Did we hire Fleck to be drastically better in one year?

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Johnnyboy18 said:
They had two NFL offensive lineman, two 1000 yard backs, the most accurate quarterback in the country, and the best receiver in college football. How did they not have more talent on offense?
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They put up similar yardage as we did vs Wisconsin but we were at Camp Randall in a division rivalry game and they were at a neutral site relatively meaningless bowl game.
 

Getting back to the OP...

My expectation is that we hired Fleck to be as good or better than Claeys in year 1, and better over the long-term.
 

I guess in the end we will have to let the season play out, a big difference in opinion among GHers as to how good Maryland is. As I stated in another thread, I still haven't gotten over last years loss to Penn State and we know what that win did for them. I don't hate PJ Fleck at all, I am rooting for him to be super successful at Minnesota. I just hate when we lose, especially the way we lost that one. 9-3
 

nm


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

Pompous Elitist said:
They put up similar yardage as we did vs Wisconsin but we were at Camp Randall in a division rivalry game and they were at a neutral site relatively meaningless bowl game.
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They put 450 on Illinois while we didn't top 300. I can play this game too....
 


Anyone that has read this board for the last 2, 5, 10+ years has more than likely picked up on one thing; there’s a contingent of fans that will almost never, ever say, “it was any of the kids’ fault”. It had to be the coaching. That’s the only answer.
 

Johnnyboy18 said:
They put 450 on Illinois while we didn't top 300. I can play this game too....
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I'm not going to sit here and argue we had a better offense than WMU last year because I think that's demonstrably false but the bar is pretty low. They had some very nice pieces, no doubt. But, I don't think WMU 2016 makes it into the pantheon of all time great G5 offenses. They were humbled a bit vs Wisconsin and put up comparable points to us vs some mediocre to bad Big Ten teams.
 

Ogee Oglethorpe said:
Anyone that has read this board for the last 2, 5, 10+ years has more than likely picked up on one thing; there’s a contingent of fans that will almost never, ever say, “it was any of the kids’ fault”. It had to be the coaching. That’s the only answer.
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Are you serious?

What is going on here?
 

John Galt said:
Getting back to the OP...

My expectation is that we hired Fleck to be as good or better than Claeys in year 1, and better over the long-term.
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I don't think that was part of his contract when he signed. To win more games year one. (with Conor Rhoda).

You are being delusional here, and all we can do is call you out on that.
If you want to continue to believe that and be disappointed, that's fine, but I don't think Mark Coyle or Eric Kaler had 2017 Wins needed to exceed 9 as a key metric for Fleck's ongoing employment.

Again, if you want to believe this to be true, even though you didn't read his contract, you weren't in the meetings, and by most common comparisons or recent coaches being judged by year #1 results, GO FOR IT.

Be a keyboard warrior all year this year complaining about how Claeys won 9 games last year. KNOCK YOURSELF OUT!

(it still doesn't make it any more true).
 



Face The Facts said:
I don't think that was part of his contract when he signed. To win more games year one. (with Conor Rhoda).

You are being delusional here, and all we can do is call you out on that.
If you want to continue to believe that and be disappointed, that's fine, but I don't think Mark Coyle or Eric Kaler had 2017 Wins needed to exceed 9 as a key metric for Fleck's ongoing employment.

Again, if you want to believe this to be true, even though you didn't read his contract, you weren't in the meetings, and by most common comparisons or recent coaches being judged by year #1 results, GO FOR IT.

Be a keyboard warrior all year this year complaining about how Claeys won 9 games last year. KNOCK YOURSELF OUT!

(it still doesn't make it any more true).
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I thought you were against concussions
 

Ogee Oglethorpe said:
Anyone that has read this board for the last 2, 5, 10+ years has more than likely picked up on one thing; there’s a contingent of fans that will almost never, ever say, “it was any of the kids’ fault”. It had to be the coaching. That’s the only answer.
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But the Gophers are going to have to figure out a way to win consistently with lesser talent than the "next level" if we want to get to said next level. Coaches.
 

Pompous Elitist said:
I thought you were against concussions
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Well, I am. But if people are that adamant about convincing themselves that Fleck was hired to go 10-2 or better this year, the damage has already occurred beyond repair I'm afraid.
 

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.
 



EG#9 said:
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.
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I very much disagree with the basic premise of your post - that we "certainly were not going to contend for any titles." It's BS. The Big Ten West is full of mediocre-to-poor teams outside of wisconsin. A minor upset home win over Becky should've been the only thing standing between us and a trip to the BTCG to get drubbed by Ohio St. or Penn St. Now, because we pissed away a home game in which we were 13-point favorites, that scenario becomes far less likely. It's ok to have expectations for P.J. Fleck. We're not paying him $3.5 million to lose to Maryland at home as 13-point favorites. He's getting paid far more than Jerry Kill, who twice had this team on the precipice of the BTCG. It's ok to have standards and to be upset when those standards aren't met.
 

EG#9 said:
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.
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Well said.
It's laughable how people are holding Fleck to such a high standard for year three, let alone year one. We have people on here acting like Nebraska fans in 2003.

I think being in the Big Ten West is definitely a great thing for us, because it's definitely the easier division to be competitive in. Essentially if we ever get decent enough to beat WI (which Claeys and Kill never could do) we should be a west contender.
 

dpodoll68 said:
I very much disagree with the basic premise of your post - that we "certainly were not going to contend for any titles." It's BS. The Big Ten West is full of mediocre-to-poor teams outside of wisconsin. A minor upset home win over Becky should've been the only thing standing between us and a trip to the BTCG to get drubbed by Ohio St. or Penn St. Now, because we pissed away a home game in which we were 13-point favorites, that scenario becomes far less likely. It's ok to have expectations for P.J. Fleck. We're not paying him $3.5 million to lose to Maryland at home as 13-point favorites. He's getting paid far more than Jerry Kill, who twice had this team on the precipice of the BTCG. It's ok to have standards and to be upset when those standards aren't met.
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Hey can you remind me how many years into his tenure did Jerry Kill have his team finishing two games above .500 in the Big Ten? Also can you tell me the made up year where the team was close to competing for a spot in the BTCG outside of 2014 under Jerry Kill?
 

Come on guys...we won 9 games last year. We had ONE guy drafted in the 7th round because he can run fast. It's college football. 25 or so guys leave every year on every team. Other guys step in. Who was irreplaceable?

Year one, you analyze what strengths you have and utilize them. You install your culture but that doesn't mean you install the spread or the triple option flexbone without the players to flourish in it. You run whatever will make you the most successful in the present while installing elements of what you want to do in the future and are able to successfully execute now. You transition slowly.

You are just making excuses, buying time to collect a paycheck if you need three years before you say you can start to build a winning team. The athletic director is talking about the urgency PJ is bringing to the program. Year zero is urgency?? Major disconnect somewhere there with both PJ and most of you guys willing to give him three years to plod along until we see what we got.

All I know is there was zero imagination on offense Saturday. If you don't have talent then you have to be innovative, you trick people, ala Purdue. You don't run the same play over and over without running the variations off of it...using it as a decoy, deception to something else. You don't tell your quarterback not to run and then run a play that requires him to. What happened to two backs? Watch highlights, wide receiver screens score a touchdown every other highlight. Spread people out...any college quarterback and receiver can play catch...that's all it is. One block, one fast receiver, touchdown. We don't need new recruits to do that!!! Or many other not really even innovative offensive plays that are hard to defend...especially when the defense is surprised....and we had them set up to be surprised by something different.

Line can't block...maybe we need a fullback...maybe we need a tight end to be an extra blocker. Million things we don't need better players to be more successful to execute offensively. Find a way!!! We certainly do have some talent. Oh btw we were 2 touchdown favorites for you guys who think we are as whoa as me as PJ paints.
 

Johnnyboy18 said:
Hey can you remind me how many years into his tenure did Jerry Kill have his team finishing two games above .500 in the Big Ten? Also can you tell me the made up year where the team was close to competing for a spot in the BTCG outside of 2014 under Jerry Kill?
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It's not an apples-to-apples comparison. What does 2011 have to do with 2017? Kill took over a 3-win team that was lucky to win that many. Fleck took over a 9-win team that held a second-half lead in every single game.

And I misspoke on the Jerry Kill part. It was 2016 under Claeys. We wouldn't have gone to the BTCG due to tiebreakers, but we would've won a share of the division title with a win over wisconsin.
 

dpodoll68 said:
It's not an apples-to-apples comparison. What does 2011 have to do with 2017? Kill took over a 3-win team that was lucky to win that many. Fleck took over a 9-win team that held a second-half lead in every single game.

And I misspoke on the Jerry Kill part. It was 2016 under Claeys. We wouldn't have gone to the BTCG due to tiebreakers, but we would've won a share of the division title with a win over wisconsin.
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The answer I was looking for was his 4th year. Thanks for not answering the question. I'm sure you watch enough football to see the talent issues at defensive back especially with all the guys out currently.
 

GopherWeatherGuy said:
Based on what? Our offense was just as good if not better than it was against Maryland last year. Uninspired? We had a goal line stand on Maryland's 1st drive. The game was tied with just under 4 minutes left in the game. There were missed opportunities by the players all game long. The coaches had the players in a position to win the game.
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Now it is OK to compare this offense to last year? In a positive light? After you have repeatedly said the opposite?

You just did a 360. And you dont even know it.
 

Face The Facts said:
If people want to be upset after this last game, fine. Not that I wouldn't have preferred a win, but if you're getting upset about the coaching after this game, you'll be upset about the coaching 5 or 6 more times this year, and probably 6-8 times next year before we start looking to be better after that.

We are 2 years away from 2019 and even then we'll be at a talent disadvantage against many teams.
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With elite recruiting?

This is exactly opposite of what fleck backers profess.
 

At this point last year we were also 3-1. Yes last years loss was a narrow one to PSU, but we only won by 7 against Oregon state and CSU.
 


Johnnyboy18 said:
The answer I was looking for was his 4th year. Thanks for not answering the question. I'm sure you watch enough football to see the talent issues at defensive back especially with all the guys out currently.
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Well, the question was idiotic. He did you a favor by not answering your ridiculous question.

It's shocking that someone could be dumb enough to bring up the current talent deficit in the same "point" as comparing early Kill tenure to early Fleck tenure. It's literally the second dumbest thing I've ever read on Gopherhole (behind your comment about "winning having little effect on recruiting"). It's not surprising. You're incapable of having a real discussion about anything to do with this team or college football in general anymore. You're obsessed with PJ Fleck to the point that you're fighting nonexistent battles. You are his white knight.
 

Bob_Loblaw said:
Well, the question was idiotic. He did you a favor by not answering your ridiculous question.

It's shocking that someone could be dumb enough to bring up the current talent deficit in the same "point" as comparing early Kill tenure to early Fleck tenure. It's literally the second dumbest thing I've ever read on Gopherhole (behind your comment about "winning having little effect on recruiting"). It's not surprising. You're incapable of having a real discussion about anything to do with this team or college football in general anymore. You're obsessed with PJ Fleck to the point that you're fighting nonexistent battles. You are his white knight.
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Just because we won 9 games last year doesn't mean Fleck inherited WAY more talent than Kill did.
 

GFBfan said:
Johnnyboy18 said:
HoustonTXGopher said:
You seem to forget we won those games though.
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Haven't you realized, we won last year only because of our embarrassment of riches in the talent department? We had the talent to be an 11 win team and Claeys, held us back to 9. So those games. . . those are Claeys fault.

As weird as it's going to sound, Claeys and Kill also were incapable of bringing talent into the program. I know what you're thinking. . .how is it possible to argue that the previous coaches couldn't bring talent into the program while also arguing that last year's team was extremely talented? The answer. . . row the boat. You don't have an ELITE mind.

Here is where you really need to have a HYPRR mindset. This year, our failures are going to be solely due to the absolute lack of talent left by Claeys and Kill.
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btowngopher said:
Just because we won 9 games last year doesn't mean Fleck inherited WAY more talent than Kill did.
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Well, that isn't the only way to tell.

But yes, Fleck inherited WAY more talent than Kill did. It's not even close.

I'm not even ripping on PJ for the Maryland loss. I said in another thread, I didn't blame him and I didn't think it was a poor coached game or anything. But if the Fleckophiles are going to start arguing that Fleck didn't inherit way more talent than Kill, you've completely fallen off the deep end.
 

Bob_Loblaw said:
Well, that isn't the only way to tell.

But yes, Fleck inherited WAY more talent than Kill did. It's not even close.

I'm not even ripping on PJ for the Maryland loss. I said in another thread, I didn't blame him and I didn't think it was a poor coached game or anything. But if the Fleckophiles are going to start arguing that Fleck didn't inherit way more talent than Kill, you've completely fallen off the deep end.
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What position group other than RB is way more talented now?
 

Bob_Loblaw said:
Well, that isn't the only way to tell.

But yes, Fleck inherited WAY more talent than Kill did. It's not even close.

I'm not even ripping on PJ for the Maryland loss. I said in another thread, I didn't blame him and I didn't think it was a poor coached game or anything. But if the Fleckophiles are going to start arguing that Fleck didn't inherit way more talent than Kill, you've completely fallen off the deep end.
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I agree he inherited more talent and also the benefit of walking into a much better program than Kill inherited. Mason and the Kill/Claeys regime did some heavy lifting to make this program exciting. I think I am going to like Fleck's results as well. I just don't get how people think we are going to equal last year's success. Claeys certainly wasn't going to this year either.

I guess the posters who praise every move Fleck makes don't bother me too much because I somewhat think it has to be a bit. And if it is not, well, if they want to be overly positive about the direction of Gopher FB (although not realistic), so what I guess. Far more annoying to me are the fans that want to find fault in everything he does. I really hope he is successful so they can't fully enjoy the ride.
 

It's a unique question. I think Fleck came in to get us to the next level, we're certainly paying him to do that. With that said he inherited a talented team that essentially beat all of the teams they were suppose too lost to everyone they were suppose too and a pulled a major upset all things considered in it's Bowl game, the cup board isn't bare, there's talent put a competent 7 ish win team on the field, I wouldn't call for his head if we had a bad year. I think every coach deserves four years to build a program, but 5-7 would be troubling, anything less would be alarming IMO in terms if PJ can get it done here because he didn't inherited a dumpster fire of situation like most past gopher coaches. Previously staff did a lot of good things here to improve the program. It's a lot harder to out athlete the big ten, even the West division through recruiting than the MAC. PJ is going to have to show the ability to coach guys up at a level that Kill and co did on top of improved recruiting if he wants to compete with the big guys on a consistent basis. That's the reality unfortunately, and hope he's able to do it because I am sick tired of losing to Wisconsin and Iowa on a consistent basis.
 

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