BleedGopher
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per Rand Ball:
At times like this, it’s easy to get swept up in the momentum. It’s just as important, then, to hit the pause button around signing day to remember that winning the recruiting battles leads to eventual success — not immediate success — on the field.
If you’re a Gophers football fan, your vision should be 2020 and beyond.
That’s the season when these recruits — the first group Fleck was able to spend an entire cycle pursuing at Minnesota — will be in their third year in the program. Those who stick and devleop will be redshirt sophomores or true juniors, depending on quickly they earn their way onto the field.
That would be Fleck’s fourth season, which seems to be a magic number if we look at a couple of meaningful (if imperfect) parallels.
Fleck’s Gophers were 5-7 last season. They might have been able to squeeze another win and bowl game appearance out of their talent and schedule, but ultimately the program would have been in the same spot as it is now.
Fleck’s Year 2 Gophers — and their fans — should expect more competent QB play if junior college transfer Vic Viramontes is as good as his numbers suggest. Next year’s schedule is friendly enough that a spot in a bowl game is a reasonable expectation as long as the QB play is upgraded.
We might say the same thing about 2019, Year 3, as well. The first five Big Ten games that year — at Purdue, vs. Illinois, vs. Nebraska, at Rutgers, vs. Maryland — are potentially cushy enough for Minnesota to arrive a year early, at least in the standings.
But 2020, Year 4, is where sights should be set in terms of real and meaningful expectations. The schedule is less forgiving, but by then it shouldn’t matter. If Fleck has done the job he wants to do, the Gophers — led by this year’s incoming class and other classes that follow — should be competitive against pretty much every opponent.
If we’re talking in December 2020 not just about a meaningful recruiting class but a meaningful bowl game, you will likely be able to trace its origins back to Wednesday. Now it’s just a matter of watching and waiting.
http://www.startribune.com/for-gophers-football-fans-the-vision-should-be-2020-and-beyond/465716803/
Go Gophers!!
At times like this, it’s easy to get swept up in the momentum. It’s just as important, then, to hit the pause button around signing day to remember that winning the recruiting battles leads to eventual success — not immediate success — on the field.
If you’re a Gophers football fan, your vision should be 2020 and beyond.
That’s the season when these recruits — the first group Fleck was able to spend an entire cycle pursuing at Minnesota — will be in their third year in the program. Those who stick and devleop will be redshirt sophomores or true juniors, depending on quickly they earn their way onto the field.
That would be Fleck’s fourth season, which seems to be a magic number if we look at a couple of meaningful (if imperfect) parallels.
Fleck’s Gophers were 5-7 last season. They might have been able to squeeze another win and bowl game appearance out of their talent and schedule, but ultimately the program would have been in the same spot as it is now.
Fleck’s Year 2 Gophers — and their fans — should expect more competent QB play if junior college transfer Vic Viramontes is as good as his numbers suggest. Next year’s schedule is friendly enough that a spot in a bowl game is a reasonable expectation as long as the QB play is upgraded.
We might say the same thing about 2019, Year 3, as well. The first five Big Ten games that year — at Purdue, vs. Illinois, vs. Nebraska, at Rutgers, vs. Maryland — are potentially cushy enough for Minnesota to arrive a year early, at least in the standings.
But 2020, Year 4, is where sights should be set in terms of real and meaningful expectations. The schedule is less forgiving, but by then it shouldn’t matter. If Fleck has done the job he wants to do, the Gophers — led by this year’s incoming class and other classes that follow — should be competitive against pretty much every opponent.
If we’re talking in December 2020 not just about a meaningful recruiting class but a meaningful bowl game, you will likely be able to trace its origins back to Wednesday. Now it’s just a matter of watching and waiting.
http://www.startribune.com/for-gophers-football-fans-the-vision-should-be-2020-and-beyond/465716803/
Go Gophers!!
