Souhan on Fleck: If he can't win big this year is the future as bright as his new $35 million contract would suggest?

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BleedGopher

BleedGopher

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per Souhan:

If he can't win big this year, with a senior quarterback who had a remarkable season as a sophomore, and the biggest, most experienced offensive line Minnesota has had in recent memory, is the future as bright as his new $35 million contract would suggest?

Fleck is 9-7 since winning the Outback Bowl, including losses to Bowling Green and Bowling Orange (Illinois). He has raised expectations for his program to the point where losses this month to Iowa and Wisconsin would be disappointing.

The biggest concern for Gophers fans has to be that in 2019 Tanner Morgan played like an NFL draft pick, and has since regressed.

www.startribune.com

Souhan: P.J. Fleck's Gophers offenses haven't added up to $35 million

P.J. Fleck signed a new deal just before had a chance to increase his leverage with a strong finish to the season and a possible high-profile bowl victory. That raises some questions.
www.startribune.com www.startribune.com

Go Gophers!!
 







BleedGopher said:
per Souhan:

If he can't win big this year, with a senior quarterback who had a remarkable season as a sophomore, and the biggest, most experienced offensive line Minnesota has had in recent memory, is the future as bright as his new $35 million contract would suggest?

Fleck is 9-7 since winning the Outback Bowl, including losses to Bowling Green and Bowling Orange (Illinois). He has raised expectations for his program to the point where losses this month to Iowa and Wisconsin would be disappointing.

The biggest concern for Gophers fans has to be that in 2019 Tanner Morgan played like an NFL draft pick, and has since regressed.

www.startribune.com

Souhan: P.J. Fleck's Gophers offenses haven't added up to $35 million

P.J. Fleck signed a new deal just before had a chance to increase his leverage with a strong finish to the season and a possible high-profile bowl victory. That raises some questions.
www.startribune.com www.startribune.com

Go Gophers!!
Click to expand...
Souhan is spot on with this column and echoes what many of us have been saying the entire year. He questions the results of OC Sanford which many of us have been saying all year. He raises legitimate questions on the results Morgan has showed and compares his career arc with Adam Weber who also looked like an NFL possibility until ruined by a bad OC. He goes on to say that Morgan had 30 TD's and 7 ints as a sophomore with a 66 pct completion rate and since then has 13 TD's and 12 Ints with a 59 pct rate. That's not the arc of a well-coached player.

I would find it hard to argue any of those points. Remember, Bateman played a little last year and was not nearly as dominating as the year before. This is NOT just because Morgan had 2 NFL receivers, he is regressing and not nearly as effective with game planning as he was two years ago. It is a combination of things, but a big part is throwing in predictable situations and throwing low percentage passes 30 yards downfield.

I think the grumblings will get a lot louder if the Gophers struggle offensively down in Iowa and if they lose the last 3 games to finish 6-6 there will be a lot of angry fans that will be very upset that nothing was done to change when you knew there was a problem.
 


His job isn't to report... His job is to provoke readership and hits online. Being provocative is the easy route to accomplish his job.
 



  1. Surprised we didn't see more contract talk this week. Granted, I don't consume much mass media outside what's posted on GH, but I figured it would be point 1 for every journalist.
  2. Fleck knows EXACTLY what's going on with his team. We hear what he says to the media and assume it's the full story on how he feels. We spend a lot of time analyzing Gopher FB, but he spends WAY more time. Trust me, he's not rationalizing away problems. He wants to win.
  3. Fleck's future is exactly as bright as it was a week ago...and that'll be the case on Sunday regardless of outcome. This season will be a huge disappointment to me at 6-6 or 7-5, but it won't tarnish my view of Fleck's future. I still think he's going to establish a legacy here.
 

This is a little thing, but it symbolizes why you wish they could do better than Souhan: the poke at Jedd Fisch's record this season. Yes, he's an easy target, and yes, he's a vagabond who seems to keep failing upward, and yes, he's probably making a valid point about Adam Weber's career. But Fisch is taking over an absolute disaster left behind by Kevin Sumlin - they lost 70-7 to ASU to close out last season - and simply citing this year's record is a misleading cheap shot when there are other ways to more fairly and accurately note Fisch's shortcomings.
 

Just look how many people are in the stadium for home games now. The student section actually fills up! Kill couldn't even get that to happen. PJ is relatively young and if he's practicing what he preaches then he will definitely get better. Criticize all you like, but people really are getting greedy with how this team "should" be doing. I'm not trying to excuse the 2 awful losses this season but please put the Gophers in perspective historically before screaming that the sky is falling.
 

I think on balance it’s right to keep Fleck but I cannot understand giving him the extension before Iowa and Wisconsin. Losing both (again) would be a dreadful performance by fleck and his staff and I’m not sure how many more chances he deserves to even the score with our biggest rivals.
 



xyz1 said:
This is a little thing, but it symbolizes why you wish they could do better than Souhan: the poke at Jedd Fisch's record this season. Yes, he's an easy target, and yes, he's a vagabond who seems to keep failing upward, and yes, he's probably making a valid point about Adam Weber's career. But Fisch is taking over an absolute disaster left behind by Kevin Sumlin - they lost 70-7 to ASU to close out last season - and simply citing this year's record is a misleading cheap shot when there are other ways to more fairly and accurately note Fisch's shortcomings.
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I thought the same thing......good point!

Also -- that win was last week against California and their defense looked pretty good!!
 

xyz1 said:
This is a little thing, but it symbolizes why you wish they could do better than Souhan: the poke at Jedd Fisch's record this season. Yes, he's an easy target, and yes, he's a vagabond who seems to keep failing upward, and yes, he's probably making a valid point about Adam Weber's career. But Fisch is taking over an absolute disaster left behind by Kevin Sumlin - they lost 70-7 to ASU to close out last season - and simply citing this year's record is a misleading cheap shot when there are other ways to more fairly and accurately note Fisch's shortcomings.
Click to expand...
This assumes Souhan watches/follows CFB beyond the few minutes of MN games he watches in order to pick up on any major mistakes made by the players or coaches. My guess is he doesn't.
 

xyz1 said:
This is a little thing, but it symbolizes why you wish they could do better than Souhan: the poke at Jedd Fisch's record this season. Yes, he's an easy target, and yes, he's a vagabond who seems to keep failing upward, and yes, he's probably making a valid point about Adam Weber's career. But Fisch is taking over an absolute disaster left behind by Kevin Sumlin - they lost 70-7 to ASU to close out last season - and simply citing this year's record is a misleading cheap shot when there are other ways to more fairly and accurately note Fisch's shortcomings.
Click to expand...
It was in support of Souhan's secondary point in the article -- which somehow seems to have gone over the heads of folks here (maybe they only read the OP stub):

he's saying that if Fleck wants to do better, something has to change with the offensive coordinator.

His point was that Weber regressed with Jedd as OC. What does that remind you of??
 

Last two lines of the article:


To win in the future, he's going to have to prove he can rebuild the offensive line and can get more out of his quarterbacks.

Fleck will not accomplish that if his offensive coordinator doesn't improve or isn't changed.
 

Torres9 said:
I think on balance it’s right to keep Fleck but I cannot understand giving him the extension before Iowa and Wisconsin. Losing both (again) would be a dreadful performance by fleck and his staff and I’m not sure how many more chances he deserves to even the score with our biggest rivals.
Click to expand...
IMO, sometimes contract extensions are given for recruiting purposes.

Currently, the Gophs 2022 class looks pretty "meh" on paper. Depending on which site you use, in the 50s, nationally. Maybe Fleck and his agent convinced Coyle that they're getting questions from higher ranked recruits regarding Fleck's future at Minnesota? In an attempt to show confidence in PJ, going out to 2028 spans the entire career of the near term recruits.

Competing with the likes of Wisky and Iowa probably keeps Coyle happy.
 

MplsGopher said:
It was in support of Souhan's secondary point in the article -- which somehow seems to have gone over the heads of folks here (maybe they only read the OP stub):

he's saying that if Fleck wants to do better, something has to change with the offensive coordinator.

His point was that Weber regressed with Jedd as OC. What does that remind you of??
Click to expand...
As I noted, the argument that Fisch hurt Weber's career is probably valid. The problem is that the snarky reference to Fisch's record this year as dispositive of him being a bad coach (which he may well be) when the situation is more complex than that.
 

Many don't like the messenger, but as another GHer pointed out, the message is what has discussed out here in multiple threads.
 

TurfGopher said:
Just look how many people are in the stadium for home games now. The student section actually fills up! Kill couldn't even get that to happen. PJ is relatively young and if he's practicing what he preaches then he will definitely get better. Criticize all you like, but people really are getting greedy with how this team "should" be doing. I'm not trying to excuse the 2 awful losses this season but please put the Gophers in perspective historically before screaming that the sky is falling.
Click to expand...
History says we cannot beat the teams that matter. Getting better means beating rivals.
 

Something is going on in this program as it relates to the OC and QB. Everything in the passing game just looks so laborious and everything has to be clicking perfectly right for it to be successful. Meanwhile, outside of the two absolute disasters where the OL didn't show up, the running game has looked effortless at times. It just works. I'm not putting the blame squarely on Tanner, but something is obviously off. It seems to be more mental than physical, but could be a combination. I am thoroughly convinced Sanford, whether in how he's coaching Tanner as QB coach, or how he's formulating the offense if F'ing with his head.

The only cause of concern for me when it comes to PJ is his often dogmatic approach to sticking to one idea and not being flexible. I think it could ultimately lead to stagnation or ultimate downfall. He takes great pride in having a plan and sticking to it. There are many on here saying, "why would you change anything now....there's only 3 games left!?!" Well, a 3 game swing can make or break your season. There is never a bad time to do the right thing. Oklahoma is undefeated, and took an incumbent starter and preseason Heisman candidate and replaced him midseason. I'm not saying the answer is to bench Tanner. But at some point, something on the offense has to give as this isn't working.

OK, maybe two concerns with PJ- the other one being his steadfast insistence with sticking only with his buddies. You don't have to be best friends with your coworkers, you just have to respect them at a professional level. I get when you're a new coach, you want to cultivate a culture and the easiest way to do that is surrounding yourself with people you know and trust. But he has enough experience now that he should be able to step outside of his comfort zone and just pick the best person available.
 

This is kind of like how we add up congressional spending bill.

it isn’t a new 7 year 35 million dollar conflict. It is a 2 year extension with a 6% raise.
 

Boomtime said:
IMO, sometimes contract extensions are given for recruiting purposes.

Currently, the Gophs 2022 class looks pretty "meh" on paper. Depending on which site you use, in the 50s, nationally. Maybe Fleck and his agent convinced Coyle that they're getting questions from higher ranked recruits regarding Fleck's future at Minnesota? In an attempt to show confidence in PJ, going out to 2028 spans the entire career of the near term recruits.

Competing with the likes of Wisky and Iowa probably keeps Coyle happy.
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Agree this likely has to do with early signings.
But we aren’t competing with Becky and the hog humpers. That’s the problem. I think Coyles happy because there are no PR messes and the team isn’t absolutely shit. It’s a low bar.
Next step for me is Fleck has to level up to our rivals. He’s making progress but he has not done that.
 

I am not a Souhan fan (his previous article accusing Fleck of insulting his players was wrong on many levels) but I think he is pretty accurate here.
The only line that bothered me was "...I think he likes it here because expectations are low and he can play the part of savior when he beats a bad Nebraska team." That was clearly a shot at Fleck, and far from the truth.
Just when he was starting to sound a little respectable, he blew it.
Sorry, Jim...you're back to dink status.
 

Jim is such a cynical asshat. This was a meandering pointless rant column. Was he 100% right about the OC and QB being a disaster? Of course- that's not an elite take or in-depth analysis. Anyone paying any attention knows this.

The headline was an attack at the U for doing a Fleck extension- while he seems to acknowledge it was a small extension (in terms of dollars and years) it ALSO increased money in the pool to pay assistant coaches. That was a big deal, and something Fleck has repeatedly said was important. Now, if he turns around and pays Sanford more money, I'll be as angry as the next guy, but if he can keep Rossi, have a bigger budget to get a better OC- then this extension does the very thing that Jimbo seems to be upset about. Not shocked his analysis didn't figure this all out.

Other factors conveniently ignored in this column
the fact we are on our 5th starting running back
that Winfield Jr. was only on the 2019 team because Fleck recruited him to stay after all the bs AW was dealing with
that fleck has recruited a number of very highly rated QBs- doesn't mean they will be good, but the quality of the QB signings is very encouraging and we can finally move on from Mediocre Morgan era
 

FredCoxRocks said:
I am not a Souhan fan (his previous article accusing Fleck of insulting his players was wrong on many levels) but I think he is pretty accurate here.
The only line that bothered me was "...I think he likes it here because expectations are low and he can play the part of savior when he beats a bad Nebraska team." That was clearly a shot at Fleck, and far from the truth.
Just when he was starting to sound a little respectable, he blew it.
Sorry, Jim...you're back to dink status.
Click to expand...
Um ... he's never been out of that status.
 

Gold Rush said:
Souhan is spot on with this column and echoes what many of us have been saying the entire year. He questions the results of OC Sanford which many of us have been saying all year. He raises legitimate questions on the results Morgan has showed and compares his career arc with Adam Weber who also looked like an NFL possibility until ruined by a bad OC. He goes on to say that Morgan had 30 TD's and 7 ints as a sophomore with a 66 pct completion rate and since then has 13 TD's and 12 Ints with a 59 pct rate. That's not the arc of a well-coached player.

I would find it hard to argue any of those points. Remember, Bateman played a little last year and was not nearly as dominating as the year before. This is NOT just because Morgan had 2 NFL receivers, he is regressing and not nearly as effective with game planning as he was two years ago. It is a combination of things, but a big part is throwing in predictable situations and throwing low percentage passes 30 yards downfield.

I think the grumblings will get a lot louder if the Gophers struggle offensively down in Iowa and if they lose the last 3 games to finish 6-6 there will be a lot of angry fans that will be very upset that nothing was done to change when you knew there was a problem.
Click to expand...
All valid points. Uncomfortable, but true.
 


Gold Rush said:
Souhan is spot on with this column and echoes what many of us have been saying the entire year. He questions the results of OC Sanford which many of us have been saying all year. He raises legitimate questions on the results Morgan has showed and compares his career arc with Adam Weber who also looked like an NFL possibility until ruined by a bad OC. He goes on to say that Morgan had 30 TD's and 7 ints as a sophomore with a 66 pct completion rate and since then has 13 TD's and 12 Ints with a 59 pct rate. That's not the arc of a well-coached player.

I would find it hard to argue any of those points. Remember, Bateman played a little last year and was not nearly as dominating as the year before. This is NOT just because Morgan had 2 NFL receivers, he is regressing and not nearly as effective with game planning as he was two years ago. It is a combination of things, but a big part is throwing in predictable situations and throwing low percentage passes 30 yards downfield.

I think the grumblings will get a lot louder if the Gophers struggle offensively down in Iowa and if they lose the last 3 games to finish 6-6 there will be a lot of angry fans that will be very upset that nothing was done to change when you knew there was a problem.
Click to expand...

Bateman still averaged almost 100 yards per game last year. The loss of Johnson also meant he saw double and even triple coverage. That is a poor example.
 

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