Serious conversation

I’m so sick and tired of this narrative, that’s not how football works.
Um ... that's exactly how football works. Every close loss players and coaches look back at one or two plays and go, "If only." Otherwise, I agree with everything else you had. I do think something clicked for P.J. this season.
 







The question was about expectations for the program given the climate today. Assuming the BiG stays the same for the next five years, here's what I think are reasonable goals:
1. Win 11 of the 15 non-conference games.
2. Beat Iowa/Wisconsin 4 of the 10 games
3. Win 22 of the 35 remaining conference games
4. Win 2 of 4 bowl games

That's winning 37 of the 60 regular season games on a typical season of 7-5, 8-4.
 

Um ... that's exactly how football works. Every close loss players and coaches look back at one or two plays and go, "If only." Otherwise, I agree with everything else you had. I do think something clicked for P.J. this season.
That thought process is what the “going 1-0” narrative tries to combat. Previous results are things to learn from and I don’t know if the same lessons would have been learned if they had “gotten away” with certain wins. Butterfly effect and all that.
 

It's college football. Every one of our opponents is losing a bunch of key guys.

Transfer portal allows much more freedom to quick-patch holes. Underclassmen will step up.

I think Daniel Jackson will be the hardest player to replace after the QB spot. The Gophers have a mostly awful track record with transfer receivers but will need to hit on a couple for 2025.
Yup, but teams also go out of their way to peak with good classes. It’s the reason that Wisconsin is so bad this year. They are finding their guys for 3 years from now.

They look weak with a Sophomore QB and new offense right now. They won’t next year.
 



It reminds me of a conversation with a Michigan football fan back in 2017 or 2018. He said Minnesota CFB will never be nationally relevant.

I wasn't willing to accept that then. Not sure I'm ready now. If there is even a little bit of hope that we can get into the playoffs occasionally, I'll hang onto that.
If you had asked a well informed CFB fan after the 2003 Sun Bowl who between Minnesota and Oregon was more like to win a championship in the next decade, people would have said Minnesota.

Tides come and go. All it takes is a salary cap or a wealthy donor and Minnesota can do it too.
 



If they win 7 or 8 regular season games next season I would not say that. The other thing to factor in is games they lose that they should win and if they have any good wins. Illinois their only decent win this year imo. USC next best win.

We’ve beat Iowa once in Fleck’s tenure.
Coming into this season, I 100% would have agreed with you. However, what Indiana did this year so far is nothing short of remarkable. Now, this is not because Indiana is reinventing football so they can compete with inferior talent. What Indiana has done is get a lucky schedule and win the 50/50 games. There is absolutely no reason that Minnesota cannot accomplish the same thing. Don’t tell me Indiana Football has better recruiting grounds, better legacy, or better administration support.

However, I think it changes the thinking on certain things – such as there is now ZERO point in scheduling a tough OOC game in our first 4 games. What matter is WINNING. As long as we are in the B1G, if we can run the OOC games and win the 50/50 games, we can do the same thing.

I have never been a big Fleck guy but I think he is literally on the cusp of doing just this if he can make a few changes. He is like Mason – if Mason had 100% committed to Minnesota and 100% applied himself to recruiting, we could have accomplished the same. For Fleck, he has to give up some control on offense and turn over in-game coaching to others because through 8 years, he has proven he is not good at these things.
 



Ersery will be the difficult to replace. Cooper and Carroll are below average B1G O lineman. This was the worst OL of the Fleck era, and I look forward to some new bodies there next year.
They did recruit some good o-lineman last year. Roy was very highly rated and Carroll wasn’t too far behind as both were 4 stars on 247. Plus you have a few guys in the program for a while who have appeared a bit like Beers and Nelson. I think there is some talent there, plus you have the portal.
 

I disagree with this. There's more parity this year than we've seen in a very long time. Gophers would be utter sh*t this year if not for Brosmer, for example.
Brosmer is here because of the free transfer rule, not NIL. (Sure you can retort that he got NIL money, but it was transferring without having to sit that led him to move to the P4 for his last year.)
 

Almost every Big Ten coach out thinks PJ on game day. And until he gets that figured out, we will continue to scuffle along. I’m optimistic on our talent. I think the OL will be better next year. I love the returning D group. I’d love to go back in time to whomever taught or told PJ that momentum is not a real thing and kick that person in the nuts. PJ fails to capitalize on what is a very real thing quite often and it’s maddening.
Generally speaking I would agree with you. I do think PJ has turned a corner the second half of the year. To me, it is clear that he trusts Brosmer and the play calling has opened up.

To the momentum comment, again, in totality I agree with you, but going blocked punt into a reverse flea flicker is the definition of feeling the momentum. Again, we gave the momentum up by letting PSU march down the field for a score (aided by a "PI"), but he 100% felt the momentum to make that call.

I feel we beat Iowa and North Carolina with the game plans we have had the past few weeks, but the problem with a transfer QB is that there is a learning curve in the game-like situations.
 

Generally speaking I would agree with you. I do think PJ has turned a corner the second half of the year. To me, it is clear that he trusts Brosmer and the play calling has opened up.

To the momentum comment, again, in totality I agree with you, but going blocked punt into a reverse flea flicker is the definition of feeling the momentum. Again, we gave the momentum up by letting PSU march down the field for a score (aided by a "PI"), but he 100% felt the momentum to make that call.

I feel we beat Iowa and North Carolina with the game plans we have had the past few weeks, but the problem with a transfer QB is that there is a learning curve in the game-like situations.
I think there was some sort of learning curve for Brosmer, but clearly the offense was the same conservative approach until some point in the Mich game.
 

back to the bigger point. the reality of the situation is that all the 'rules' have changed with NIL, unlimited transfers, and starting next year (we think) direct revenue-sharing payments.

In this new reality, I just don't see MN moving into the upper tier of the B1G. maybe once every 10 years, they strike lightning and roll out a 10-win season. (that will require a strong roster and a favorable schedule).

but most of the time, in my book, a good season for the Gophers will be 8 wins. that gets you into a decent bowl game.
 

Yup, but teams also go out of their way to peak with good classes. It’s the reason that Wisconsin is so bad this year. They are finding their guys for 3 years from now.

They look weak with a Sophomore QB and new offense right now. They won’t next year.
They looked weak last year. They look weak this year. If Locke is their qb they’ll look weak next year. They dump 10 seniors on offense and 14 on defense with 10 in the back 7.

In the era of the portal, fickell may not have the ability to wait for his guys for 3 years from now. Kekehuna and Dupree look good on offense. Pauling has been good in the past. Their classes have really lacked much for game breakers and their defense has been meh all year and they’re dumping a bunch of their talent and will depending on a lot of unknowns there next year or on the portal
 





PJ is not improving. PJ is regressing. Next year could be a 3-9 or 4-8 season. The hiring of Jerry Kill was fun, the hiring of PJ Fleck was fun, the last 5 years haven't been very fun. Losing games we shouldn't and falling short of expectations. We lost by 1 today, but we were winning most of the game. For me, losing by 1 or losing by 14 today wouldn't have made a difference, it's still a loss. 6-5 and odds are this team will lose to Wisconsin next week. The talent on this team will be worse next season. This team underperformed again, for the 5th straight season. I've heard the expectation was 4.5 wins, I never saw that. I saw 5.5.
Strongly disagree. I was just thinking while walking the pup before the Penn State game that there was a stretch of maybe five years (well into the Jerry Kill era) where the Gophers never scored a td on their first possession of the game. When you have a new DC and a new quarterback, it's going to take a little while to get both sides of the ball playing well. This team improved throughout the year, the coaching staff improved, and the program has a healthy and positive culture.
 

It reminds me of a conversation with a Michigan football fan back in 2017 or 2018. He said Minnesota CFB will never be nationally relevant.

I wasn't willing to accept that then. Not sure I'm ready now. If there is even a little bit of hope that we can get into the playoffs occasionally, I'll hang onto that.
He sounds like an @ss. So glad my college football experience isn't based on enjoying the season if the team is in the top ten. Minnesota will never be like Michigan and OSU again. But they can have good to really good teams and we can enjoy watching/communing with our fellow fans. Maybe I'm the exception though as I would rather not have a college football playoff and just regular bowl games like before.
 

Coming into this season, I 100% would have agreed with you. However, what Indiana did this year so far is nothing short of remarkable. Now, this is not because Indiana is reinventing football so they can compete with inferior talent. What Indiana has done is get a lucky schedule and win the 50/50 games. There is absolutely no reason that Minnesota cannot accomplish the same thing. Don’t tell me Indiana Football has better recruiting grounds, better legacy, or better administration support.
Umm they have John Mellencamp.
 

I agree with a lot of points in this thread. This team lead in the 2nd half of 10 of 11 games played and the one they didn't (Michigan) they were a bad call away from having the ball with a chance to win the game on the final possession.

For all the hand wringing about this schedule, at the end of the year there will be a maximum of 2 teams on this schedule that finish in the top 25 (if Illinois holds on).

We had good health luck and probably good turnover luck.

Is doesn't seem like too much to ask to win 2/3 against UNC, Iowa, and at Rutgers. If you want to get crazy beat one of the worst Michigan teams we'll likely see in the NIL era. I feel like 9-3 against this schedule *should* have been about what was expected with the benefit of hindsight. Of course the Penn State loss hurts much more if we were 8-2 going in to the game instead of 6-4, so silver linings right?

We've had so many chances to turn the corner as a program since 2019 and we just refuse to do it. The frustrating thing is we could have had some really good years that could have gotten us to a different level (in fan interest and perceived stature which both would help NIL) and it wouldn't have required us beating an Ohio State or Michigan to do it. Iowa's great years have been almost exclusively where they beat a bunch of average or below average teams and maybe sprung one upset much like Indiana's current year. We've had the schedule opportunities to do the same thing and just can't get it done. There has been some horrible luck involved (see MBS dropped TD turning in to an INT against Purdue or the thousands of chances we had to put Iowa away when Mo ran crazy) but when we consistently drop 1-2 games a year to teams we "should" beat, it feels like a function of what this program is.

We lose a lot this year and get Ohio State and Oregon on the schedule next year. Lets beat Wisconsin, hit the portal hard, and hope there's more reason to get excited for '25 than there appears to be now.
 


The one absolute to at least give us a shot is continuing to field an above-average defense as has been the case with Jerry, Tracy, and now PJ. It was the defense that kept us in the game on Saturday...and many other past Saturdays. Lose that part of the three-legged stool and things will indeed be much bleaker in the new B1G+ reality.

Pretty amazing the think that Mase could not build a consistently decent D during his tenure but JK, TC, and PJF have done it. Lack of D ended up being Mason's undoing.
 

Ok. Well what makes you say the team is underperforming this year?
think it's kind of an interesting thought experiment given you brought up the preseason. How would you expect the gophers to perform had you known you'd be playing these teams (Gopher result removed):
5-5 UNC
10-1 Rhode Island
3-8 Nevada
6-4 Iowa
5-5 Michigan
6-4 USC
4-6 UCLA
4-6 MD
8-2 Ill
5-5 Rutgers
9-1 PSU

Looking at it, I'd probably with 8 regular season wins to this point after seeing the teams we've played on the field (wins over UNC, RI, Nev, Iowa, one of MI/USC, UCLA, MD, Rutgers with losses to PSU, one of USC/Mich, and Ill). Think that's what BB is getting it is the actual team had the talent to win more games this year in what was actually a reasonably soft schedule (Our SOS in the Big Ten is 17th and 54th overall). This team was what ends up happening in football epitomized. It's a couple of small things and good teams take advantage of those opportunities and don't drop games to UNC, Rutgers, or Iowa when you have a good lead. This team has the pieces to be a good (not great) team and they didn't quite achieve being a good team to me so yeah I'd say underperformed based on the results on the field, not using the Vegas preseason win totals (which I hammered the over though was wrong on which games they'd win). They beat WI and it's probably a meets expectations for me as I thought they'd be right between 7-8 wins but looking back, there's more disappointment in chances let go than feeling like we overachieved but that's just my opinion and of course you can say we overachieved based on Vegas predictions (totally fine and not arguing with you, just meaning we have different criteria).
 




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