I guess I can see how you could be upset about the coaching change if you expected this team to win 8 or more regular season games again this year...I just don't know how anybody who even casually follows the Gopher football program could have had that expectation. They were losing their long time starting QB (who was not good but nobody else on the roster was good enough to challenge him for 2-3 years), their main WR, their top OT, their C (Moore has given up football due to his back so he wasn't playing here this year if Claeys stayed), a starting DE and 3/4 of their starting secondary. The Gophers seemed to have some options they could reasonably expect to take over in the secondary if not for the expulsions, but the other positions were major question marks. Nobody who has access to the program was confident in who would replace Leidner, Wolitarsky, Pirsig, and the only hope at DE was that Devers would put enough weight on to take over for Ekpe. The secondary became a mess with the expulsions and significant knee injury to Durr, the starters now are guys that Sawvel was probably hoping to be his 4th and 5th CB's if he was still here and all his guys were available.
Now look at the schedule: A close 7 point home win over Oregon State was replaced with a road game at Oregon State. A close home win over Rutgers was replaced with Michigan State. The best win of the regular season, home against Northwestern, is replaced with a game at Northwestern. Even if you call replacing @Penn State with @Michigan a wash, it was very easy to see how a similarly talented Gopher team (I would certainly contend they are not) would struggle to match last years 8-4 regular season.
I thought it was pretty clear why Fleck was hired: there was no realistic expectation to believe that the Claeys/Kill era would reach another level. Year 6 was supposed to be it: Veteran Senior QB with tons of game experience and the easiest schedule of my lifetime...a schedule very reminiscent of the Iowa schedule from the prior year that nearly everyone here unanimously mocked...and they went out and started out 0-2 in conference play. 4 of the 5 conference wins were against first year or interim head coaches. None of the teams the Gophers beat in conference play beat anyone of note either. A final kick in the nuts? The two unquestioned best wins of the seasons (Northwestern and Washington State) were over teams that also lost to FCS schools that same season. So we're 6 years in, we're 2-4 against Iowa, 0-6 against Wisconsin, have one top 25 win that was now 3 season in the mirror...what do you have to sell at this point? That's without getting in to the off the field incident which obviously also hurt the program both locally and nationally.
I have to laugh at the post in this thread that said that if PJ isn't competing for the West title and a regular in the top 25 by year 3 he's out of a job. I'd LOVE for that to be the standard at Minnesota, but you do realize the previous staff never finished a season in the top 25? I would be surprised if the Gophers were ranked more than 10 weeks TOTAL in the last six years. It's kind of like when Brewster got us back to the Mason average in years 2 and 3 and people were freaking out like going 3-5 in conference play and going to garbage bowl games wasn't the norm at Minnesota.
It's bizarre how some people were very patient with other coaching staffs are unwilling to grant that same patience to PJ Fleck. The Gophers lost to Maryland at home in a year where they certainly were not going to contend for any titles...look at the big picture does that mean anything? I hope most of you can come to the conclusion that it does not and give PJ an opportunity to develop this program.