Fleck on KFAN #92noon

[bottlebass]

A lot of those points came on turnovers and good field position thanks to the defense. That's why I use S&P which factors in those things and the schedule.

They lost what I would consider 4 of their top 6 players on a bad offense. Pirsig, Moore, Wolitarsky, and Leidner. The other two are Smith and Brooks. Lingen is a wild card if he can stay healthy.

If you're losing some of your best players on a bad offense and aren't confident in their replacements, which direction do you think the offense will go next year? Factor in a new system, it's hard for me to expect the offense to improve much over last year.

Did our defense get significantly more pick 6's this last year? Our D had a good year, but it has been that good for the last 4 years. Like I said some stats make our offense look horrible compared to other Kill years, some don't. Points per game we were good.

Every team loses 3,4,5 of their best offensive players every year. This is college football. I expect our offense to be just as good if not better next year. We lost nothing special on offense. Our game changers are still in place.

 

[GopherHomer]

Complete and utter BS.

You seriously need to change your screen name.

So we won more than 8 regular season games during the Kill/Claeys era? I must have missed that. We are a mediocre program (that's being polite if you ask anybody outside of our little universe). Under the previous regime we would have probably had occasional 8-9 win seasons with dry spells mixed in...their recruiting was not good enough. In all honesty, I wouldn't have made a change for any other mid-range project. The guys we had were fine. Fleck may not be able to do any better...or possible will be a complete bust - but he was a chance worth taking. 4-5 years from now there will be countless guys similar to Tracy Claeys that we can hire and go back to being a poor man's Iowa/Wisconsin. I just don't get why people here are afraid to shoot for the moon - we weren't going to hire Nick Saban. Our only chance of getting to the next level was on a young, relatively unproven guy to get lucky with and Fleck was the pick of the litter.

He may seriously fail here and be much, much worse than Claeys/Kill and I will still think it was the smart move. I'd take Mason over Claeys.

 

[GFBfan]

Both. The guys we lost weren't that good - but were the best on the roster. Not sure why we are excited about guys that couldn't beat out the mediocre talent we lost.

Pirsig couldn't beat anybody out his first two years and he turned out to be one of our best OL last year.
Wolitarsky couldn't beat out the receivers ahead of him the first few years and he became our best WR last year.
Your take that since they couldn't beat anybody out last year, so they are going to be crap again this year in inaccurate and really sells short the idea that players can improve from one year to the next. Also, since the coaching staff is different and as most are in agreement, the Off. coaches are better than the ones that they are replacing, then our offense should be better this year with better coaching.

We are not rebuilding!

 

[GopherHomer]

Pirsig couldn't beat anybody out his first two years and he turned out to be one of our best OL last year.
Wolitarsky couldn't beat out the receivers ahead of him the first few years and he became our best WR last year.
Your take that since they couldn't beat anybody out last year, so they are going to be crap again this year in inaccurate and really sells short the idea that players can improve from one year to the next. Also, since the coaching staff is different and as most are in agreement, the Off. coaches are better than the ones that they are replacing, then our offense should be better this year with better coaching.

We are not rebuilding!

Yes we are. As was stated before, every team loses players and therefore every team must rebuild from year to year. The guys we have coming up aren't all that impressive compared to others in the conference. The previous staff was effective at taking their crumbs left over from lazy recruiting and making us competitive - I will give them that. I give Kill the benefit of the doubt because he was struggling with serious health issues, but Tracy Claeys is NOT cut out to be a head coach in college. I think he is very smart and can continue to make a nice living in this profession and could maybe even steer an elite program forward without much drop-off. But we are, currently, a bottom feeder in the world of college football and we need someone to shake stuff up. I will be willing to 'swing and miss' for eternity than just hope for the best with lazy, dumpy, southern-midwest monoliths.

Someone, as is usually the case, suggested I change my name. To be clear I am a University of Minnesota Homer and will always be one. If I seem negative right now, it's because I see faults in our roster and want to be excited to give our new coach (the hottest name on market, remember) a couple years to turn this **** around. It's like people forgot last year - sure, we won 9 games but that was as depressing a 9 win year as could ever exist. 2016 sucked - attendance, excitement, drama, everything. Change was needed, and if you don't get that I feel bad for you.

For the people arguing with me - do you still want Claeys as our coach? Seriously? Do you really think Tracy Claeys was some hot, young prospect that the Blue Bloods were just waiting to poach? In 10 years Claeys will probably be calling bingo in some rural Kansas dust bowl while Fleck will probably either be the toast of Minneapolis or coaching in the SEC. It's a risk worth taking. Don't call me a "Fleck-ite" as I'm still in wait and see mode, but my main point is this was a risk that the University doesn't usually take and I'm all for it. We can always get back to Claeys' level.

 

[BroncoRedux]

PJ Fleck and our Minnesota Gophers could lose 12 games next year and he would not be fired. Nor would Mark Coyle. Or Kahler.

Claeys will not be coming back to coach the Gophers. It doesn't matter if you think him the best thing since sliced bread or a slug. He is done, gone, finished.

With that, the season will be what the season is. I have no expectations other than the team never quits on the field. I've seen that (not recently) and its very painful.

Okay back to firing PJ or who graduated and how good or bad they were.

 

[Spoofin]

So you disagree with Swingman (and PJF) on "Says only has five offensive linemen. Says only one underclass dt." and the FACT that we have to find a starting quarterback?

Just because it's a rebuild compared to a 9 win season doesn't mean this is a ground-up rebuild. Go for false dichotomies much?

We have 5 OL for Spring Ball. We have more this Fall.
Having only one underclassman DT hurts us next year. It doesn't this Fall.


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[GoldenGopherTilTheEnd]

We have 5 OL for Spring Ball. We have more this Fall.
Having only one underclassman DT hurts us next year. It doesn't this Fall.


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Absolutely agree on all counts, but fits in point that while the cupboard wasn't empty (and, again, issss so much better stocked than when Kill arrived), PJF has some challenges that will impact team performance over the first few years.

 

[GopherBulldog]

For those eating the Fleck Chow... Two wins will be a major accomplishment. That is, if we can even field a team. You are tripping over excuses for why we will be a laughingstock for two or three years. And to think it was a disaster that we only finished with 9 wins last season. The horror!

 

[GopherWeatherGuy]

Did our defense get significantly more pick 6's this last year? Our D had a good year, but it has been that good for the last 4 years. Like I said some stats make our offense look horrible compared to other Kill years, some don't. Points per game we were good.

Every team loses 3,4,5 of their best offensive players every year. This is college football. I expect our offense to be just as good if not better next year. We lost nothing special on offense. Our game changers are still in place.

We were top 25 in turnovers gained. Our highest scoring B1G games were against Rutgers, Illinois, and Purdue where we had 14 total TDs, but only 4 of those drives were longer than 50 yards thanks to our defense/ST.

Sure everyone loses players every year that's why recruiting is so important. Our classes have still been ranked near the bottom of the B1G. You think we lost nothing special, but their replacements couldn't beat them out.

Those players fit the Kill/Claeys system and they were able to coach them up to an average B1G team. I think Fleck will take a small step back this year and possibly next year until he gets the talent he needs to break into the upper half of the B1G.

 

[46Gophers]

It is apparent that there are many GHers on this thread and others with big bladders based on the number of pissing matches they are constantly getting into.

 

[John Galt]

Pirsig couldn't beat anybody out his first two years and he turned out to be one of our best OL last year.
Wolitarsky couldn't beat out the receivers ahead of him the first few years and he became our best WR last year.
Your take that since they couldn't beat anybody out last year, so they are going to be crap again this year in inaccurate and really sells short the idea that players can improve from one year to the next. Also, since the coaching staff is different and as most are in agreement, the Off. coaches are better than the ones that they are replacing, then our offense should be better this year with better coaching.

We are not rebuilding!

Pirsig was a 3 year starter. He was our most experienced offensive lineman last year and everybody expected him to be pretty good. This year we will be starting 3 JUCOs who have been in the program for 1 year along with???? The rest is a huge unknown, we don't even know who on the roster is practicing at center.

Wolitarsky was our 2nd best WR as a junior. Again, everybody expected him to step up as a senior last year. Next year's leading returning receivers are Still (18 catches) and Carter (9 catches). Tyler Johnson had a few as well, so we at probably returning about 30-40 catches between all of our WRs. I have to imagine that there are 100 teams that return more catches at WR.

 

[GFBfan]

Yes we are. As was stated before, every team loses players and therefore every team must rebuild from year to year. The guys we have coming up aren't all that impressive compared to others in the conference. The previous staff was effective at taking their crumbs left over from lazy recruiting and making us competitive - I will give them that. I give Kill the benefit of the doubt because he was struggling with serious health issues, but Tracy Claeys is NOT cut out to be a head coach in college. I think he is very smart and can continue to make a nice living in this profession and could maybe even steer an elite program forward without much drop-off. But we are, currently, a bottom feeder in the world of college football and we need someone to shake stuff up. I will be willing to 'swing and miss' for eternity than just hope for the best with lazy, dumpy, southern-midwest monoliths.

Someone, as is usually the case, suggested I change my name. To be clear I am a University of Minnesota Homer and will always be one. If I seem negative right now, it's because I see faults in our roster and want to be excited to give our new coach (the hottest name on market, remember) a couple years to turn this **** around. It's like people forgot last year - sure, we won 9 games but that was as depressing a 9 win year as could ever exist. 2016 sucked - attendance, excitement, drama, everything. Change was needed, and if you don't get that I feel bad for you.

For the people arguing with me - do you still want Claeys as our coach? Seriously? Do you really think Tracy Claeys was some hot, young prospect that the Blue Bloods were just waiting to poach? In 10 years Claeys will probably be calling bingo in some rural Kansas dust bowl while Fleck will probably either be the toast of Minneapolis or coaching in the SEC. It's a risk worth taking. Don't call me a "Fleck-ite" as I'm still in wait and see mode, but my main point is this was a risk that the University doesn't usually take and I'm all for it. We can always get back to Claeys' level.

Listening to Billy Glasscock talk about the recruiting philosophy of Kill/Claeys certainly didn't sound like they were lazy at recruiting, they just had a different approach. They tried to focus on the guys who didn't have high major offers, but were quality players. They felt they could recruit well in the area of unheralded guys instead of trying to sway those who had the big offers. Which, they were really good at getting those players.
Was Claeys head coach material? You say no, I say yes he would have been a good one. As you said he was smart. I believe he would have been able take all he learned in his first year as a HC and learned from it, refined his philosophy, schemes, culture and recruiting and would have built our program into a competitive conference contender year in and year out. Just as I can't say you are wrong with your assessment of Claeys, you can't say I am wrong with my assessment.

He is gone. We are now moving on the with PJF. His recruiting philosophy is different. Will it be better? We will find out soon enough. I am fully in support of him. I don't buy the fact that we are going to have to wait three years or longer until he can get us to become a good program, because we were a good program already. There is no need to tear it down and start over. We need to fill some holes and build on what has already taken place.

 

[Bob_Loblaw]

So Mitch Leidner, Drew Wolitarsky, Jonah Pirsig, Hank Epke, Scott Epke, Jack Lynn, Jalen Myrick, Damarius Travis and Nick Rallis were not key contributors? Even though they were all starters last year?

What about Tyler Moore and Kiante Hardin who started and Connor Mayes who saw significant time and are also gone?

Our senior class was not that great. We lost more the year before. I'm not knocking what those players did for the program, but we are returning quite a bit. You Fleckophiles can try spinning that anyway that you want, but we are bringing back a lot of talent and a lot of depth.

 

[Bob_Loblaw]

Pirsig was a 3 year starter. He was our most experienced offensive lineman last year and everybody expected him to be pretty good. This year we will be starting 3 JUCOs who have been in the program for 1 year along with???? The rest is a huge unknown, we don't even know who on the roster is practicing at center.

Wolitarsky was our 2nd best WR as a junior. Again, everybody expected him to step up as a senior last year. Next year's leading returning receivers are Still (18 catches) and Carter (9 catches). Tyler Johnson had a few as well, so we at probably returning about 30-40 catches between all of our WRs. I have to imagine that there are 100 teams that return more catches at WR.

Yep and we lost a higher percentage of our receptions and receiving yards LAST year when Maye left and Lindgen was hurt.

If Lindgen is healthy, we are in a better position with the skill players than we were last year at this time.

 

[#2Gopher]

Wow...pissing match on a slow news day. I'm going to stay out of this one. I'm going to let the season play out and allow Fleck to work with what he has.

 

[GopherWeatherGuy]

Our senior class was not that great. We lost more the year before. I'm not knocking what those players did for the program, but we are returning quite a bit. You Fleckophiles can try spinning that anyway that you want, but we are bringing back a lot of talent and a lot of depth.

So we lost 9 great starters off of a team that won 5 regular season games in 2015, but are losing 11 not great starters off a team that won 8 regular season games last season. Sound logic...

 

[Spoofin]

So we lost 9 great starters off of a team that won 5 regular season games in 2015, but are losing 11 not great starters off a team that won 8 regular season games last season. Sound logic...

8* Regular Season Wins.


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[GFBfan]

So we lost 9 great starters off of a team that won 5 regular season games in 2015, but are losing 11 not great starters off a team that won 8 regular season games last season. Sound logic...

Went back and looked at the position charts from the Bowl game vs. Central Mich., and we returned 18 of the 22 on the 2 deeps for offense while 15 of 22 returned on the defense. From our bowl game against Wash. State, we return 18 of 22 on the 2 deeps for offense and 14 of 22 on defense. I believe that shows we are in approx. the same place this year as we were last year. Do we have some holes to fill? Absolutely and so does every college team in the country. I tend to look at it from a positive perspective. Not on who we lost, but on who we return. We have some quality players at most positions and with the upgrade in coaching staff should be better on the offensive side of the football while our defense should be close to as good as last year. Will that lead to more wins? That depends on turnovers, but we should not be taking a big step back this coming season.

 

[Ski U Mah 55]

Went back and looked at the position charts from the Bowl game vs. Central Mich., and we returned 18 of the 22 on the 2 deeps for offense while 15 of 22 returned on the defense. From our bowl game against Wash. State, we return 18 of 22 on the 2 deeps for offense and 14 of 22 on defense. I believe that shows we are in approx. the same place this year as we were last year. Do we have some holes to fill? Absolutely and so does every college team in the country. I tend to look at it from a positive perspective. Not on who we lost, but on who we return. We have some quality players at most positions and with the upgrade in coaching staff should be better on the offensive side of the football while our defense should be close to as good as last year. Will that lead to more wins? That depends on turnovers, but we should not be taking a big step back this coming season.

The numbers might be similar, but replacing a QB is not like replacing a RB. I know Mitch wasn't an all-star, but replacing a Sr. QB is not simple.

 

[GFBfan]

The numbers might be similar, but replacing a QB is not like replacing a RB. I know Mitch wasn't an all-star, but replacing a Sr. QB is not simple.

Agreed, but with two all-conference caliber running backs, we should be able to break in the starting QB over the course of the non-Conference schedule and can take quite a bit of pressure off of him all year with those two carrying the load.

 

[John Galt]

Yep and we lost a higher percentage of our receptions and receiving yards LAST year when Maye left and Lindgen was hurt.

If Lindgen is healthy, we are in a better position with the skill players than we were last year at this time.

So we're now not counting Lingen as a returner last year because he got hurt?

 

[swingman]

The numbers might be similar, but replacing a QB is not like replacing a RB. I know Mitch wasn't an all-star, but replacing a Sr. QB is not simple.

Iowa Beathard. Nebraska Armstrong. Illinois Lunt. MSU O'Connor. Maryland Hills. Houston at Wisconsin. half our schedule loses senior qbs.

Michigan returns Speight, but his offense loses Butt, Chesson, Darboh, Peppers, DeVeon Smith, three offensive lineman and all big kicker...probably all in the NFL.

Blough has an all new coach staff and system.

Thorson, who we killed, loses All American wr Austin Carr, loses his right tackle.

The MTSU QB is out with shoulder surgery. Buffalo hired Zebrowski to help their QB. Oregon State has a three way QB race, no clear leader. Loses an NFL talent wr. Next best wr has meningitis health issues. Loses three starters on Oline.

 

[John Galt]

Our senior class was not that great. We lost more the year before. I'm not knocking what those players did for the program, but we are returning quite a bit. You Fleckophiles can try spinning that anyway that you want, but we are bringing back a lot of talent and a lot of depth.

Fleckophile? I initially wanted us to keep Claeys, but am now happy we got Fleck. You make it sound like we would have won 10 games and made it to the Rose Bowl this year if we had only kept Claeys...

I would have predicted 7 wins with Claeys (the coaching "god" who won 6 games in 2015) and I'm predicting the same # of wins with the new staff. But I guess that makes me a Fleckophile...

 

[NotAFanOfBecky]

This is not a rebuilding job, Fleck said so himself. If you honestly believe this is a rebuilding job do everyone a favor and never post here again.

+1

 

[NotAFanOfBecky]

Is it true that the Gophers are so young? I remember about mid season last year a couple different announcers say we had the fewest senior starters on offense in the nation (3). Most/all of those guys should be back and older, no? Sure, Gophers lose guys to graduation but so do all the other teams.

I get it that Fleck wants to underpromise (for now) and overdeliver. However, the way he tells it I'm wondering how this team ever won any games, let alone averaged 8 wins a year the past 4 years. I saw a program that had marginal recruiting and punched well above its weight due to solid and stable coaching and quality player development. A team that avoided turnovers and played great special teams. That's what the national voices and stat sheet saw too.

Now, apparently everything is a shambles and guys don't even know how to block, tackle, catch, or even put their pads on correctly, because culture. That's a tack you can take when taking over a sub-4 win team, but it's questionable given the consistent overperformance of talent the past few years.

That my man is a well thought out quote...and I like Fleck!

 

[oak_street1981]

Yes, this is a rebuild job (for the reasons Fleck stated that are facts) and Yes, Kill, Claeys and co left this program on much better footing than they inherited.

This certainly is no rebuilding job, although the concern about the O line is real. If these coaches are for real they should be able to get something out of a couple of the WRs and get a couple more DTs ready to play. With Winfield back that helps a lot in the DB area, although the knee injury to Coney Durr is a problem. Hardin would be all the DB core needed to be very solid again.

I think they blew it when they pushed out the JC OL guy Claeys had coming in, but that is not a huge deal in the long term.

PJF is just playing the old Lou Holtz poormouthing game, like most coaches still do, and is nothing to get too worked up about. Almost all coaches play these silly games when making public pronouncements, which is why I really appreciate guys like Mike Leach and Harbaugh who have no time for that stuff.

 

[John Galt]

Rebuilding is a point of view. We haven't won the west in 50 years. We've lost to Wisky 13 years in a row. The trophy case is empty. Things aren't as great as the Claeyophiles would lead us to believe.

 

[EG#9]

I listened to the interview and didn't come away with the same broad theme of negativity as the original poster. That said, I wonder who many people in this thread complaining love Jerry Kill's talk in his first couple of years? Jerry was much more negative and a lot of people ate that up. Fleck seems like he's in a no win situation: If he talks up the team, people then expect him to deliver in year one and if he doesn't, he's Brewster and if he tries to preach patience he's setting the bar too low and WE WON 9 GAMES LAST YEAR/THIS IS NOT A REBUILD/RESPECT KILL/CLAEYS!!!

I wouldn't be surprised if someone talked to PJ between his introductory press conference and yesterday and explained how much better the Kill approach worked with Minnesotan's than the Brewster approach. A lot of people, even many on this board, didn't realize that when Brewster was talking about "Taking Gopher Nation to Pasadena" he was never talking about year one, two or three. Then when it doesn't happen, he's mocked and ridiculed.

The previous staff had been here 6 years and really struggled to beat upper echelon teams (2 top 25 wins both over 25th ranked Nebraska I believe), so this idea that PJ should just hit the ground running is odd to me. He's factually correct about the depth issues on the team. If you want to be optimistic about the guys that haven't played on the Oline or at WR or at QB that is fine, but I don't think it's fair to be outraged when others are skeptical.

 

[Ski U Mah 55]

Iowa Beathard. Nebraska Armstrong. Illinois Lunt. MSU O'Connor. Maryland Hills. Houston at Wisconsin. half our schedule loses senior qbs.

Michigan returns Speight, but his offense loses Butt, Chesson, Darboh, Peppers, DeVeon Smith, three offensive lineman and all big kicker...probably all in the NFL.

Blough has an all new coach staff and system.

Thorson, who we killed, loses All American wr Austin Carr, loses his right tackle.

The MTSU QB is out with shoulder surgery. Buffalo hired Zebrowski to help their QB. Oregon State has a three way QB race, no clear leader. Loses an NFL talent wr. Next best wr has meningitis health issues. Loses three starters on Oline.

Was just commenting on his number of returners method of evaluation, agree that lots of teams are in a similar position at QB.

 

[Bob_Loblaw]

Fleckophile? I initially wanted us to keep Claeys, but am now happy we got Fleck. You make it sound like we would have won 10 games and made it to the Rose Bowl this year if we had only kept Claeys...

I would have predicted 7 wins with Claeys (the coaching "god" who won 6 games in 2015) and I'm predicting the same # of wins with the new staff. But I guess that makes me a Fleckophile...

I thought Claeys was a coaching god? D'ok.

I wasn't really referring to you as a Fleckophile, I meant that sub-community in general.