“Geezo beezo Gopher nation! My heart is pumpin’ and my corpuscles are jumpin’, baby! Are you hungry or are you starvin’ Gopher nation? Because I’ll tell ya, I am thrilled!"
That’s me doing my best to channel a mashup of former University of Minnesota Football coaches Jim Wacker and Tim Brewster, while hoping I don’t get confused with current head coach PJ Fleck, because doing so would not be “Elite”.
I don’t blame anybody who is confused at this point, because if you follow Gopher football these coaches do sound the same in some respects, and if you follow Gopher football you have been burned by sales pitches like the one used by Coach Fleck in the past.
For the record... I DO believe in P.J. Fleck and I do believe this football program is going to win. I’m just pretty sure you’re going to have to be patient for one more year.
One more year.
The Gophers kick-off Season 2 of the PJ Fleck era tonight at TCF Bank Stadium against the Aggies of New Mexico State, and expectations locally and nationally around the Gophers and their energetic head coach are mixed at-best.
Fleck managed to win five games in his first year with the Gophers, a total that might ordinarily garner a lot more optimism if it weren’t for the coach’s penchant for gimmicky sayings like “Row the Boat” and overusing the aforementioned term, “Elite”. Also contributing to the skepticism is the fact that every time it looks like things are finally going to get turned around with this historically hard-luck football program, and we have head coaches who people are starting to believe in (like Glen Mason or Jerry Kill) something bad happens. At that point the program implodes and we go right back to square-1 to begin the cycle all over again.
But not this time.
While Jim Wacker and Tim Brewster each came to the Gophers with a track record of success in recruiting, and while Mason and Kill both had success leading other programs before coming to the ‘U’, none of them has had the recruiting success that Fleck has already produced in his short time here.
Depending on which poll you choose, Fleck’s first recruiting class at Minnesota (put together on short notice with holdovers from Tracy Claeys’ incoming class) had a national rank of 56. This past year, with a season under his belt and a full recruiting period to work his magic, Fleck’s incoming class was ranked either 37 or 38 in most polls. That trails only Nebraska among schools in the Big-10 West, while ranking higher than powerful rivals Wisconsin and Iowa.
That’s the GOOD news. The bad news is, you’re going to be seeing a lot of those recruits right away, playing as true freshmen. Five freshmen, including Quarterback Zack Annexstad, are expected to be in the starting lineup tonight, with 23 other freshmen (13 true and 10 redshirt) listed as second string.
We could go deep into the many issues of becoming just the second Power-5 school to go into a season starting a true freshman at Quarterback, but frankly, that’s a column in itself. Lets just admit that the situation is far from ideal and move on.
Football is a contact sport, and you can expect that most (if not all) of the 28 freshmen listed on the depth chart will see action before the Big-10 season begins. That’s good if that experience comes in situations where newbies can get acclimated to the speed and strength of the college game at times they can find success. It will be bad if large numbers of these kids are forced on to the field for extended duty due to injuries or subpar performance.
You need only look back to last season to see the effect of playing a Big-10 Schedule. The 2017 Gophers were unbeaten at 3-0 in non-conference play, then 3-5 in the Big-10 heading into the last two games of the season. With a sixth win (and potential bowl game on the line) the Gophers went into rainy Evanston, Illinois, and got blown-out by the Northwestern Wildcats 39-0. The following week they returned home to get bludgeoned by the Wisconsin Badgers in the annual battle for Paul Bunyon’s Axe 31-zip. That’s right... the Gophers, with a lot of young players forced into action due to injury, were outscored 70-0 in the final two games of the season.
Not surprisingly, Coach Fleck has tried to put a positive spin on the way last season ended.
“In the last game, of the guys returning, there were tears, they were upset, it affected them”, said Fleck. “You saw that glimmer of hope that said moving forward, man, the guys coming back, this hurt them. You want to see that in tough times.”
What we have yet to see is how those young players put in their time in the weight room this off-season, and how ready these true and redshirt freshmen are to play. The Gophers' non-conference schedule appears to be favorable, but the true indicator will be how the Gophers are able to get through the non-conference schedule from an injury standpoint.
I had the Gophers winning the three non-conference games of their 2018 schedule, then losing their Big-10 opener at Maryland. The Terps, however, are in the midst of their own crisis following the death of a player at practice, leaving the future direction of the program in doubt.
IF the Gophers can beat Maryland and win their Big-10 home opener against Iowa the next week, you can expect to see them in a low-rent bowl game during the holidays. For me, the over/under record on wins for this team is six. Anything below that will be mildly disappointing (if not surprising) and any wins beyond that will be a pleasant surprise.
I'll say it again: I like and believe in P.J. Fleck. I believe he is the right man for the job and I do believe that better days ARE coming for the Golden Gopher football program. Time will tell just how quickly we’ll see evidence of that.