Last part I found interesting because it addresses the issues on defense with Howden taking Winfield's spot.
Q. Since Winfield has gone down, opposing offensive coordinators seemingly have been picking on that safety, replacing him. How do you go about fixing that with five games remaining?
COACH FLECK: Great question. What we have to be able to do is personnel. We can go a few different routes here.
As we continue to go, Jordan Howden, our freshman, has got to play. But again you're playing a true freshman who's had some ups and downs this year.
Maryland wasn't exactly the greatest game for the young man. He's got to bounce back from that mentally. He hasn't been in the weight room. You can see the strength difference between the running back from Nebraska and our guys tackling those guys.
He'll be a different player next year. But we need him now to do that. What we have to be able to do is protect that. Like I said, what we were doing was we were fixing problems to create a problem.
Well, let's stop fixing problems. Let's be us. Let's make people earn it. And let's stop saying, okay, we've got to take away this and this and this. Let's play our style of defense that we know how to play before we've got into, okay, well, this guy went down and that guy went down now we've got to protect this guy because he's not ready.
Ready or not here we come. I mean it's like red rover, red rover and we're going. Red rover send Jordan Howden over. Whether you're ready or not, we're sending you over. And our coaches will get him ready. If he fails, he'll grow. If he succeeds, he'll grow. And this is the only chance we have to make people better is by experience, because come next year they're going to have to be ready to play at a very, very high level.
And that's not to say this year they don't have to be. But frustration happens when your experience doesn't match your expectation. I don't have an expectation of Jordan Howden been an All-American right now so I'm not frustrated.
Other people are frustrated. But I'm not frustrated. He is who he is right now and that's the best he can give us as an example. There's other people in the secondary that that's their expectation because that's where they are right now.
I don't have unrealistic expectations of people who can or cannot do something. And your experience like we're having doesn't match the expectation everyone else has, that's when everybody gets up in arms and they're frustrated about it. That's not how coaches work.
Coaches work day to day, how is he better today than he was yesterday? Because over the long haul he's going to be a very special player. But it's very hard to be able to sit there and say, okay, you get to learn under No. 11. No, you don't. Now you've got to start. Because behind that there wasn't like we had 12 deep back there. For many different reasons.
So when you look at that, we have to make sure that we play our style of defense, keep a cap to the defense as much as possible. Keep everything in front of us. When they come in front we've got to tackle it because plenty of opportunities we've made but we haven't made the tackle in the back end. 18 missed tackles that's our most all year. That's why you get 53 points. It wasn't like people were like just running scot-free.
The last play was the one that -- again, freshmen bit up. And the guy went right behind him. But again he hasn't seen that before. Now he's going to understand a little bit more how to do that. I was such a horrible player my freshman year. But I was really good my junior and senior year. But I was horrible my freshman year.
We're expecting so much out of these young kids -- or let me restate that, or first-year experience players that we're having. Because it's not just youth -- youthful people. I've said youth and inexperience all year. Whether you want to call it the youngest team or most inexperienced team, they go hand in hand.
You can be the youngest team in America but you can have a ton of experience and your ton of experience is everywhere. And your youth is right behind everybody deep. We're not in that position. We're youthful and inexperienced at a lot of positions. Not an excuse. Those are facts. We've got to get it done. The expectation is to get it done we did not get it done. Again that's why it falls on me because I make the decisions to be able to build the program the way I want to build it. But this is the way that I feel the University of Minnesota has to be built. And those are decisions I get to make.
But I feel this is the way and what we need to be able to do by throwing some of these guys into the fire. But I think everybody's going to be really, really excited a few years from now and I think the conversations will be different. And I appreciate -- I want to make sure you all know I appreciate every single one of your opinions.
I read them. I look at them. I'm not one of those coaches that says I don't want to look at it. I appreciate everyone's opinion. The reason I appreciate everyone's opinion because you actually care. You care enough to want it to maybe one day be good. But again, as you look at frustration, when your experience doesn't match your expectation but your expectations have to be realistic based on what is there, and I can't do that or I'll lose a football team. If you say, well, you should be this and you're not, we need to be better than we were yesterday. And we need to change our best on a daily basis.
So, again, I appreciate everybody's opinion. And you are right. You're right. We gotta be better. And that's my job to get this team better and that's what we're going to do today at practice. Okay. Appreciate everybody's opinion. Sun came up today, we're rowing the boat. Go Gophers.