PJ Fleck on Sports Huddle 10-21-18

Shenault isn’t very good and routinely picked upon by opposing teams.

He sees the field the amount he does out of necessity.


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again....perhaps the system. Some DB's are better at man (X. Rhoades); some are better at zone (Krause and Winfield Sr.); some are run stoppers (Winfield Sr.). Agreed, Shenault is having a rough year, but under the previous system I don't recall anyone ever complaining about him. Thus, perhaps it's coaching and not playing him--and others-- to their strengths.

Had you asked Paul Krause to play man all of the time, he wouldn't have been NFL Career INT record holder...hell, he wouldn't have been in the NFL long at all.
 

again....perhaps the system. Some DB's are better at man (X. Rhoades); some are better at zone (Krause and Winfield Sr.); some are run stoppers (Winfield Sr.). Agreed, Shenault is having a rough year, but under the previous system I don't recall anyone ever complaining about him. Thus, perhaps it's coaching and not playing him--and others-- to their strengths.

Had you asked Paul Krause to play man all of the time, he wouldn't have been NFL Career INT record holder...hell, he wouldn't have been in the NFL long at all.

Maybe the previous staff helped him out with coverage and he wasn’t exposed as much. Though I still believe he was thrown at quite a bit and regularly beat.

Regardless, coaching, scheme, personnel or combination of all three they need to get it fixed.




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So few NFL players yet that 2016 defense was pretty good. 9/23 underclassmen. Walk on at LB, safety. True freshman CB.

Is it:
Talent
Age
Combine invitees
NFL draftees
UDFA and minicamp invitees
Coaching
 

again....perhaps the system. Some DB's are better at man (X. Rhoades); some are better at zone (Krause and Winfield Sr.); some are run stoppers (Winfield Sr.). Agreed, Shenault is having a rough year, but under the previous system I don't recall anyone ever complaining about him. Thus, perhaps it's coaching and not playing him--and others-- to their strengths.

Had you asked Paul Krause to play man all of the time, he wouldn't have been NFL Career INT record holder...hell, he wouldn't have been in the NFL long at all.

There have been plenty of complaints about him over the years. He started in 2015 when Hardin was suspended. Otherwise Myrick and Hardin were the two starters.

Lets not pretend that 2016 defense didn't have issues at times, giving up 30+ to a 2 win and 3 win Rutgers and Purdue teams.
 
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There have been plenty of complaints about him over the years. He started in 2015 when Hardin was suspended. Otherwise Myrick and Hardin were the two starters.

Lets not pretend that 2016 defense didn't have issues at times, giving up 30+ to a 2 win and 3 win Rutgers and Purdue teams.

yeah, the 2016 team was lucky to win 9 games.

Wonder when a Fleck-coached team will be that lucky?
 



There have been plenty of complaints about him over the years. He started in 2015 when Hardin was suspended. Otherwise Myrick and Hardin were the two starters.

Lets not pretend that 2016 defense didn't have issues at times, giving up 30+ to a 2 win and 3 win Rutgers and Purdue teams.

6 of Rutgers' points came on a TD pass from Mitch Leidner; yep a pick 6. I'm sure someone on the Defense got to call and execute that play.
 

Shenault is having a rough year, but under the previous system I don't recall anyone ever complaining about him. .

That's not true. I recall lots of complaints on this board over his career.
 

6 of Rutgers' points came on a TD pass from Mitch Leidner; yep a pick 6. I'm sure someone on the Defense got to call and execute that play.

So the Rutgers offense still scored 26 on us after scoring 14 points in the previous 4 games combined. Including only scoring 7 the week before against a 3 win Illinois team.
 



So the Rutgers offense still scored 26 on us after scoring 14 points in the previous 4 games combined. Including only scoring 7 the week before against a 3 win Illinois team.

I wish we were at a spot this year where we were complaining about giving up more points than we would have liked in one of our nine wins.

Imagine for a second how you would react if PJ were to win nine games next year, and I were to chime in and say "it's not that impressive, how good are we really if we surrendered 32 points in a win against a bad team".
 

The 2018 Gophers are in big trouble if their stoutest defenders insist on turning all posts into dissections of previous seasons rather than looking at the present one.

One that still has at least 5 more games to play.

Though to be fair, any criticism of players or Assistant Coaches are more than welcome.
 

So the Rutgers offense still scored 26 on us after scoring 14 points in the previous 4 games combined. Including only scoring 7 the week before against a 3 win Illinois team.

How does diminishing the 2016 team help your goal of supporting Fleck?

That 2016 team was a Gopher team made up of Gopher football players. Ripping them because you care about a man with a strange and creepy passion is your right, but not at all in the interest of actually being a Gopher fan, just a Fleck fan.
 

There have been plenty of complaints about him over the years. He started in 2015 when Hardin was suspended. Otherwise Myrick and Hardin were the two starters.

Lets not pretend that 2016 defense didn't have issues at times, giving up 30+ to a 2 win and 3 win Rutgers and Purdue teams.

To quote coach Dinardo, it's about match-ups! Even Alabama has run across a team or two over the years that could move the ball against them. Overall, the 2016 Gopher defense won (or at least hung in there) the majority of their match-ups. Shenault is a decent player. Like Oddstack said, if you put him in a scenario where he can succeed, he will play well.

This coaching staff knows how to recruit, and coach their system. What I'm not sure of is whether or not they are good at modifying there system for the players they have on hand.
 



How does diminishing the 2016 team help your goal of supporting Fleck?

That 2016 team was a Gopher team made up of Gopher football players. Ripping them because you care about a man with a strange and creepy passion is your right, but not at all in the interest of actually being a Gopher fan, just a Fleck fan.

I'm not trying to rip or diminish the team, I'm just throwing out some facts. The first people to rip Fleck were generally the biggest supporters of Claeys. I've read several comments on here about how such poor defensive play never happened under the previous regime, especially against bad teams. Some want to think that the defensive effort that we saw against Washington St was what we saw every week, but that wasn't the case.

Those defenses did have poor and inconsistent play against bad teams in 2015 and 2016, even after that defensive staff had been recruiting and developing players for 5-6 years.

Those defenses were still better than what we've seen so far this year and something definitely has to improve. But I think this defense has plenty of personnel issues that those teams didn't have, so I'll give this staff the time to recruit and develop their players before I throw them under the bus.
 

I'm not trying to rip or diminish the team, I'm just throwing out some facts. The first people to rip Fleck were generally the biggest supporters of Claeys. I've read several comments on here about how such poor defensive play never happened under the previous regime, especially against bad teams. Some want to think that the defensive effort that we saw against Washington St was what we saw every week, but that wasn't the case.

Those defenses did have poor and inconsistent play against bad teams in 2015 and 2016, even after that defensive staff had been recruiting and developing players for 5-6 years.

Those defenses were still better than what we've seen so far this year and something definitely has to improve. But I think this defense has plenty of personnel issues that those teams didn't have, so I'll give this staff the time to recruit and develop their players before I throw them under the bus.

Even in the first few years of Kill/Claeys, you could see the defensive philosophy and what they were trying to do working more often than not. Did they have bad series, bad halves or bad games, yes, but overall you saw a pretty fundamentally sound that improved each year. The level of athleticism on the defense also improved during their time. There isn't a stat for that, just an eye test. Also, the only time that they had a streak of giving up over 30 pts or more to multiple teams in a row was in the first season. After that they never had a time where it occurred even in back to back BIG games
Now they also didn't have an offense that could throw it around like we do now, so there is that. But Defense is what wins games more often than offense and it is what will sustain your team over the long haul. We need to be better on that side.
 




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