Joey Gerlach

equivalent?

Maybe Joey Gerlach.

He was injured all of last year, and he's a little like Cashman in that local kid from Woodbury.

He was committed to South Dakota or South Dakota State.

The Gophers defense, here's where they shined on this one.

Joey Gerlach, TJ Bush Jr., and Matt Kingsbury all had interceptions in this game.

The team had five pass breakups in addition to that.

So think about this for a moment.

So we've talked about the defensive line.

I thought Joey Gerlach continues to be one of the best stories about this 5-2 start.

where it's the kid who hadn't played much, local kid from Woodbury, East Metro stand-up, and has a debilitating injury last year that cost him his season, works all offseason to get back from it, and is now playing a huge role where he just set a career high in snaps defensively with over 60 snaps against Iowa.

And even on the first drive, it was second play of the game, he nearly just caught the ball on an RPO slant.

I still think DJ Vonami is a pretty good player.

When Iowa tight ends only have 46 receiving yards on the day, it's probably going to be a pretty good day for your defense.

I want to call out one play in particular, the Joey Gerlach interception near the goal line that you mentioned, Ryan, was a good example of As P.J. Fleck would say, not taking the cheese.

You know, Minnesota, as we mentioned, they were selling out to stop the run.

The linebackers couldn't figure out where they were going because whether it was between zone, counter, they'd pull two guys, run zone out on the, the other way.

Between Baranowski and Joey Gerlach, who ...

Joey Gerlach didn't have a great day, and Matt Kingsbury, who, if you at least believe the PFF stuff, had his worst game of his career, and that somehow supersedes what he did as a true freshman in West Lafayette, which I am certain of not many things in life, I am certain Matt Kingsbury never wants to play another game in West Lafayette in his entire life.

Now, it also doesn't help when Femi Ejeboi becomes Leroy Keyes, for those of you who are of a certain generation and remember a Heisman Trophy finalist from the late '60s for the Purdue Boilermakers.

18 missed tackles, and that is where Minnesota had missed, I believe, nine tackles against Washington as a defense, seven against Washington, and then they missed 22 yesterday.

...

Baranowski, Joey Gerlach, Matt Kingsbury, Zach Harden, Kerry Brown.

Those guys between the hashes, you need to be able to tackle Femi Ajiboye and these slot receivers so that they don't turn these into explosive plays.

All right, let's get into the facts and figures.

Like, he is playing well.

Joey Gerlach continues to play well.

Uh, I'm certainly open to potentially giving Mason Carrier some more reps and Matt Kingsbury stead, but that's not a topic of A, B, or C nature for today.

But all 11 on defense knew the calls, they knew where they were supposed to go, Luke, and they were fresh for that fourth quarter, just because they hadn't played until the fourth quarter.

They're, that, the, the guy who's their hybrid space player is actually pretty good.

Joey Gerlach is, uh...

I, we haven't r- we haven't published the full film defense yet, but when I talked with Alex about, like, who we're gonna put a star on, I was like, "Take a look at this guy.

I can show him a couple cool plays." Now he's in a position where he gets to make plays, but that's the one to kind of watch out for, I think.