For about 90 percent of its contest against Toledo, the Massachusetts football team’s pass defense showed marked improvement over its week one performance against Eastern Michigan. Unfortunately for the Minutemen (0-2), the other 10 percent reared its ugly head on Saturday.
Rockets (2-0) quarterback Tucker Gleason threw for 175 yards and three touchdowns en route to a 38-23 victory. These numbers by themselves show an incremental improvement for UMass, as in the previous week it allowed 241 passing yards and one touchdown to the Eagles’ Cole Snyder. You have to look past the stats, however, to see the effectiveness of the Minutemen’s defensive backs, secondary and deep coverage.
Gleason’s three touchdown passes accounted for 37.5 percent of his total completions on the day — with one of those being a proto-jet sweep to wide receiver Jerjuan Newton. Finishing with just eight completions on the day in 23 attempts, UMass’ ability in limiting consistent success from a passing game that has Gleason, someone with a career completion percentage sitting just above 50 percent, is something to hang its hat on. Of the junior’s 175 yards, 152 of them came from just three passing plays. Those three big gains consisted of two touchdowns and a long catch-and-run by Junior Vandeross III which set Toledo up for Willie Shaw III’s four-yard touchdown scamper.
Nine different Minutemen had pass breakups on Saturday afternoon, which is much more than the four they mustered in week one. And with multiple preseason All-MAC receivers on the Rockets’ roster, UMass did a good job for the most part in limiting how much damage receivers like Newton and Vandeross could do.
But that brings back the idea that Saturday was feast or famine for the Minutemen. Just looking at the average time of possession exemplifies this even more. Toledo, in a game where it won by two scores, had possession for just over a quarter of the game.
The story is similar when looking at more stats under the hood. The Rockets had six three-and-outs and seven drives that lasted under a minute. UMass’ defensive scheme and plan for Saturday’s game was effective, and was an improvement over its previous performance on that side of the ball.
On the outset, it seems very easy to blame the pass defense for the outcome of Saturday’s game. However, I believe that the improvements that were made in the pass defense between weeks was one of the only reasons why this game was as competitive as it was.
But in truth, these stats don’t matter. What matters is the final score. There can be all the talk in the world about how if one or two plays went a different way, the Minutemen would be heading to Buffalo with a chance at a winning record. But UMass isn’t heading to Buffalo with a chance at a winning record due in part to the defensive performance that made this a competitive game in the first place.
“We’re much more competitive, but that’s over now. We know we can compete in these games, we’ve just got to clean up all of the mistakes and keep trending in a positive direction,” Brown said.
Despite the big plays allowed, despite the loss and despite the fact that the MAC is now 2-0 against them, Saturday was a step in the right direction for the Minutemen. It’ll need to find a way to limit the big plays that it fell victim to on Saturday though, or we’ll be having this same conversation again in the near future.
Johnny Depin can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter/X @Jdepin101.
