"Purdue and Illinois are teams that Minnesota should be beating in year six of the P.J. Fleck era." | Gopherhole

Donate To GopherHole






The true test in a coach is getting a team to improve as the season goes on. This team is clearly in a midseason slump. There's still time to save the season. Otherwise, we'll be hoping the team makes the Mayonnaise Bowl.
 



I’m done with PJ. I just have no faith.
 




combes1 said:
Why? Illinois has beaten Minnesota the last two seasons. Why should Minnesota be better? Pretty equal programs.
Click to expand...
PJ should be beating these programs six years in. He’s not. He hasn’t elevated the program beyond what he inherited. Best season had recruits from both regimes. We don’t seem to be ahead of where the program was the year before he came. Hope they can turn it around the rest of the way.
 

combes1 said:
Why? Illinois has beaten Minnesota the last two seasons. Why should Minnesota be better? Pretty equal programs.
Click to expand...
That's the point, they should not be "pretty equal".
 




Tucker32 said:
PJ should be beating these programs six years in. He’s not. He hasn’t elevated the program beyond what he inherited. Best season had recruits from both regimes. We don’t seem to be ahead of where the program was the year before he came. Hope they can turn it around the rest of the way.
Click to expand...
I've been saying it for a long time, but behind the scenes, Fleck did not realize how hard it is to recruit to this place. We have no college atmosphere, and are in a big city. It's hard to recruit here.

And I will still never understand how in the hell with Minneapolis and St. Paul......how the hell do we have such little talent in this state.
 


scools12 said:
Minnesota isn’t a program no matter the length of the coaching tenure that should be considered a sure thing against two other middling conference teams.
Click to expand...
Illinois, THIS YEAR, isn’t a middling team. Best defense in the nation after 7 games isn’t middling. Number one running back in the nation isn’t middling. And a very good QB to boot.
 

Gophergrandpa said:
Illinois, THIS YEAR, isn’t a middling team. Best defense in the nation after 7 games isn’t middling. Number one running back in the nation isn’t middling. And a very good QB to boot.
Click to expand...
Think the point is IL has leapfrogged us in one year. They are good but not great. We’re average but not good and PJ has been at this for 6 years.
 

Torres9 said:
Think the point is IL has leapfrogged us in one year. They are good but not great. We’re average but not good and PJ has been at this for 6 years.
Click to expand...
I don’t disagree that Illinois has leapfrogged us … and probably WI and IA. I disagree that today Illinois is a “middling” team. They’ll be ranked in the top 20 tomorrow … and deserve it.
 

GoForGold said:
The true test in a coach is getting a team to improve as the season goes on. This team is clearly in a midseason slump. There's still time to save the season. Otherwise, we'll be hoping the team makes the Mayonnaise Bowl.
Click to expand...
2018 comes to mind...
 

It's a fair discussion to have.

Gophers went 11-2, and some people thought that meant the Gophers had moved to a different level.

Now, it seems as if that year might have been a peak, not a plateau.

Doesn't mean that the Gophers can't have another season like that. But it doesn't look like it's happening this season.

Illinois and Purdue are the types of games that Mason or Kill would lose, and fans would complain that the Gophers needed a better coach to "make it to the next level." Apparently, getting to that level is harder than it seems.
 


kg21 said:
I've been saying it for a long time, but behind the scenes, Fleck did not realize how hard it is to recruit to this place. We have no college atmosphere, and are in a big city. It's hard to recruit here.

And I will still never understand how in the hell with Minneapolis and St. Paul......how the hell do we have such little talent in this state.
Click to expand...
Have you seen Minnesota HS football live? Terrible football in this state.
 



BilldGopher said:
2018 comes to mind...
Click to expand...
2018 had a solid finish with the Gophers going 4-2 in the final 6 games. I think they can still do much better than the 7-6 team that year. There's still a lot of football to be played. All of a sudden Michigan State and Colorado look pretty good today. Those were supposedly ho-hum wins for the Gophers against hopeless teams.
 


Illinois is a top 25 team. Gophers haven't beaten a top 25 team on the road since 2014. Why can't we give Illinois credit for being a good team right now? Because they're good in only Bert's 2nd year? 6 games left on the schedule, lets see where things end up. Last year we were 6-4 and everyone gave up, won the next 3 and were 9-4 and everything was great, we were dancing to Jump Around on the field of Huntington Bank Stadium.

We're on to Penn State.
 

Purdue beats teams they shouldn't all the time, and they've beaten us once in the past 5 years.

Bret Beilema is a good B1G coach, we all knew that. Does he have Illinois turned around in record time? Yeah, and that's a bit unexpected, but we knew they would soon be a team that couldn't be taken for granted.

I'll admit, I thought getting KC back would be an immediate remedy to our offensive woes, but it seems not. But there is still a ton of season left.
 

Prior to this year, I thought PJ Fleck had elevated the program to the point where we were arguably the "best of the rest" of the Big Ten. They weren't in the same conversation as the elite programs (Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State, Iowa, Wisconsin, and possibly Michigan State). But they had beaten most of the dregs of the conference pretty handily for the most part. You could pretty easily make the argument they were better than Northwestern, Maryland, Rutgers, Illinois, Indiana, Purdue, and Nebraska. Two games doesn't necessarily change my opinion but with a soft schedule and a pretty experienced team, it's hard not to be disappointed with where they are right now.
 

What's weird is that 2019 team just got by 3 teams from minor conferences early before ending 11-2 and pounding Auburn in the bowl game while we absolutely dominated the first 4 games this year only to stumble big time. I don't like our chances against Penn State but you never know and still a lot of football to be played. Old adage is that you either get better or get worse. We sure as hell have a lot of room to get better.
 

You must log in or register to reply here.



Top Bottom