The bolded here is straight garbage. People want to know why Fleck keeps losing games to Illinois, Bowling Green, Purdue, Northwestern, and Iowa that have been the difference between a B1G West title and another trip to the Outback Bowl (or better) and a season where we end up in one of the bottom tier B1G bowls. This has NOTHING to do with NIL. It actually hurts the NIL argument when you lose these games. If you can't beat a Northwestern team that hasn't won a B1G game in over a season...why would you think any amount of $$$ would ever put you in a position to beat Michigan?
PJ says it's on him, but he doesn't say ANYTHING that inspires any belief that he will ever change. He actually has thrown players under the bus (to a degree). After the Northwestern debacle he mentioned several times that the final 3rd down before his decision to punt that Darius Taylor should have cut the run inside instead of going outside. After Illinois he made comments about Athan doing the same thing and not cutting the run inside and also how the pass on 3rd down was open. He was right in all 3 instances, and I don't mind him saying it (except given all that happened in the Northwestern game talking about one minor mistake by Darius seemed ridiculous to me). When questioned about his decisions before halftime to run the ball before setting up the FG. He again mentioned this fear of getting sacked and being taken out of FG range...just like his explanation for his calls against MSU. That last drive of the first half took 7:23 off the clock and only covered 53 yards. When you purposefully shorten the game, EVERY mistake is magnified. When you are playing an opponent with 1 B1G win that is 4-9 in its last 13 games...why are you trying to increase variance by limiting possessions? Another example: After the turnover to start the 2nd half, Athan finds Crooms for a should be score...and he drops it. Big mistake. Ok, why is the 2nd and 10 play from the 12 yard line a run play? Why would you ever play for 3rd down in that down and distance when up 3 and the difference between being up 6 and up 10 is enormous? We end up gaining a whopping 3 yards to have the advantage of facing a 3rd and 7 instead of a 3rd and 10...and then we don't even get a pass off on 3rd down. If you look at our history this year, we've run the ball a ridiculous amount on 2nd and long and it has rarely resulted in getting close enough to run the ball again on 3rd down much less actually garnering a 1st.
If we're going to continue to play this white knuckle it/scared/conservative style of football, we need to be "Elite" in areas that we're terrible at. A kick returner can't decide to return a kick that he's not positive will get him out past the 25 yard line (much less fumble the ball). Our last two punts, Crawford punted from our 48 and our 45. We didn't even pin Illinois inside the 10 on either of these. Illinois starts on their 19 and then on their 16. If we're going to play this style, we have to have an offense that can execute in short clock situations just as much as we need a defense that can shut the door when it has the opportunity. In Fleck's entire tenure we've shown zero ability to score in a scenario like Saturday where we had 50 seconds and 2 timeouts and needed a FG to win a game. That's an eternity in college football and we couldn't even complete a single pass to get the drive started.
On Saturday, Illinois had three turnovers and a missed fg. The Gophers had one turnover. That's like Fleck's entire "ball is the program" mantra. That should be the perfect recipe for an easy blowout win at home over a 1 win B1G team. Instead it was another loss and people are justifiably wondering what it takes for Fleck to "change his best" and realize that this style of football doesn't get it done in the weak B1G West and certainly won't get it done against the much tougher schedules to come.
