Minnesota State has been one of the most dominant NCAA Division II football programs of the last decade and a case could be made that one of the key reasons for the success starts with the Maverick offensive line.
These things are cyclical, of course and long-time followers of the program will point to the Bob Otto-era of the 1950s and 1960s when the likes of Hall of Fame running back Bernie Maczuga rambled for 3,129 yards along the ground from 1967-69. The program had All-Americans in the trenches with the likes of Scott Annexstad and Duane Goldammer in the late 1980s when the Mavericks featured an option-oriented offense, but it's only been recently that the program's rushing numbers from those times have been surpassed in the school's record books.
Todd Hoffner was named head coach of the Mavericks before the start of the 2008 season and he transformed a team that finished 4-7 the year before into a team that finished 9-3, won the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference South Division and qualified for the NCAA tournament for the fourth time in school history.
In 2007, Minnesota State finished 4-7 while throwing the ball for 376.4 yards a game and rushing for 41.5 yards a game. Hoffner changed the narrative to running the ball. In his second season in 2009, Minnesota State finished with a 10-2 record and were NSIC South Division Champions. The Mavericks qualified for their second straight NCAA Tournament and hosted the first playoff game at Blakeslee Stadium for the first time. That year, they ran for 216.8 yards per game and 34 total rushing touchdowns while throwing the ball for 180.8 yards per game and putting up 23 touchdowns through the air. Hoffner quickly turned that pass-first offense around with a win-in-the trenches mentality where his team ran the ball through opponents unrelentlessly.
Chad Henning, a Sun Prairie, Wis., native who played on the Minnesota State offensive line from 2007-11, now is a coach with the Mavericks where he serves as the program's offensive line coach. He had been a part of two completely different offensive schemes while at MSU.
“Well, my freshman year we were a 95% passing offense,” Coach Henning said. “When Coach Hoffner got here, we changed that completely. We ran the ball about 60% of the time and had some really good luck doing so. The size of the offensive line helped run block for sure.”
You cannot run the football without a great offensive line. Over the course of history, Minnesota State football has had 18 All-American offensive linemen, dating back to 1974 when Dan Miller was the first offensive linemen to receive All-American honors. Minnesota State’s Evan Heim, who was named an All-American in 2018 and 2019, was the last Maverick lineman to be honored before he graduated in the fall of 2019. Heim, who started in all 54 games at left tackle during his career at MSU, was the anchor in the offensive line while the Mavericks made a run at the national championship in 2019 - group of offensive linemen that refer to themselves The Hogs.
“Being a hog offensive lineman just meant about being something bigger than yourself and offensive line is one of the only positions in sports where all five guys need to do their job in order for us to be successful,” Heim said.
As successful as they were, in the 2019 season the Mavericks set a program record 4,246 total yards along with the single-season rushing yards record, the Mavericks also set records in points scored (712), rushing attempts (713) and rushing touchdowns (59) and ranked fifth in the nation for rushing offense.
“We were very dominate up front but the offensive line only gets you so far like ten yards but all runs more than that is thanks to offensive line sustaining blocks and caring about the team and doing it for the team and wide receiver downfield blocking where most schools wide receiver don’t care about blocking and normally wide receiver are very selfish but not at Mankato,” Heim said. “Also helps to have great tight end (Tyler Schmidt) and an All-American running back (Nate Gunn). Having a great offensive line is just part of the equation.”
Minnesota State takes pride in its offensive line and bringing in the best linemen every year. The Mavericks rushing offense had made the top 20 in the nation seven out of the last nine years. Those two seasons they did not, were the only two seasons they lost more than one game, one was in 2015, they finished 10-2, with 227.7 rushing yards per game, 25th in the nation for rushing offense. The other was in 2016 where they finished 8-3, with only 169.5 rushing yards per game, 60th in the nation for rushing offense.
Colin Prosser joined the Minnesota State staff as offensive line coach in 2017 and now serves as the program's offensive coordinator. Under his leadership the Maverick offensive line led a third-ranked rushing offense in the nation with 4,036 rushing yards on the year for an average of 288.3 rushing yards per game in his first year. The Mavericks set a program single-season rushing yards record with 4,246 yards on the ground in 2019. MSU also set records in points scored (712), rushing attempts (713) and rushing touchdowns (59) and ranked fifth in the nation for rushing offense.
“Coach Prosser has done a great job of holding everyone accountable and getting the most out of his players,” said Henning. “We are a lot better now than we were back then when I played, not only as a talent level but also from a depth perspective. We have a lot more pride in the offensive line room now.”
Contributed by Tanner Johnson, Minnesota State Athletic Communications student intern
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