Twitter Reaction: Au Revoir, Gopher

By Johnny Ginter on November 16, 2014 at 8:30 am
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Minnesota was always going to be The Trap Game.

There are a number of factors that had contributed to that, mostly involving upper-level football dissertations involving gap schemes and zone blitzes and the like that I'm sure Ross and Kyle can fill you in on later. The other factors are more my forte, and they involve things like ice cream, snow, big goofy furry gopher suits, and Tesla coils placed deep underground to power the secretly predetermined game of tabletop football that we called Ohio State versus Minnesota.

I mean, yes, the Golden Gophers were and are a decent team with a good-ish defense and a great rushing attack. But those things pale in the face of the fact that the real thing that was going to cause Ohio State trouble on Saturday was the frankly adorable aw shucks can-do attitude of Goldy's fans, players, and coaches. That downright lovable attitude makes us the unfortunate Carl Spacklers of the Big Ten.

And like Bill Murray's greatest role, Ohio State was inspired yet sloppy. The fumbles and drops made this game much closer than it really had any right to be, and the missed tackles toward the end of the game game me some Agent Orange-level flashbacks to last season that I'd really rather not revisit. Still, the Buckeyes ended up with nearly 500 yards of offense again, and aside from one really good drive, Minnesota's offense spent most of the game harried and harassed by a generally solid Buckeye defense. Au revoir Gopher, indeed.

So whatever. We've been the villains before, and as we saw yesterday, J.T. Barrett has little to no mercy for any squeaky varmints that dare to cross his path.

Aaaaaaa God, see what I mean? Look at these guys! They're adorable! I almost feel bad that J.T. Barrett basically was able to do whatever he wanted until he threw a really stupid interception that made you go "oh yeah, he's a redshirt freshman." But before that was a really ridiculous 86 yard touchdown run that eclipsed anything that Braxton has done, with the added bonus of looking about 150% less impressive.

I'm sure that Barrett is a very fast young man, but he shouldn't be outrun-Minnesota's-entire-secondary fast. On that play he was, and the for the rest of the game he ate Goldy's lunch on the ground to the tune of over 11 yards per carry. This made up for a pretty average game throwing the ball, which was mediocre due to equal parts bad weather, drops, and bad decisions. But Barrett winged it around just enough to reassure us that he's still the clear Heisman favorite that we all are 1000% certain that he is, and in the meantime broke like fifteen different Ohio State scoring records. His position atop those vaunted lists probably have as much to do with him as Urban Meyer and Tom Herman, but it's more fun to give Barrett the lion's share of the credit.

Also the idea of Sam Thompson, wide receiver, is one that will keep me happy and warm in the cold months ahead.

DID I MENTION THAT IT WAS COLD?

Oooo, prophetic tweet, Jon!

The other player that I want to talk about a little bit is Jalin Marshall, he of many fumbles and also some pretty nifty offensive moves.

I'm also a Buckeye from Middletown, O-H-I-O, and I can assure you that we do in fact have snow and cold in that part of the state. We do not, unfortunately, have webbed feet or octopus suckers on our hands (despite years of steel mill runoff seeping into our water supply), so I'm inclined to give the guy a bit of a break.

Here's the thing; even with the drops and fumbles, Jalin still accounted for 107 yards receiving and rushing, and his five catches were more than any other Buckeye had on the day. Ohio State absolutely has to tighten up on the turnovers heading into the next three games, but crucifying Jalin Marshall because you're nervous about how the team has been taking care of the ball the last few weeks probably isn't fair. The dude had a mixed bag of a game, but his talent is obvious and he should still factor heavily into the offense going forward.

And ultimately, in my Twitter Reaction piece I don't want to focus on the negatives. Once Evan Spencer hauled in his fourth quarter TD I knew that the game was pretty much done, which gave me leave to focus on things like this:

BOSS MOVE.

"Dilly Bar" started trending right after this, and with good reason, because a) they're delicious, b) it was like 15 degrees outside, and c) incredulous football fans south of the Mason-Dixon line started to understand that they'll never understand the decadent pleasure of eating something cold while also being heinously cold yourself.

Oh, Denny, I so wish that this was true. We all should all be so lucky to enjoy Dilly Bars in the snow while being surrounded by people in gopher costumes. We should all be so lucky.

The last thing that I'll say before I get to a series of funny tweets from Ohio State players/coaches about how cold they were during the game is that this was not a simple trap game. This was a stiff test from a good Gopher team that could've given a still very young Buckeye squad fits. Instead, they did the things that they needed to do to pull out a win despite some general sloppiness in terms of both the weather and their general performance. Also:

So we've got that going for us, which is nice. Now let's all get home to our comfy, warm beds back in C-Bus.

...AND CRANK SOME IGGY!

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