2021: Winningest P5 season away from home ever

[fmlizard]

The 2021 Gophers were the first team in school history to win 5 games against P5 competition on the road or at a neutral site. The 2019 and 2003 Gophers each won 4, as did a couple teams of the more distant past.

 

[watertown 1987 guy n]

Defense!

 

[cjbfbp]

The 2021 Gophers were the first team in school history to win 5 games against P5 competition on the road or at a neutral site. The 2019 and 2003 Gophers each won 4, as did a couple teams of the more distant past.

That's an example of the interesting facts about this season. Despite the bewildering lows, there were some really favorable performance metrics for this season:

The away-neutral record you describe.

The team won 4 games where it was the underdog going into the game according to the betting line.

The team was 8-4-1 against the betting line; 3rd best record in the conference behind the two Michigan schools. Two of those losses were against MAC teams and two (BGSU, IL) were very large failures. One loss (Iowa) was only by a point. 3 of the 4 losses happened as favorites.

The team finished 3rd in the nation in total (yardage) defense, tied for 6th nationally in scoring defense, 7th in the nation in rushing yardage allowed, and 9th in the nation in passing yardage allowed.

 

[BilldGopher]

And recall Defense was what had the most question marks coming into the season...

 

[MNVCGUY]

Come up in a few other threads as well but this team has become a really good road/neutral site team under Fleck. For whatever reason they seem to play better on the road than they do at home in a lot of cases.