Sporting News: Minnesota football projected for pedestrian finish in 2026 Big Ten predictions

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New Running Back Coach, New WR Coach, New DL Coach, New Special Teams Coach, Add Limegrover to Offensive Line Coaches, Add Schula as an offensive assistant, retain both of our coordinators. To me, these are some signifcant changes that needed to be made. Yes, we return a good amount of quality players, yes we have some great additions from the portal and a few freshmen that will be able to help us immediately. But I think the changes on the coaching staff might be a huge difference maker for the Gophers in 2026.
 




Lifeleadership said:
New Running Back Coach, New WR Coach, New DL Coach, New Special Teams Coach, Add Limegrover to Offensive Line Coaches, Add Schula as an offensive assistant, retain both of our coordinators. To me, these are some signifcant changes that needed to be made. Yes, we return a good amount of quality players, yes we have some great additions from the portal and a few freshmen that will be able to help us immediately. But I think the changes on the coaching staff might be a huge difference maker for the Gophers in 2026.
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I have a slight concern that the new coaching additions will be taken an adjustment come real games and we could see a regression in some of those positions, at least in the first quarter to third of the season. WR, OL, and special teams can't really get much worse, but a step back with the D line in particular would suck.
 


IceBoxGopher said:
It's an extra lazy article because the writer doesn't even have an original thought. It's all based on the CBS Sports piece published earlier. One of use could write the same article based on Sporting News' coverage of CBS Sports' predictions.

According to Sporting News’ article, which itself was based on the 2026 game picks and win-loss predictions from CBS Sports analyst Brad Crawford, Minnesota is projected to finish with a pedestrian 6-6 overall record and a 4-5 mark in conference play. Sporting News reports that CBS Sports predicts Minnesota to take care of business when favored.

^ There. I just did the same thing the Sporting News writer did.
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Put it out there and get paid. These idiots are getting money for it, you should too. Then you can buy the beer when the Gophs make the playoffs.
 


TwistingMyMelon said:
But they've had horrible QBs before (remember Deacon Hill?) and still had a good season. We won't know until the season gets going.
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I have a hard time seeing Iowa being worse than an annoying as hell 6-6 even if deacon hill comes back for an extra season.
 

Back in the day, I’m older than sh@t, this stuff wasn’t written until late August or early September. Of course now we are playing games by then, but still, just need something to write about, so just go make it up! Sorry, been golfing and drinking.
 



TwistingMyMelon said:
But they've had horrible QBs before (remember Deacon Hill?) and still had a good season. We won't know until the season gets going.
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I guess it is a new era with the transfer portal, but I would think the larger issue would be the lack or returning productivity. They also bring back no one on special teams (coordinator took some players with him when he took a position at Michigan State).


We will see, but I like the under of the projected 6.5 win total.
 

GooningGopher said:
We will see, but I like the under of the projected 6.5 win total.
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I'm not high on them and I'm expecting that the Gophers will beat them this year. Still, I can't be too confident in predicting the failure of a program that has had one losing season since the turn of the century and has beaten the Gophers in 9 of the last 10 meetings.
 


The Gophers have two projected All Americans, a mature star RB and experienced quality starters at many positions, including QB. In a better spot than last year, I believe. This makes me think an 8 win regular season is a reasonable hope. The Mississippi State and Iowa games, both early in the schedule, could provide corroboration … or dash my hopes. Go Gophers.
 



Gophergrandpa said:
The Gophers have two projected All Americans, a mature star RB and experienced quality starters at many positions, including QB. In a better spot than last year, I believe. This makes me think an 8 win regular season is a reasonable hope. The Mississippi State and Iowa games, both early in the schedule, could provide corroboration … or dash my hopes. Go Gophers.
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First part of you post is correct. Gophers are in a very good spot relative to other trophy game opponents. 10-2 regular season, grandpa.
 

Gophergrandpa said:
10% maybe? Ferentz has a hex on PJ, and PJ has a hex of Fickell, regardless of venue.
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Harbaugh versus Parker is an even worse scenario than PJ v Kirk. What I would love to see out of our offense this year would be some recognition that surprising the defense with what play you are running is better than just saying these are the six players we run and we’re gonna beat you running them. That just doesn’t work post Mo.
 
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Gophergrandpa said:
The Gophers have two projected All Americans, a mature star RB and experienced quality starters at many positions, including QB. In a better spot than last year, I believe. This makes me think an 8 win regular season is a reasonable hope. The Mississippi State and Iowa games, both early in the schedule, could provide corroboration … or dash my hopes. Go Gophers.
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I love Taylor but he’s so injury prone.
 

MNVCGUY said:
I think what gets tiring as a Gopher fan is we rarely see the optimistic off season projection article. Not always but most of the time they seem to skew towards the worst case scenario as opposed to a positive outlook where the assumption is that some things will go right.

It is what it is.....it is all just off season filler anyway....just might be fun to get some of the undeserved hype teams like Wisconsin and Nebraska have gotten in recent years where the assumption is that things will go right even though that has not been the case for either program in recent years.
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To me, saying 6-6 and getting at least one thing right in the analysis wouldn't bother me. I don't think that's unreasonable, nor do I think it's guaranteed.

But when you say the lines are depleted, they're not. The D-line was surprisingly good given how pedestrian our Defense was last year, and it has some key pieces back. Even if we don't lead the B1G in Sacks and aren't #2 in TFLs, the d-line will likely be in the top half of the conference.

The O-line returns many people. Who struggled against a very, very, very weak B1G home schedule (except against Nebby). There isn't as big an imbalance in our schedule, allowing us to play 4 of the 5 worst teams by record in the B1G this year (maybe?), but what we lose in top tier, we also lose in bottom tier. The o-line is still our biggest concern, and the biggest flaw in Drake's game was he can't run like the wind when opposing D-lineman are on him on step 2 of his 3-step drop to dump the ball off at the LOS because our o-line sucked.

And taking someone else's predictions for us to beat Iowa and circle Purdue as a win so easily clearly hasn't even looked at the stat sheets from those games. The last 6 quarters we've played against Iowa have been abysmal, but since we play them at home this year, that's going to make a difference. They may want to rewatch the second half in 2024 on that one. The Purdue game was one where the difference between playing at home and at Purdue helped us pull that one out.

My guess is we'll still play the games, and we'll see what happens, I just hope the team shows up for more than two and a half conference games this year.
 
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