Before Saturday night’s game between his Minnesota Golden Gophers and the Michigan Wolverines, Tracy Claeys spoke movingly to his team.
He spoke about the people who wear the Minnesota uniform, who owe a debt to former coach Jerry Kill for improving the Golden Gopher program and giving a lot of men — 20 years old and 45 years old — a very precious opportunity.
It was a great speech. Moreover, it translated into a strong effort and performance by the Gophers, who gave Michigan all it could handle. Claeys — who admirably coached Minnesota on previous occasions when Kill had to step away from the sidelines on a more temporary basis — certainly got his players to play well. Claeys spoke eloquently about how emotion is fleeting, but passion is forever. He didn’t want his players to get caught up in a single moment. He wanted them to carry a sustained fire which would last throughout the game.
Oh, how ironic that is.
Claeys earns high marks for putting his players in the right frame of mind to play. Yet, when push came to shove in Minneapolis, Claeys and the Golden Gophers — including and especially a veteran quarterback who should know the ins and outs of clock management — did indeed get caught up in a single moment. It cost Minnesota a game, but this is about more than just one night’s crushing defeat and one team’s fortunate victory. This is about much more than Michigan — after a gut-punch loss to Michigan State — standing on the other side of the fine line between heartbreak and exultation.
What’s particularly noteworthy about this game is not that Minnesota lost and Michigan won. The key point to make is that Claeys, as an interim coach, is auditioning for the permanent job in Minneapolis. As much as he should be applauded for the way in which he motivated his team after Kill retired earlier in the week, Claeys must also bear the responsibility for this loss. Accordingly, his job audition took a wrong turn. Minnesota administrators and decision makers should be more inclined to look outside the program for a new coach after Saturday night’s events.
This shouldn’t be a done deal — if Claeys rebounds in November, he should deserve extensive consideration for the permanent gig. However, it’s hard to deny the notion that Claeys hurt his prospects. The chances of him being the Gophers’ permanent coach in 2016 took a major hit.
This is what happens when motivation and preparation are not accompanied by effective endgame management.
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You don’t need to review all the minute details of Minnesota’s wrenching loss to Michigan. Chances are you know that Minnesota allowed over 10 seconds to run off the clock in the final 20 seconds, which is naturally quite significant. You know that Claeys, with two seconds left, opted to go for the win from the one-yard line instead of kicking a field goal to force overtime. That was a perfectly reasonable move, one which simply didn’t work out. It should not be part of any postgame criticim of Minnesota’s interim boss.
The one detail which has to be emphasized here is that with a veteran signal caller, Mitch Leidner, Claeys should have been able to make sure his offensive players knew what they had to do and when they had to do it. The run-off of more than 10 seconds was bad, but the circumstances surrounding the run-off are what make it so unpardonable.
Very simply, a replay review — did Minnesota score a touchdown or not? — preceded the Gophers’ snap from the one-yard line. When that replay review ended, 19 seconds remained on the clock. It’s this replay review which magnifies the extent of Claeys’s (and Leidner’s) lack of preparedness for the situation.
Think about it: What else could (or should?) Claeys have been discussing with Leidner or the rest of the offense in that delay during the review process? He had to have known that in order to get at least three shots at the end zone from the one, it was imperative that Minnesota snap the ball with at least 17 seconds left. This meant that within two seconds of the clock restart (at 0:19), the ball needed to be snapped. Claeys had an extended review break in which to pound home this basic but essential point.
If a review process or another source of a delay had NOT occurred with 19 seconds on the clock, this conversation (and column) would not exist. Claeys would not have been able to coach Leidner through each and every minute detail of the situation; it would have been much more important for Leidner to act in the heat of battle.
Yet, the presence of this delay is exactly what makes Claeys’s inaction and Leidner’s paralysis impossible to accept. Leidner is not a freshman with precious little experience. He’s a veteran. For a head coach to preside over a veteran quarterback’s bungling of an endgame sequence is one thing; doing so after a delay — which offered all the time in the world to firm up a plan — is quite another.
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Tracy Claeys can still become Minnesota’s permanent head coach next year.
After Saturday, though, it’s safe to say that at the very least, he’s lost his margin for error in terms of making future mistakes on this kind of scale.
