2026 Dodge Center LB Pierce Petersohn said Gophers think he can be next Cody Lindenberg | video

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btowngopher said:
All conference and presumably a draft pick isn’t high enough?
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Check out the stats on his missed tackles and lack of speed on the outside. Was he a decent linebacker? Yes. Was this a strong year for LBs in the B1G? No.

Just because our head cheerleader calls everyone on the team elite doesn't make it so. I hope he gets drafted on day two. I hope he actually plays and has a great career. I'm glad he represented the U well.

I also hope that we're raising our expectations of what Elite is in terms of a football player so that his on-field performance is actually Elite. Someone like Koi Perich is.
 

caliGopher said:
Check out the stats on his missed tackles and lack of speed on the outside. Was he a decent linebacker? Yes. Was this a strong year for LBs in the B1G? No.

Just because our head cheerleader calls everyone on the team elite doesn't make it so. I hope he gets drafted on day two. I hope he actually plays and has a great career. I'm glad he represented the U well.

I also hope that we're raising our expectations of what Elite is in terms of a football player so that his on-field performance is actually Elite. Someone like Koi Perich is.
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For a 6'3" 240 lbs LB, I actually think Lindenberg moved really well. I actually think his speed led to many of his "missed tackles". Our system is especially difficult on LBers, I've been saying this for years as people hated on MSM, Thomas Barber, etc. When you play 5 DBs, your two LBers really have massive responsibilities.

He was first team All Big 10 and the leading tackler on one of the best defenses in the country. You can call it an up or down year at LB (in a season the Big 10 dominated nonetheless), but that's an elite football player.

By definition, his on the field performance was elite.
 


caliGopher said:
Check out the stats on his missed tackles and lack of speed on the outside. Was he a decent linebacker? Yes. Was this a strong year for LBs in the B1G? No.

Just because our head cheerleader calls everyone on the team elite doesn't make it so. I hope he gets drafted on day two. I hope he actually plays and has a great career. I'm glad he represented the U well.

I also hope that we're raising our expectations of what Elite is in terms of a football player so that his on-field performance is actually Elite. Someone like Koi Perich is.
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Devil's advocate. Is Koi elite at this point? Saw him miss tackles and plays. He made some hype plays at big points in games. Plenty of room for improvement. Glad he's doing it as a Gopher.

Next Lindenberg can mean playing for your hometown team and potentially getting to the NFL. It can be that simple.
 

MaxyJR1 said:
Devil's advocate. Is Koi elite at this point? Saw him miss tackles and plays. He made some hype plays at big points in games. Plenty of room for improvement. Glad he's doing it as a Gopher.

Next Lindenberg can mean playing for your hometown team and potentially getting to the NFL. It can be that simple.
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Yes, he’s far from a finished product and there are developmental players in the NFL, as well.

He has things that cannot be coached: speed, intuition and quickness - more important for a backer than speed in my opinion - as most plays don’t require him having to cover a great distance.
 

MaxyJR1 said:
Devil's advocate. Is Koi elite at this point? Saw him miss tackles and plays. He made some hype plays at big points in games. Plenty of room for improvement. Glad he's doing it as a Gopher.

Next Lindenberg can mean playing for your hometown team and potentially getting to the NFL. It can be that simple.
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Everybody misses tackles. Lindenberg missed a lot (well above average), particularly on the outside—hence my statement that he was not elite. Koi has three more years to prove himself, but he was a difference-maker on the field all season long. He's the best safety we've had since Tyrone Carter in terms of his ability to improve the entire defense.
 

If Petersohn ends up being the next Lindenberg, we're in great shape. A day one pick is all the better he could strive for, and I like a kid who sets realistic goals that are high but not confidence breaking if he doesn't shoot the moon. It also shows that this kid is paying attention and compares himself to guys who have come through this program, not "I wanna be the next (enter NFL name here)" etc.
 




MaxyJR1 said:
Devil's advocate. Is Koi elite at this point? Saw him miss tackles and plays. He made some hype plays at big points in games. Plenty of room for improvement. Glad he's doing it as a Gopher.

Next Lindenberg can mean playing for your hometown team and potentially getting to the NFL. It can be that simple.
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Yeah he's very promising, makes plays, but I've seen direct misses and "uh pretty sure that was Koi's guy" on some plays.
 

Bob_Loblaw said:
For a 6'3" 240 lbs LB, I actually think Lindenberg moved really well. I actually think his speed led to many of his "missed tackles". Our system is especially difficult on LBers, I've been saying this for years as people hated on MSM, Thomas Barber, etc. When you play 5 DBs, your two LBers really have massive responsibilities.

He was first team All Big 10 and the leading tackler on one of the best defenses in the country. You can call it an up or down year at LB (in a season the Big 10 dominated nonetheless), but that's an elite football player.

By definition, his on the field performance was elite.
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He led the team in tackles. He was First team Coaches, second team media. All great accomplishments. And I take nothing from him on that.

He was one of our best players on defense. My point is that we can celebrate his accomplishments and still admit if we're going to get better, and be Fleck's favorite word - Elite (he does not use this word the way most people do) - then he we need to improve our best as Peej loves to say (but rarely do).

Two of Lindenberg's counterparts on the B1G Coaches First team—Jay Higgens and Carson Schwesinger—were both AP first-team all-Americans as well. That is elite.

Our #5 ranking is also not elite when you dig into it. If you take the two exceedingly weak opponents out of the mix, we had the 13th ranked D in terms of yards allowed. When you look at just the B1G games, we would have been 26th. Between 13th and 26th is a more realistic evaluation of our team defense. Very Good, but not Elite.

Proof point.
Ohio State had the #1 ranked D in yards allowed at 254.6 yds per game. NC games of note in this figure included their NC run (Tennessee, Oregon, again, Texas, and Notre Dame). In B1G games, they gave up an average of 266.8 yds per game. An increase of 4.8% over their season average. With the NC title run in their totals, there were actually better overall than just the B1G. That is Elite.

Minnesota had the #5 ranked D in yards allowed at 285.7, NC games of note in this figure are North Carolina (Va Tech. In B1G games, we gave up an average of 325.8 yds per game, an increase of 14% over our average. That is very good as well. It is not Elite.

Proof point #2
We held B1G opponents to 89.0% of their average offensive yardage when we played them, which is pretty good. We gave up more yardage to Iowa, UCLA, and Maryland.

tOSU held B1G opponents to 75.7% of their average offensive yardage, which is Elite. tOSU gave up more yardage to Oregon (note the playoff game against Oregon game is not included in these figures)
 




STPGopher said:
I liked this because at the end of the day, we always like to see our players and program improving even though we'd love to see him reach Lindenberg's status.
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Nice to have guys to achieve to be. That's the importance of success and putting guys into the NFL.
 

caliGopher said:
He led the team in tackles. He was First team Coaches, second team media. All great accomplishments. And I take nothing from him on that.

He was one of our best players on defense. My point is that we can celebrate his accomplishments and still admit if we're going to get better, and be Fleck's favorite word - Elite (he does not use this word the way most people do) - then he we need to improve our best as Peej loves to say (but rarely do).

Two of Lindenberg's counterparts on the B1G Coaches First team—Jay Higgens and Carson Schwesinger—were both AP first-team all-Americans as well. That is elite.

Our #5 ranking is also not elite when you dig into it. If you take the two exceedingly weak opponents out of the mix, we had the 13th ranked D in terms of yards allowed. When you look at just the B1G games, we would have been 26th. Between 13th and 26th is a more realistic evaluation of our team defense. Very Good, but not Elite.

Proof point.
Ohio State had the #1 ranked D in yards allowed at 254.6 yds per game. NC games of note in this figure included their NC run (Tennessee, Oregon, again, Texas, and Notre Dame). In B1G games, they gave up an average of 266.8 yds per game. An increase of 4.8% over their season average. With the NC title run in their totals, there were actually better overall than just the B1G. That is Elite.

Minnesota had the #5 ranked D in yards allowed at 285.7, NC games of note in this figure are North Carolina (Va Tech. In B1G games, we gave up an average of 325.8 yds per game, an increase of 14% over our average. That is very good as well. It is not Elite.

Proof point #2
We held B1G opponents to 89.0% of their average offensive yardage when we played them, which is pretty good. We gave up more yardage to Iowa, UCLA, and Maryland.

tOSU held B1G opponents to 75.7% of their average offensive yardage, which is Elite. tOSU gave up more yardage to Oregon (note the playoff game against Oregon game is not included in these figures)
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You're not very good at analysis.

For example:

Of you're going to compare defenses, don't take out "two weak opponents" for the Gophers but not do the same for the team's being compared.

You also shouldn't compare only conference games for one, but not for all.

Simple stuff.
 

caliGopher said:
He led the team in tackles. He was First team Coaches, second team media. All great accomplishments. And I take nothing from him on that.

He was one of our best players on defense. My point is that we can celebrate his accomplishments and still admit if we're going to get better, and be Fleck's favorite word - Elite (he does not use this word the way most people do) - then he we need to improve our best as Peej loves to say (but rarely do).

Two of Lindenberg's counterparts on the B1G Coaches First team—Jay Higgens and Carson Schwesinger—were both AP first-team all-Americans as well. That is elite.

Our #5 ranking is also not elite when you dig into it. If you take the two exceedingly weak opponents out of the mix, we had the 13th ranked D in terms of yards allowed. When you look at just the B1G games, we would have been 26th. Between 13th and 26th is a more realistic evaluation of our team defense. Very Good, but not Elite.

Proof point.
Ohio State had the #1 ranked D in yards allowed at 254.6 yds per game. NC games of note in this figure included their NC run (Tennessee, Oregon, again, Texas, and Notre Dame). In B1G games, they gave up an average of 266.8 yds per game. An increase of 4.8% over their season average. With the NC title run in their totals, there were actually better overall than just the B1G. That is Elite.

Minnesota had the #5 ranked D in yards allowed at 285.7, NC games of note in this figure are North Carolina (Va Tech. In B1G games, we gave up an average of 325.8 yds per game, an increase of 14% over our average. That is very good as well. It is not Elite.

Proof point #2
We held B1G opponents to 89.0% of their average offensive yardage when we played them, which is pretty good. We gave up more yardage to Iowa, UCLA, and Maryland.

tOSU held B1G opponents to 75.7% of their average offensive yardage, which is Elite. tOSU gave up more yardage to Oregon (note the playoff game against Oregon game is not included in these figures)
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Of course we need to improve to become an elite program, but Cody Lindenberg is an awful example of that. Both of your "proof points" have very little to do with Lindenberg. He was certainly better than our other LBers and most of the players on our defense. Despite that, we still had a very good defense (if you want to shy away from using the term Elite or elite). The fact that you would point to our first team All Big 10 LB as part of the reason our defense isn't as good as Ohio State is one of the wildest takes I've ever read on the internet. He is one of the few players we have that would have gotten PT on Ohio State.

If every recruit we brought in turned out as good as Cody Lindenberg, we would be one of the better teams in the country. That's true despite the fact that there are two LBers better than him in the Big 10. That's true despite the fact that

You're acting like everyone in this thread was talking about Lindenberg like he's LT. Nope. This is a thread where a recruit talked about wanting to fashion his game after Lindenberg and you went out of your way to take a shot at him. For some of us, it was weird and we commented. But make no mistake, this wasn't a thread of people exaggerating the greatness of Cody Lindenberg before you came along and brought us a dose of reality. We weren't even celebrating his accomplishments.
 

Back to the post, does he have the frame to play LB? I've seen a lot of him playing basketball. Pretty tall and thin. WR/TE seems more his style at the college level. He's an amazing athlete with a huge vertical leap.
 

balds said:
Back to the post, does he have the frame to play LB? I've seen a lot of him playing basketball. Pretty tall and thin. WR/TE seems more his style at the college level. He's an amazing athlete with a huge vertical leap.
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He definitely seems taller and thinner than your typical LB prospect, but you gotta love the speed and athleticism, if he can keep that and tack on some weight he could be very interesting. Typically it seems like most prospects are very capable of bulking up as needed.
 

caliGopher said:
Check out the stats on his missed tackles and lack of speed on the outside. Was he a decent linebacker? Yes. Was this a strong year for LBs in the B1G? No.

Just because our head cheerleader calls everyone on the team elite doesn't make it so. I hope he gets drafted on day two. I hope he actually plays and has a great career. I'm glad he represented the U well.

I also hope that we're raising our expectations of what Elite is in terms of a football player so that his on-field performance is actually Elite. Someone like Koi Perich is.
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"Decent linebacker"??? He was first team ALL B10 by the COACHES....you know the guys that actually know football? Damn...SMH. And calling PJ our "head cheerleader"?? Seems like a lot of coaches in the B10 must've been listening.....
 

Lindenberg tackled in a historically bad way during the non-conference schedule. Probably a combination of rust and being overly anxious to be a difference maker after basically missing all last year. He recovered from that and played great during league play. He’s a solid pro to be will start in the NFL. He’s fast and strong and has good instincts.
 

Was at a Hall of Fame program at Triton the other day. Talked to Pierce's track coach. If I heard him correctly he runs a 49.3 400 meters. That would have been as a sophomore because Track season hasn't started yet. Not too shabby. I know football speed in measured in shorter runs. Saw him play basketball that weekend too. The kid can jump out of the building. Big springs in his legs. I definitely could see him putting some pounds on and being a TE.
 

MNSpaniel said:
Was at a Hall of Fame program at Triton the other day. Talked to Pierce's track coach. If I heard him correctly he runs a 49.3 400 meters. That would have been as a sophomore because Track season hasn't started yet. Not too shabby. I know football speed in measured in shorter runs. Saw him play basketball that weekend too. The kid can jump out of the building. Big springs in his legs. I definitely could see him putting some pounds on and being a TE.
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Definite vertical threat option if he transitioned to TE, that's a rockstar time for the 400. He can probably run the 200 and 100 in a highly competitive time comparatively.
 

USAF said:
You're not very good at analysis.

For example:

Of you're going to compare defenses, don't take out "two weak opponents" for the Gophers but not do the same for the team's being compared.

You also shouldn't compare only conference games for one, but not for all.

Simple stuff.
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Well, since you asked:

If you take out Ohio State's three weak NC games, they would have ranked 2 in the nation vs. 1st. That includes the four games against Tennessee, Oregon (the second one), Texas, and Notre Dame.

If you look at them only using the conference schedule, they would have ranked....you guessed it, second again.

So, first or second, still an Elite D overall.

You're right. If I had been presenting a full statistical analysis, I would have included that. Given that their total rank of #1 included the four play-off games, I didn't think this added much to an already long post given they won the national title based on their defense I thought that was more obvious, so please forgive me.

The point, in response to Lindenberg was the top tackler on a top defense, is that our defense was much better in 2025, but it was not the top 5 defense in the country, and it was not Elite. Just like Indiana's rank of #2 wouldn't hold much water, and Northern Illinois' #4 feels empty as well.

It's why I brought in the stat of where we gave up more than average yards in the B1G - it wasn't against the top teams, it was against three of the weaker offensive teams on our schedule (Maryland #67, Iowa #117, and UCLA #118), something an Elite defense would not have happened 3 times in a nine-game schedule (even elite players and Defenses can have a bad game, but 33% of the time?).

The top five total defensive stat is a nice headline, but they say very little about the actual quality of our D, which was used to justify that Lindenberg was the top tackler on a top defense, which we were, in one statistical measure that doesn't bear out under scrutiny. OSU's winning the Natty showed that they truly had the top Defense in the country and were Elite.

As they say in analytics, not everything that counts can be measured, and not everything that can be measured counts.
 

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