Scoggins/Kill Article

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everybody knows my name said:
A few observations.

1.
Kill took over a program that had gone 3-9 (2-6) in the previous season, and made it better.
Fleck took over a program that had gone 9-4 (5-4) in the previous season, and made it worse.

2.
Kill was named Big Ten Coach of the Year in 2014.
Fleck was named co-Coach of the Year in 2019, sharing the honor with Ryan Day.

3.
After taking over a wrecked program, Kill fielded a better team each year he was at Minnesota*, except in his final season, when his health collapsed and he was forced to retire. (*win totals: 3, 6, 8, 8, and 4 in a partial season)

After taking over a winning program, Fleck peaked in his third season, winning 11 games with a number of the previous regime's players still on his roster. Since then he has endured two seasons with a losing record, and since 2021 has only presided over a season-upon-season improvement once (2024).

4.
Kill's run at Minnesota was cut short due to intractable health problems, but his overall record as a head coach is 175-115 for a winning percentage of .603.

Fleck has now had nine years at Minnesota, making him the second-longest tenured coach in the Big Ten, and his overall record as a head coach is 93-64 for a winning percentage of .592.

5.
A lot of Gopher fans are dicks. Some of them are reading observation 5 right now.
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Jerry Kill started with a map showing him where the stadium was. PJ started on the goal line inheriting the majority of his best players from the Kill regime. PJ has had some guys of his own over a longer period of time but nuthin' comparable to the ones on the roster of the team. he inherited.
 

60's Guy said:
Jerry Kill started with a map showing him where the stadium was. PJ started on the goal line inheriting the majority of his best players from the Kill regime. PJ has had some guys of his own over a longer period of time but nuthin' comparable to the ones on the roster of the team. he inherited.
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Pretty crazy that team was on the goal line but only went 8-4 the year before

Glad we got rid of Claeys
 


Gophers1992 said:
Would like to read it but I don't have Strib access. Your story is a good one and very relevant though, I will grant that. My main problem is I've never heard Jerry apologize or show any remorse for the things he said. Maybe he did so in the article, but that's really my main issue with him.
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Hopefully that will come later. We need to give him time, at his time when he is ready. It's not about when we are ready. The article is a great start, and to me, he's come along ways. He simply had too much on his plate at one time in his life and he just got screwed up royally big time making no sense.

Admittedly, I wonder what happened to Rebecca. I always thought that she was a great gal and hoping that she is doing well after dealing with quite a bit as well. In the end however, its none of my damn business.
 



#2Gopher said:
Hopefully that will come later. We need to give him time, at his time when he is ready. It's not about when we are ready. The article is a great start, and to me, he's come along ways. He simply had too much on his plate at one time in his life and he just got screwed up royally big time making no sense.

Admittedly, I wonder what happened to Rebecca. I always thought that she was a great gal and hoping that she is doing well after dealing with quite a bit as well. In the end however, its none of my damn business.
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It has been almost 7 years…..
 

Also, please remember Flecks most successful season was led by Jerry Kill's seniors who were called the Empire recruits. Who knows, if Jerry had not been waylaid by his health issues our beloved Gophers may have been in several CFPs by now, based on the strength of Jerry's best recruits having been his last recruits and certainly deserved the name Empire class!

But, despite these assertions and speculations, I respect P J and hope he continues to improve the team, keeps working hard, and leads the creation of a Great Golden Gopher era!
 

Gophers1992 said:
It has been almost 7 years…..
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Not necessarily. Deep wounds take times to heal and understand what he went through. I don't think people realize what he really went through. I don't, and neither do the rest of us. We can't judge him for his inaction. Nor will others judge us for our inaction in our lives if we have gone through tough times. Everyone is different.
 

60's Guy said:
Jerry Kill started with a map showing him where the stadium was. PJ started on the goal line inheriting the majority of his best players from the Kill regime. PJ has had some guys of his own over a longer period of time but nuthin' comparable to the ones on the roster of the team. he inherited.
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Complete bullshit. What PJ inherited on offense was beyond pathetic, not to mention virtually nothing at DB until PJ convinced Antoine Winfield Jr to stay. He’s the 3rd best coach Minnesota has seen in the last 60 years after PJ and Mason. Get over it.
 
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Eastside Forever said:
Also, please remember Flecks most successful season was led by Jerry Kill's seniors who were called the Empire recruits. Who knows, if Jerry had not been waylaid by his health issues our beloved Gophers may have been in several CFPs by now, based on the strength of Jerry's best recruits having been his last recruits and certainly deserved the name Empire class!

But, despite these assertions and speculations, I respect P J and hope he continues to improve the team, keeps working hard, and leads the creation of a Great Golden Gopher era!
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Also complete bullshit. JK only cares about himself and has proved it at every turn. There's a reason he and all of his assistants could never land a job equal to or greater than MN after they left.
 
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GopherWeatherGuy said:
Also complete bullshit. JK only cares about himself and has proved it at every turn. There's a reason he and all of his assistants could never land a job equal to or greater than MN after they left.
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JK was all ego wrapped in a personality that was less real than PJ. Think about that for minute. Being in his family must have been exhausting.
 




everybody knows my name said:
I made my original point, which is that Kill wasn't a bad coach and Fleck isn't a great one. You supposedly agree with that, but everyone knows somebody who loves to create and prolong disputes by nitpicking, deflecting, and arguing semantics.

I'll make a further point: all these people who love Fleck and despise Kill today, are going to hate Fleck once he's gone, whether he deserves it or not. That's an ugly truth about Minnesota sports fans.
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Here's the thing....the people who like Fleck don't think Kill was a bad coach, it would be foolish to think that because he did a solid job while he was here. Nearly everyone that doesn't like Kill at this point doesn't like him because of how he conducted himself after leaving the U when he went scorched earth on the bit.

On the flip side, there are people who love Kill that have despised Fleck from day one and still take every opportunity they can to knock him.

Could not disagree more with your final point. Had Kill not done what he did after he left he would have remained very popular with the majority of the fanbase. He torched his own legacy.

Very few former coaches are hated.
 

Some guy said:
Pretty crazy that team was on the goal line but only went 8-4 the year before

Glad we got rid of Claeys
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I also love that some can just completely ignore the QB situation on that 2017 team while acting like Fleck inherited a loaded roster. He inherited some really nice young pieces from the 2016 class who were redshirt freshman in 2017. That 2017 team was going to suck no matter who the coach was, that roster was a mess.
 

MNVCGUY said:
I also love that some can just completely ignore the QB situation on that 2017 team while acting like Fleck inherited a loaded roster. He inherited some really nice young pieces from the 2016 class who were redshirt freshman in 2017. That 2017 team was going to suck no matter who the coach was, that roster was a mess.
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There were nice pieces on the roster. It was a miracle that fleck recruited them back from leaving.

And some of those pieces like AWJr graduated the spring of 2016. Kill left the program in 2015 fall.
I give zero credit to kill for AWJr and all the credit to Claeys and Sawvel for landing him and beginning the development and fleck for keeping him and continuing deployment (and him for his work).

Carter Coughlin
Tyler Johnson


So many good players.
Many Signed when kill was out of the program even if they initially committed when kill was in the program.

Do we credit coaches for verbal commitments or signings and how they play?
A lot of the guys from the 2019 fleck team people say kill left fleck signed when kill was already gone and never were coached a single practice by Kill
 

MNVCGUY said:
I also love that some can just completely ignore the QB situation on that 2017 team while acting like Fleck inherited a loaded roster. He inherited some really nice young pieces from the 2016 class who were redshirt freshman in 2017. That 2017 team was going to suck no matter who the coach was, that roster was a mess.
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Agree and a lot of people just drive past this point. Claeys was in on Jordan Ta'amu, but he committed to Ole Miss and they turned to JC transfer Neil McLaurin who never played a snap. That left the Gophers with Demry Croft and Connor Rhoda as the only guys with experience in Fleck's first year. He could have rushed Tanner Morgan, but in retrospect, not doing that turned out to be the right move.

And I agree that Kill's team played more aggressively on defense, especially the LBs. That said, Fleck's defenses have usually ranked higher nationally than Kill's. Kill's whistle-to-whistle mantra was sometimes refreshing, but it was painful to watch Duke McGhee get slapped with another targeting or the offensive line getting a chop-block penalty every game.
 

Some guy said:
There were nice pieces on the roster. It was a miracle that fleck recruited them back from leaving.

And some of those pieces like AWJr graduated the spring of 2016. Kill left the program in 2015 fall.
I give zero credit to kill for AWJr and all the credit to Claeys and Sawvel for landing him and beginning the development and fleck for keeping him and continuing deployment (and him for his work).

Carter Coughlin
Tyler Johnson


So many good players.
Many Signed when kill was out of the program even if they initially committed when kill was in the program.

Do we credit coaches for verbal commitments or signings and how they play?
A lot of the guys from the 2019 fleck team people say kill left fleck signed when kill was already gone and never were coached a single practice by Kill
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Can't prove the negative, but I wonder if Tyler Johnson is drawing an NFL paycheck had Claeys remained in charge. Difficult to tell as Jay Johnson was a different breed than Matt Limegrover so we don't know how the passing game would have worked had the Claeys' regime remained in place.
 

50PoundHead said:
Can't prove the negative, but I wonder if Tyler Johnson is drawing an NFL paycheck had Claeys remained in charge. Difficult to tell as Jay Johnson was a different breed than Matt Limegrover so we don't know how the passing game would have worked had the Claeys' regime remained in place.
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There are a whole bunch of spring 2016 signings that people credit to kill sometimes that kill didn’t sign nor coach

Offense and defense.

impossible to know how it turns out
 

Seems like this board has two kinds of people: those who ignore facts to dispute that Fleck is doing a better job than Kill, and those who ignore facts to overstate how much better Fleck is doing than Kill did.

Fleck's B1G winning percentage is definitely higher with too big a sample size for that to be ignored. When Fleck took over we were at a point where our baseline was 8-4 regular seasons. 8-4 regular seasons are similar to the level Fleck seems to have settled into.

The big differences in performance for me are: (1) Fleck had one great season that was better than anything Kill or Claeys ever achieved, (2) Fleck wins the bowl games, and (3) Fleck competes with Wisconsin, rivalries matter, and Kill couldn't get that monkey off his back (this factor is somewhat mitigated by Fleck's struggles with Iowa).

Bottom line, I think the record shows that Fleck is inarguably a notch above Kill, but its just one notch, not a night and day difference.
 

bleedsmaroonandgold said:
Seems like this board has two kinds of people: those who ignore facts to dispute that Fleck is doing a better job than Kill, and those who ignore facts to overstate how much better Fleck is doing than Kill did.

Fleck's B1G winning percentage is definitely higher with too big a sample size for that to be ignored. When Fleck took over we were at a point where our baseline was 8-4 regular seasons. 8-4 regular seasons are similar to the level Fleck seems to have settled into.

The big differences in performance for me are: (1) Fleck had one great season that was better than anything Kill or Claeys ever achieved, (2) Fleck wins the bowl games, and (3) Fleck competes with Wisconsin, rivalries matter, and Kill couldn't get that monkey off his back (this factor is somewhat mitigated by Fleck's struggles with Iowa).

Bottom line, I think the record shows that Fleck is inarguably a notch above Kill, but its just one notch, not a night and day difference.
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The thing I really don't understand about this battle is why it is even a battle in the first place. Fleck didn't replace Kill he replaced Claeys who had replaced Kill when Kill left on his own (wasn't fired even though some still act like he was).

Fleck has been the most successful coach at Minnesota in a long time. Saying that doesn't take a single thing away from what Kill did here. Kill inherited a mess and got the team back on a solid footing before he left.

Said in another post, there are people that have this odd attachment to Kill and have hated Fleck from day one and they are the ones that keep bringing this argument back in their effort to protect the Jerry Kill legacy he poured gasoline and set fire too on his own after he left.

For the most part, the people who like Fleck don't dislike Kill because of Fleck, they dislike Kill because of the way he conducted himself after he left the U. He could have left as one of the most beloved former coaches of all time here but he torched his own legacy by being petty and small in the way he handled things.

10 years later and this same stupid Kill vs. Fleck battle still rage on this board everytime Kill gets brought up for one reason or another.
 

bleedsmaroonandgold said:
Seems like this board has two kinds of people: those who ignore facts to dispute that Fleck is doing a better job than Kill, and those who ignore facts to overstate how much better Fleck is doing than Kill did.

Fleck's B1G winning percentage is definitely higher with too big a sample size for that to be ignored. When Fleck took over we were at a point where our baseline was 8-4 regular seasons. 8-4 regular seasons are similar to the level Fleck seems to have settled into.

The big differences in performance for me are: (1) Fleck had one great season that was better than anything Kill or Claeys ever achieved, (2) Fleck wins the bowl games, and (3) Fleck competes with Wisconsin, rivalries matter, and Kill couldn't get that monkey off his back (this factor is somewhat mitigated by Fleck's struggles with Iowa).

Bottom line, I think the record shows that Fleck is inarguably a notch above Kill, but its just one notch, not a night and day difference.
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Another thing that people fail to be consistent on is analyzing Claeys and Kill as two different people.
If kill gets credit for Claeys’ stuff then that means Claeys was an interim coach and nobody should be made he was let go
If he was a real coach then you can credit kill with Claeys’ accomplishments

I honestly don’t care which you do but you cant do both in the same conversation
 

It does seem ridiculous to argue about Kill vs Fleck. I wonder if Viking's boards argue Grant vs Steckel vs Denny Green, vs Zimmer, etc.........
 

bleedsmaroonandgold said:
(3) Fleck competes with Wisconsin, rivalries matter, and Kill couldn't get that monkey off his back (this factor is somewhat mitigated by Fleck's struggles with Iowa).

Bottom line, I think the record shows that Fleck is inarguably a notch above Kill, but its just one notch, not a night and day difference.
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As far as the mitigation with Fleck struggling with Iowa is a definite demerit. Kill still has more Floyd of Rosedale victories than PJ. Staggering it's been more than a decade since a Bank crowd has been able to celebrate such a win.

I don't disagree Fleck is better, but even a full notch to me is arguable. There's just so many different circumstances that each has had to deal with.

- Kill inherited less overall talent as well as issues with APR that had to be navigated. Fleck was the benefactor of some already in-house NFL caliber players, but sure QB was an issue

- Kill first benefited from an 8 game Big 10 schedule, but then had a Legends/Leaders with a powerful Badger crossover for rest of his full seasons. East/West was far more manageable, but now Fleck has to manage an 18 Team Division-less setup in a now coast to coast conference.

- Fleck's tenure is now essentially twice as long as Kill but now in the 2020s it is a far different world with Portal/NIL. It's presented many challenges, but also no doubt there are also benefits to Fleck. Completely different eras.

If one views Fleck as superior, sure I won't argue, but if it were a boxing analogy it's a split decision in my opinion. If Fleck had somehow gotten to Indianapolis, it surely would be a knockout.
 

bleedsmaroonandgold said:
Seems like this board has two kinds of people: those who ignore facts to dispute that Fleck is doing a better job than Kill, and those who ignore facts to overstate how much better Fleck is doing than Kill did.

Fleck's B1G winning percentage is definitely higher with too big a sample size for that to be ignored. When Fleck took over we were at a point where our baseline was 8-4 regular seasons. 8-4 regular seasons are similar to the level Fleck seems to have settled into.

The big differences in performance for me are: (1) Fleck had one great season that was better than anything Kill or Claeys ever achieved, (2) Fleck wins the bowl games, and (3) Fleck competes with Wisconsin, rivalries matter, and Kill couldn't get that monkey off his back (this factor is somewhat mitigated by Fleck's struggles with Iowa).

Bottom line, I think the record shows that Fleck is inarguably a notch above Kill, but its just one notch, not a night and day difference.
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You also forgot that Fleck beats far more ranked opponents and has put far more talent into the NFL.

Kill only won 8 games in 2 out of 4 seasons. The year he quit on the team they went 6-7
 

60's Guy said:
Jerry Kill started with a map showing him where the stadium was. PJ started on the goal line inheriting the majority of his best players from the Kill regime. PJ has had some guys of his own over a longer period of time but nuthin' comparable to the ones on the roster of the team. he inherited.
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That’s such BS. Other than Winfield at safety, even though Nubin was fantastic, what position has he not had comparable or better talents at? lol @ empire class, Kill gets a bunch of credit for lucking into a good instate class.
 

btowngopher said:
That’s such BS. Other than Winfield at safety, even though Nubin was fantastic, what position has he not had comparable or better talents at? lol @ empire class, Kill gets a bunch of credit for lucking into a good instate class.
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Kill didn’t sign that class Claeys did
Kill left the program in October 2015
That class signed and enrolled in 2016
 


Ope3 said:
As far as the mitigation with Fleck struggling with Iowa is a definite demerit. Kill still has more Floyd of Rosedale victories than PJ. Staggering it's been more than a decade since a Bank crowd has been able to celebrate such a win.

I don't disagree Fleck is better, but even a full notch to me is arguable. There's just so many different circumstances that each has had to deal with.

- Kill inherited less overall talent as well as issues with APR that had to be navigated. Fleck was the benefactor of some already in-house NFL caliber players, but sure QB was an issue

- Kill first benefited from an 8 game Big 10 schedule, but then had a Legends/Leaders with a powerful Badger crossover for rest of his full seasons. East/West was far more manageable, but now Fleck has to manage an 18 Team Division-less setup in a now coast to coast conference.

- Fleck's tenure is now essentially twice as long as Kill but now in the 2020s it is a far different world with Portal/NIL. It's presented many challenges, but also no doubt there are also benefits to Fleck. Completely different eras.

If one views Fleck as superior, sure I won't argue, but if it were a boxing analogy it's a split decision in my opinion. If Fleck had somehow gotten to Indianapolis, it surely would be a knockout.
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Only player drafted from Claeys 2016 team was Myrick. There were zero gophers drafted after Fleck’s first year here and only Cashman after his second year. To be fair to Kill he had zero drafted his first two years, but neither inherited a team that could win anything right from the start. Kind of crazy a 9 win team only produced one late round draft pick.
 


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