Fleck: "I think we can be a really good football team next year."

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The biggest question who replace #24?
Given the number of carries he had this year he would be better served trying to get drafted.
RBs like him have a short shelf life.
 


Idk anything. There are a million variables. How many of our guys who play transfer?
Do we lose coaches again this off season?
What if several o-linemen do leave?
What if Mo leaves to go pro?
Who is going to play DB?
Don’t we absolutely have to go 3 and 0 non conference to have a shot at 7 and 5?
Really hard for me to see 8 and 4 or better and isn’t that the minimum for really good next year?
Love to see it happen but I’m not predicting it in December.
 

We'll be better, so will most of the B1G West. And of course Nebby will be ranked as a top 25 team again when the season starts...
 


2021 is a crapshoot to predict right now for every team - there are so many variables.

Who comes back and who moves on? Coney, BSJ, MDT, Schad, Schlueter, Olson, Kieft, Witham, etc. For both the Gophers and other teams, how many guys want to come back for 5th and 6th seasons? I imagine all of those guys have degrees, and they probably aren’t going to improve playing one more year of college football.

The one time transfer market. I can’t remember if it’s official yet, but speculation is the NCAA will give every athlete the chance to take advantage of transferring without having to sit out a year. How active will the Gophers be and who do we go after? If we’re aggressive, it’a not outside the realm of possibility that we have 4-5 new starters that transfer in during the off-season. The teams that win in the transfer market and fill key needs will have a leg up.

How many scholarships does the NCAA allow for next year? It’s going to be more than 85 - but is it 95? 100? 105? We just signed 17, so that would put us at 102 for next year assuming everyone returns, which won’t happen. All teams will need to get back to 85 scholarships by 2022, so there will be a lot of difficult conversations after the 2021 season and most teams will probably sign far smaller classes in 2022 than normal. This will help the non blue blood schools if teams like Ohio St, Alabama, Clemson, etc only sign 12-15 players.
 

60's Guy said:
Idk anything. There are a million variables. How many of our guys who play transfer?
Do we lose coaches again this off season?
What if several o-linemen do leave?
What if Mo leaves to go pro?
Who is going to play DB?
Don’t we absolutely have to go 3 and 0 non conference to have a shot at 7 and 5?
Really hard for me to see 8 and 4 or better and isn’t that the minimum for really good next year?
Love to see it happen but I’m not predicting it in December.
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I dunno, I don’t see five sure losses on the schedule. If we are good next year we should win 8 or more.
 

Some guy said:
Well 3-5 is only one game worse than the 4-4 that got Jerry kill ordained a saint in 2013
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Need to consider the source. I don't think AMK has ever had a positive thing to say, just trolls and posts negative crap every chance he gets.

As for next season we should be in a much better position heading into next year than we were heading into this year. All the new faces on defense got a lot of valuable experience and should be ready to hit the ground running next year. The improvement from game one to game 7 on defense was night and day. Defense should be much better next year.

Offense should also be very strong. Lots of returning talent at all positions.

Hopefully with a somewhat normal off-season we will be in a position to contend for the West next season. Anything less than being a contender in the West would be a massive disappointment in year 5 given the strides we have made in recruiting.
 

Plato said:
The biggest question who replace #24?
Given the number of carries he had this year he would be better served trying to get drafted.
RBs like him have a short shelf life.
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He had a high carry per game, but it was a short season so he didn’t even get 200 carries, he had more carries two years ago. Jonathan Taylor had three seasons of 299 carries or more.
 



John Galt said:
The o-line could potentially lose Schlueter, Olson, Dunlap, Faalele, Andries and Schmitz. Schlueter and Olson have already been here 5 years, are they going to come back for a 6th? They are both solid, but could test the NFL waters or move on. Faalele, Dunlap and Andries have now all been here 3-4 years. It's not inconceivable that two of them would test the NFL - I think Faalele and Dunlap would get drafted based on potential alone. And Schmitz is a junior and was name HM all B1G.

I doubt all 6 leave, but it won't be surprising if only 2-3 of them are back.
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Faalele could maybe get drafted based on his size but he wouldn't be a super high pick coming off a year without playing. Dunlap would not get drafted coming off an achilles injury. He has some talent but NFL teams wouldn't touch that, too much risk.

Others have said they think most if not all those guys will be back. Will be interesting to see how it shakes out but I like our odds of having a very experienced offensive line heading into 2021 no matter how it all shakes out.
 

whalenfan said:
They are all coming back......
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You have been pretty much on with your opinions regarding things like this and I enjoy your insights. So for you to make that statement makes me pretty excited! If those guys are back that bodes well for the line. Love to see Mo back because he's just so good but I do feel that there are some other talented backs in the stable.
 


I like PJ, but he and the other coaches had a bad year. We need to be more creative on offense, we need more team speed on defense, and we need use more of our rostered players than we currently use.
 



Will all come down to our OC and Morgan!
 

60's Guy said:
Idk anything. There are a million variables. How many of our guys who play transfer?
Do we lose coaches again this off season?
What if several o-linemen do leave?
What if Mo leaves to go pro?
Who is going to play DB?
Don’t we absolutely have to go 3 and 0 non conference to have a shot at 7 and 5?
Really hard for me to see 8 and 4 or better and isn’t that the minimum for really good next year?
Love to see it happen but I’m not predicting it in December.
Click to expand...

Who in the world would consider 8-4 really good? Outside of Ohio State who are these unbeatable teams on the schedule? I am comfortable picking an L against Ohio State and W's against Miami (OH) and Bowling Green. The other 9 games will determine things.
 

btowngopher said:
I dunno, I don’t see five sure losses on the schedule. If we are good next year we should win 8 or more.
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I hope so! Lol and we will IF we are good 😎
EG#9 said:
Who in the world would consider 8-4 really good? Outside of Ohio State who are these unbeatable teams on the schedule? I am comfortable picking an L against Ohio State and W's against Miami (OH) and Bowling Green. The other 9 games will determine things.
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PJ: “I think we can be a really good football team next year.” So you think he is guaranteeing 9-3 or better? That means winning 7 of those 9 games. It’d be great but...
That means no problem with Colorado, Purdue, Northwestern, Iowa, Indiana all on the road. Then we just automatically kick Illinois and Nebraska at home and this is the year we get past Wisconsin. I have a hard time guaranteeing 7 wins or even predicting. It could change...maybe we beat The Ohio State but I did see all the games this year and can’t unsee them.
 
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The Gophers were a couple of poor choices to kick dicey overtime field goals and extra points away from a good season. Had the Gophers found a way in toss-up situations against Wisconsin and/or Maryland the team would have had a winning Big Ten season, something that's not been done a lot here prior to last season.

I'm optimistic about next season. Hopefully some normalcy and a lot of players back. A defense that trended up the last few weeks. A sound running game and experienced QB. Need some playmakers to step up for the loss of TJ and Bateman.
 

Some guy said:
I don’t know if the young player will be better than they were today but the gophers just held Wisconsin under 20 in regulation for the second time since 2000 and 5th time since 1990 after being the 130th best defense in the country going into Purdue game
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That says more about how putrid the Wisconsin offense has been vs how good our D played.
 

Some guy said:
Well 3-5 is only one game worse than the 4-4 that got Jerry kill ordained a saint in 2013
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So after 4 years of superior recruiting and having the hottest young coach in college football, the best we should expect is to be able to compare him to two head coaches ago?

we're not going to have a new coach anytime soon, and i haven't heard anyone say Fleck should be fired. But we hired Fleck because we wanted more.

4 years in and we have little talent on defense. A team that was woefully unprepared for the season - and let's not forget, everyone had the same handicap this year - a losing conference record, and a team talent ranking in the big10 that is a mild improvement over the year before he took over.

Those are the facts. Yes, An improvement in results on the field and in the standings is a part of the expectations for anyone having a job as a head football coach. Not sure why anyone would look at this season and be happy with the results.
 

GFBfan said:
That says more about how putrid the Wisconsin offense has been vs how good our D played.
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Maybe
2 times since 2000
5 since 1990

2 of 4 in fleck era

Let’s fire him
 




GO4INLALALAND said:
The players maybe better, but if we have the same oc who runs on 85% of first downs, it will be another challenging year.

Fleck can beat crap teams, but he has difficulty beating mid tier, eg, Iowa, WI and upper tier. I understand not beating upper tier, but our struggles with mid tier teams is frustrating.
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Correct! Can’t be so effing predictable.
 


Breakin' The Plane said:
What I don't understand is Fleck is an agressive coach early in games. Not afraid to go for it in 4th down or try a fake punt. Burns through timeouts with no concern for "later". Late in games, he totally flips the switch to ultra conservative.
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Yup. You’d think we’d learn from punting from WI 37 yard line last year and going for the extra point at Maryland this year. Horrible, idiotic decisions from someone paid millions of dollars to make fairly simple in-game decisions. Same things reared their heads today. Appears we never learn. Then again, my ACT score was twice that of our coach. Tough to be brilliant I guess.
 

Replacement Gopher said:
Yup. You’d think we’d learn from punting from WI 37 yard line last year and going for the extra point at Maryland this year. Horrible, idiotic decisions from someone paid millions of dollars to make fairly simple in-game decisions. Same things reared their heads today. Appears we never learn. Then again, my ACT score was twice that of our coach. Tough to be brilliant I guess.
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Do you want him to keep running the program or do you feel it’s time to move on?
 

caliGopher said:
Those are the facts. Yes, An improvement in results on the field and in the standings is a part of the expectations for anyone having a job as a head football coach. Not sure why anyone would look at this season and be happy with the results.
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It is far less about being happy with the results from this season and far more about not freaking out about what was a messed up year all the way around. In the Big Ten there are 4 teams that are probably ok with how things went this year (Ohio State, Indiana, Iowa, and Northwestern) for everyone else it was a very forgettable year.

As for our season, we dealt with massive covid issues causing us to have many games with key players missing. We were certainly not alone in that but I would be willing to bet we were one of the hardest hit overall.

We had a young defense that clearly could have used a standard off season and non-conf games to get ready as evidenced by how terrible they looked early in the year and how much they improved as the season went on.

2020 was a disappointing season, but it really isn't fair to judge any staff anywhere based on what happened this year because this was such a unique situation and one that nobody was really prepared for. Some teams fared better than others but everyone felt the impact of the pandemic to some extent.
 

2020 was disappointing because we seemed to have not learned the lessons presented to us 2019. By us, I mean our coaches.

They shrivel like Costanza on a cold beach.
 

Replacement Gopher said:
2020 was disappointing because we seemed to have not learned the lessons presented to us 2019. By us, I mean our coaches.

They shrivel like Costanza on a cold beach.
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Lol

you’re all willing to say that our coaches have small dicks but then won’t say we shouldn’t get a new coach.

Then make fun of others for being tired.
 

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