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On the first play of the second half Saturday against Nebraska, in relief of injured senior quarterback Tanner Morgan, Gophers redshirt freshman Athan Kaliakmanis kept the ball and ran for 8 yards.
That positive momentum continued for the rest of the drive (field goal) and throughout the second half as Kaliakmanis used a mix of runs and passes to help lead four scoring marches in a 20-13 comeback victory.
He added a 16-yard run on a later drive, a big deal in the game and an even bigger deal when you consider this: That's more rushing yards than Morgan, a sixth-year player, has in his entire college career (13).
A significant part of that is college football's insistence that QB sacks are treated as negative rushing yards, but the larger point is this: For the first time in a very long time, the Gophers have a dual threat option at quarterback — something Randy Johnson and I talked about on Wednesday's Daily Delivery podcast.
Morgan, for all he does well as a leader and a passer, does not bring a true element of a running threat to the offense. Even in his remarkable 2019 season, when Morgan stretched the field with the help of NFL wideouts Rashod Bateman and Tyler Johnson and threw for 30 touchdowns, he finished with negative rushing yards.
Morgan took over the starting job from Zack Annextad in the middle of 2018. Annexstad, in seven games that year, had minus-89 yards rushing.
In 2017, P.J. Fleck's first year, Conor Rhoda and Demry Croft split time at QB. Rhoda could throw. Croft could run. Neither could do both at a dangerous level.
Cole Kramer has occasionally been used by Fleck as a change-of-pace QB during Morgan's tenure, but it's almost always as a runner (41 career rushing attempts vs. 13 pass attempts).
You have to go all the way back to 2016 and Mitch Leidner's final season as a starter, to a time when the Gophers had a QB who was a credible threat to run or pass (Leidner had accuracy issues, but he still kept defenses honest with his arm).
Kaliakmanis ends that streak. How much he plays the rest of the year will be determined either by Morgan's health or Fleck's analysis of the offense.
But I dare say this: In Year 6, Fleck for the first time has an emerging QB who can run the offense the way most high-functioning college offenses are run.
