Like I had indicated earlier, the WR, punter and the Iowa DB were all great portal transfers. The two RB, Turner and Davis were good depth players and Turner unfortunately got hurt. Believe there was a DT who played quite a few snaps and another one from Purdue who got hurt and missed the whole season. Two other WR played but not significantly. Believe a LB also got hurt and missed alot of games as well. I believe we signed 5 offensive linemen and one or two started many games, our offensive line was not very good this year even with them being added. This past year, we lost two really good OL, Daniels to Ohio State and Lewis to Northwestern. We could not run the ball very well all year. Obviously having DT hurt and missing many games, hurt the running attack. I think building a cohesive OL is tough. Every play, they all need to do their job and if one messes up by not doing his correct assignment, the play can be a disaster even though the other 4 OL are doing their assignments correctly. Over the past few years with the portal and before, the gophers have picked up some nice DB's. Teams like Minnesota who win 6-8 games a year, that is under Fleck, need in my opinion a bigger impact from portal transfers to get to the next level. You will not win consistently with high school recruits because most kids want to play immediately and some will not be patient to sit for two or three years or longer. Gophers are not a team with lots of depth. They need their transfers thru the portal to not just provide depth, but to start and make a serious impact like the DB from Iowa, the punter and the WR from the MAC schools. In my opinion, we need the portal to provide the gophers with more than three starters who make an impact. If we sign around 18-20 players thru the portal, I would hope that we could pick up at least 5-6 players who start and make a huge impact and also add a several players to the depth chart that make a difference, who play 10-15 snaps a game. You can never have enough RB's or WR's or DB's. RB's get injured and you need a lot of depth for that position, multiple WR's are needed because many times you play with 3 WR's and DB's are needed since you play with 4 or 5 in the game and many DB's play on special teams. Looking at penalties and turnovers, the Gophers did well in those categories, we were plus 1 on interceptions, plus 6 on fumbles, and penalties had 28 less penalties against us. Our running game only averaged 103 YPG, not very good, was the worst year since Fleck has been the gopher coach. It appears that the Gophers have signed a very good class of high school seniors, but the majority of them will not make a huge difference for the coming year. We may get one or two starters from them this first year and a few guys who provide depth. The portal is what can make us a much better team for next year. My two cents worth, oh, if you want to check my stats regarding penalties, turnovers, rushing yard per game, go to gophersports. com and look them up. I went back to 2017, PJ Flecks first year to check rushing yards per game. The last two years, the gophers have not run the ball well, but their passing attack has been much better. If Indiana can pick up great players thru the portal, why cann't Minnesota do the same thing? Look at their portal players who have transferred in the past two years. We shared the BTEN conference championship with them in 1967
