Garnett's final year under contract with the Brooklyn Nets, so it might be his last season in the NBA. The former Timberwolves star is entering his 20th pro season, which will tie him with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar for the third-most all-time.