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

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BleedGopher

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Per Zain:

For the better part of a decade, P.J. Fleck has rowed the boat in Minneapolis with relentless optimism, building a gritty, competitive culture that consistently overachieves.

But in the ruthless landscape of the 18-team Big Ten, culture and grit can only compensate for so much. When the roster lacks elite depth, the margins eventually disappear.

According to the latest 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, backing into a lower-tier bowl game.

The Golden Gophers are projected to take care of business when favored, securing non-conference wins over Eastern Illinois and Akron. In conference play, Crawford expects Fleck’s squad to grind out tough victories over Purdue, UCLA, Iowa, and Northwestern.

However, these projected wins merely keep Minnesota treading water in a conference that severely punishes any sign of weakness.

The crux of Minnesota's projected stagnation lies in personnel. It's challenging to survive a nine-game Big Ten schedule without consistent quarterback play and robust depth in the trenches—two areas where the Gophers are currently severely lacking.

"The Gophers have been competitive in recent years, but a step back in the win column signals roster turnover finally catching up with depth issues on both lines," Crawford wrote. This lack of depth is explicitly exposed in the model's projected losses.

Crawford predicts Minnesota will drop a non-conference tilt against Mississippi State and suffer grueling Big Ten defeats to Washington, Michigan, Indiana, Penn State and Wisconsin.

A .500 finish is a bitter pill to swallow for a program that has tasted 11-win success under Fleck, proving just how razor-thin the margin for error is in the new super-conference era.

www.sportingnews.com

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

The Minnesota Golden Gophers may end up in the same position they usually are in every year: good but not elite. The outlook this fall seems to indicate that.
www.sportingnews.com www.sportingnews.com

Go Gophers!!
 




We could go 6-6 but it won't because of line or QB play. Sure we brought in some guys on the interior dline, but both sides of the LOS are full of returning starters and guys that are four or five years into the program. Our QB is a legit NFL prospect as well. I also don't see a scenario where we lose to Mississippi State and Wisconsin, but beat Iowa
 




Some guy said:
What are the odds They beat Iowa and lose to wisconsin

Gotta be like 5% or less
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Given that the Iowa game is at Home and Wisconsin is Away, I don't think it's quite as low a 5%.
 

Ope3 said:
Given that the Iowa game is at Home and Wisconsin is Away, I don't think it's quite as low a 5%.
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I suppose maybe

But I still put those two games at 25% to beat Iowa and 75% to beat Wisconsin

That’s 6.25%
 






My new totally arbitrary goal for gopher football is for us to have a season where we beat Iowa and Wisconsin before the next time we have a season where we lose to both Iowa and Wisconsin.
 



Must be a lazy article. If he said 8-4 it would it would be a great article.

In fairness 6-6 is certainly a fairly likely record, along with 7-5, 8-4, and 5-7. Id put the Gophers at at least 90% finishing in that range. If I had to bet today I would go 7-5 most likely, followed by 6-6, 8-4, then 5-7 barring a major QB injury.

I do think the WR group and OL are areas of potential concern, along with Taylor staying healthy.
 

I think your W-L analysis and probabilities are realistic preseason guesses.

I'm in the minority - I think - but I'm a little higher on the O-line because of Limegrover and I'm a little higher on the WR room because of Fruechte. I'm also less concerned than most if Drake goes down for a game or two or three.

If we lose DT or AJ, now I'm a little nervous and believe 5-7/6-6 are the likelihood.

P.S. I used to be a staunch 6-6 "dink" here but I'm maturing out of that and feel more and more this could be a special season.
 

Some guy said:
I suppose maybe

But I still put those two games at 25% to beat Iowa and 75% to beat Wisconsin

That’s 6.25%
Click to expand...

That's not unrealistic, but I would bump up the Gophers chances of beating Iowa more like 35% at Home.

I think the season finale is much more of a toss up at this point, putting it in the 12% range for the Gophers to Win Floyd, but Lose the Axe.
 

Not sure if the national football geniuses even bother to do the math. But if they do, the fact that they perpetually overrate Wisconsin and Nebraska means they have to hang some extra L’s on somebody’s team. It’s usually us. My habit is to take whatever win total the scribes predict for the Gophers and add 2. I’ll be right much more than they will.
 


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.
 

Some guy said:
No.
The badgers have a 25% chance of beating MN
And the gophers have a 25% chance of beating Iowa

It’s 18.75% chance gophers beat both
6.25% gophers beat Iowa but lose to Wisconsin
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Got it, should gone back a post. I saw you say 25% to win and 75% to win equaled 6.25%, but in an earlier comment you said to beat Iowa and lose to Wisconsin (so 25% x 25%).
 

Ski-U-Ham said:
Got it, should gone back a post. I saw you say 25% to win and 75% to win equaled 6.25%, but in an earlier comment you said to beat Iowa and lose to Wisconsin (so 25% x 25%).
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Yeah. If the gophers are good enough to beat Iowa, in my opinion, almost 0% chance they’ll lose to what I think will be a skeleton crew Wisconsin team with an interim coach
 

Same thing, different year. The Gophers nearly always slightly surpass the national predictions and as others have said, since the national folks consistently overrank Nebraska and Wisconsin, somebody has to be underrated and that somebody is usually the Gophers.

The problem is, the Gophers only dramatically smashed the predictions just once, in 2019. Because of that, the reality has been a lot of 7-5 and 8-4, slightly above the 5-7 or 6-6 predictions. It usually hasn’t been enough to change the perceptions enough to change the annual slight difference in predictions.

If the Gophers go 8-4 with stellar QB play this season and get Lindsey back for next season, prepare yourself for the annual 6-6 predictions for 2027.
 

Some guy said:
Yeah. If the gophers are good enough to beat Iowa, in my opinion, almost 0% chance they’ll lose to what I think will be a skeleton crew Wisconsin team with an interim coach
Click to expand...

You may be right Some Guy. I think if Fickell shows on the field improvements after playing arguably the most difficult schedule last fall, and creates the appearance that he can succeed in the new-normal of CFB, I think he is safe for one more season.
 


Arminius said:
You may be right Some Guy. I think if Fickell shows on the field improvements after playing arguably the most difficult schedule last fall, and creates the appearance that he can succeed in the new-normal of CFB, I think he is safe for one more season.
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I think so too.
But I don’t think he will.

Notre dame - loss
W Illinois - win
E Michigan - win
@ Penn state - loss
Michigan State - 50/50
@ UCLA - 50/50
USC - loss
@ Iowa - loss
Rutgers - 50/50
@ maryland - 50/50
@ Purdue - win (but they will get Purdue’s best shot)

I mean they could beat the gophers and go 9-3
But they could also pretty easily be 2-3 and fire him at the bye week or 2-6/3-5 and fire him before Rutgers game. And the AD is no longer his AD.
 

I do feel the national media is usually rather hesitant when predicting the Gophers because of previous history, too. Years where Minnesota was expected to compete at a higher level because of returning talent or coming off a good season, the Gophers usually regressed or didn't go as far as people thought.
  • 2000, after finishing 8-4 and ranked No. 17/18, Minnesota finished 6-6
  • 2004, after finishing 10-3 and ranked No. 17/20, Minnesota finished 7-5
  • 2005, Maroney, Eslinger, Cupito, Spaeth and Setterstrom returning, Minnesota finsihed 7-5
  • 2015, after finishing 8-5 with a NYD bowl and returning starters, Minnesota finished 6-7
  • 2020, after finishing 11-2 and ranked No. 10, Minnesota finished 3-4 (shortened season)
  • 2022, with Morgan, Ibrahim, Schmitz, Bell and Nubin returning, Minnesota finished 9-4 and missed B1G West Title opporutnity
I also shared in an earlier thread where Minnesota cracked the Top 25 in seven seasons, (2000, 2002, 2005, 2013, 2014, 2020 and 2022) before losing their next game and falling out of the rankings. Every season is obviously different and the teams should be taken where they are at in the present, but Minnesota is one of those "you have to prove it first" programs to a lot of people.
 

Arminius said:
I think your W-L analysis and probabilities are realistic preseason guesses.

I'm in the minority - I think - but I'm a little higher on the O-line because of Limegrover and I'm a little higher on the WR room because of Fruechte. I'm also less concerned than most if Drake goes down for a game or two or three.

If we lose DT or AJ, now I'm a little nervous and believe 5-7/6-6 are the likelihood.

P.S. I used to be a staunch 6-6 "dink" here but I'm maturing out of that and feel more and more this could be a special season.
Click to expand...
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.
 

Ope3 said:
That's not unrealistic, but I would bump up the Gophers chances of beating Iowa more like 35% at Home.

I think the season finale is much more of a toss up at this point, putting it in the 12% range for the Gophers to Win Floyd, but Lose the Axe.
Click to expand...
Yeah football can be funny, in 2018 I don't think anyone thought we would have a 37-7 lead in the 4th quarter in Madison during Week one when Wisconsin was a person fourth ranked team in the country or that 2019 game would be a 9-2 vs 10-1 match up.
 

goldenboy said:
Not sure if the national football geniuses even bother to do the math. But if they do, the fact that they perpetually overrate Wisconsin and Nebraska means they have to hang some extra L’s on somebody’s team. It’s usually us. My habit is to take whatever win total the scribes predict for the Gophers and add 2. I’ll be right much more than they will.
Click to expand...

Good point! With a few exceptions here and there, Minnesota doesn't appear to be a popular team for sports writers (or hacks if you prefer) to pick as a dark horse or a team to make a little more noise than usual in the upcoming season. Seems like the same thing almost every year. But, these writers do have teams like Wisconsin, Nebraska, and now UCLA who they are hoping to see break out of their doldrums so Rodney Dangerfield (I get no respect) teams need to be underrated in order to give those preferred teams the necessary wins to meet their optimistic expectations.

Maybe it's also the effect of shiny new objects. Minnesota really doesn't have any. They have the same coach since 2017 and while they got some decent players from the portal, no one jumps out as a true star. Wisconsin has a new dual threat QB who was impressive at ODU, Nebraska has some notable new players, and UCLA has a new coach coming from the same G5 program as Cignetti (Hey, that must make him really good, right?) and a former 5-star QB. Of course, Fickell and Rhule were shiny new objects not long ago and maybe some writers are hoping that they can still be proven right.
 

MNVCGUY said:
I think what gets tiring as a Gopher fan is we rarely see the optimistic off season projection article.
Click to expand...

How true! I think the most optimistic projection for the 2019 team I saw outside of Gopher land was on one of the primary Nebraska fan boards. Despite them beating us pretty badly in 2018 (the last time they won) the Gophers seemed to be the most popular choice as a dark horse in the Big Ten West for the 2019 season because of the pretty easy schedule, the strong finish in 2018, and the fact that most of their top players were returning.
 

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