O'Gara: Is it time for Minnesota fans to have second thoughts about P.J. Fleck?

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BleedGopher

BleedGopher

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per O'Gara:

Now, there has to at least be some fans wondering if Fleck was good enough for Minnesota. The Gophers did win at least eight games in three of the previous four seasons with Kill and the ever low-profile Tracy Claeys. Even if there was an inevitable step back in Year 1 of the Fleck era with all of Minnesota’s roster attrition, most probably assumed that Fleck would start off better than 2-11 in B1G play.

In each of Fleck’s first two seasons, his team started off with at least a three-game losing streak in conference play after a sweep of a weak non-conference slate. You could probably make the argument that Fleck, like Frost, lost a few games his team could’ve won in the first part of 2017. Heading into the final two weeks of the season in need of one win for bowl eligibility, only one team had beat the Gophers by more than 14 points.

Since that time, Minnesota lost six straight B1G games by a combined score of 243-86 (-26.2 per game). And every one of those losses was by more than 14 points. Just for a little perspective, Rutgers has been outscored 247-66 by B1G teams in that same stretch, and actually it has a smaller margin of defeat at 25.9 points per game.

That’s rowing the boat the wrong way.

Pardon the bad joke, but a high profile coach tends to become an easy target when he doesn’t win. Pre-2018 Jim Harbaugh could relate to that to in a certain way. Obviously Gopher fans would love it if eight wins was their floor. That doesn’t look like it’s happening anytime soon.

The reality is, Fleck’s team has looked significantly overmatched playing in one of the most favorable divisions in the country. Has anything that happened in conference play suggest that he’s ready to take the program to the next level? Hanging tight with Ohio State for awhile shouldn’t be the answer to that question.

In Fleck’s plan, I highly doubt that it consisted of struggling this much in Year 2. His idea of capitalizing on the university’s new $166 million Athletes Village was not looking like Rutgers West. His marketability has a shelf life, and unless he starts digging his way out of the B1G basement, it’ll get staler by the day.

On Tuesday, Fleck addressed the criticism he received in the wake of the Nebraska loss. He appreciated it, and admitted that criticism of his team’s performance was fair. He then ended his press conference with his usual “Row the Boat, Ski-U-Mah, Go Gophers,” which was said with a smile.

Fleck isn’t losing patience, but I can’t blame Minnesota fans if they are.

https://saturdaytradition.com/minnesota-football/fleck-minnesota-fans-second-thoughts-2018/

Go Gophers!!
 

BleedGopher said:
per O'Gara:

Since that time, Minnesota lost six straight B1G games by a combined score of 243-86 (-26.2 per game). And every one of those losses was by more than 14 points. Just for a little perspective, Rutgers has been outscored 247-66 by B1G teams in that same stretch, and actually it has a smaller margin of defeat at 25.9 points per game.

https://saturdaytradition.com/minnesota-football/fleck-minnesota-fans-second-thoughts-2018/

Go Gophers!!
Click to expand...

That one hurt!!!:cry:
 

Fleck 2-11
Kill 3-12
Mason 3-13

Different coach same story through two years. Yes it's hard to be patient, but that's what we do.

Western Michigan took a dip last year to 6-6 and this year is 6-2 (4-0) at this point. Seems that Fleck did a decent job building a program that is able to sustain a bit.
 

OK now, those Rutgers cracks just hurt.

But can't argue with this:

BleedGopher said:
His marketability has a shelf life, and unless he starts digging his way out of the B1G basement, it’ll get staler by the day.
Click to expand...

Hey, I'm not losing patience. It will be at least another 12 months before I think we get a solid reading on where things are going. But if the wins don't start coming somewhere in the next 12 months, recruiting is going to suffer. You can't keep selling kids on being elite when people are comparing your program to Rutgers, fer chrissakes.

JTG
 

MaxyJR1 said:
Fleck 2-11
Kill 3-12
Mason 3-13

Different coach same story through two years. Yes it's hard to be patient, but that's what we do.

Western Michigan took a dip last year to 6-6 and this year is 6-2 (4-0) at this point. Seems that Fleck did a decent job building a program that is able to sustain a bit.
Click to expand...

Understand, yet prior to Mason 1-7; prior to Kill 2-6; prior to Fleck 5-4. It's easier to be patient when you have no where to go but up. It's much more difficult to be patient when you start falling.
 


rockford said:
Hey, I'm not losing patience. It will be at least another 12 months before I think we get a solid reading on where things are going. But if the wins don't start coming somewhere in the next 12 months, recruiting is going to suffer. You can't keep selling kids on being elite when people are comparing your program to Rutgers, fer chrissakes.

JTG
Click to expand...

That is exactly what happened with Brewcrew.
 

OddStack said:
Understand, yet prior to Mason 1-7; prior to Kill 2-6; prior to Fleck 5-4. It's easier to be patient when you have no where to go but up. It's much more difficult to be patient when you start falling.
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I'm with the people that believe the fall started before Fleck was hired. This was due to graduation, suspensions, transfers, and recruiting.
 

MaxyJR1 said:
I'm with the people that believe the fall started before Fleck was hired. This was due to graduation, suspensions, transfers, and recruiting.
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So you think we're at the bottom now and able to be patient? Would a 0 or 1 win conference season test your patience?
 

OddStack said:
So you think we're at the bottom now and able to be patient? Would a 0 or 1 win conference season test your patience?
Click to expand...

Not now, but in the future. I think Fleck needs another year to get defense going in the right direction. I may have a different opinion in a year.
 



Count me as impatient but that isn't surprising as I am a charter member of the Fleck Isn't For Everyone Group.
 


Too early of course but after living through this since Salem, I am skeptical this time. Brew had me interested early and Mason did a great job given the facilities. Kill came right out from day 1 and said it was 4 to 6 years to get the opportunity to be competitive in this conference. Fleck was a little aggressive with the championship stuff but He needs more time to learn and prove what he can do. We play like this next year, fired. We do have too many excuses like previous staffs. We have facilities, great venue, new campus for the most part and a ton of opportunities after football is over for student athletes. We are in a position to attract a talent and coaching.
We need to show some improvement this week on defense.
 

I'm glad to see this article because at 19 games in, I feel the media has been slow to question Fleck and his ability.
Good to see someone sticking their neck out a little with some Gopher football skepticism.


/s
 



Losing sucks. If we win, all is forgotten and all is embraced.
 

My junior-year season ticket-holding daughter is definitely ready to cut bait, as I'm sure are many of her classmates. I've told her what most people are saying here: that you don't fire a football coach after a year and a half. I've been telling her that next year ought to be a pretty decent season for her senior year of college. I hope to god she doesn't come out of her U of M collegiate experience permanently soured on the program.
 

OddStack said:
Understand, yet prior to Mason 1-7; prior to Kill 2-6; prior to Fleck 5-4. It's easier to be patient when you have no where to go but up. It's much more difficult to be patient when you start falling.
Click to expand...

I do think this is where a lot of the hand wringing comes from, the assumption that last year would have been significantly better under Claeys than it was under Fleck.

I fall in the camp that thinks last year was going to be rough no matter who was in charge because there was nothing at the QB position (and would have been even thinner without Rhoda being begged to come back) and would have been nothing beyond Johnson at the WR spot. The other well documented roster issues (O-Line, D-Line, DB) would have all been in play as well regardless of who the coach was. We were going to struggle in my opinion and recruiting wasn't exactly looking like anything spectacular either before the change was made.

In the end we will never know how things would have played out but in my honest opinion had they stuck with Claeys for one more year we would have been looking for a new coach to start this season.
 

MNVCGUY said:
I do think this is where a lot of the hand wringing comes from, the assumption that last year would have been significantly better under Claeys than it was under Fleck.

I fall in the camp that thinks last year was going to be rough no matter who was in charge because there was nothing at the QB position (and would have been even thinner without Rhoda being begged to come back) and would have been nothing beyond Johnson at the WR spot. The other well documented roster issues (O-Line, D-Line, DB) would have all been in play as well regardless of who the coach was. We were going to struggle in my opinion and recruiting wasn't exactly looking like anything spectacular either before the change was made.

In the end we will never know how things would have played out but in my honest opinion had they stuck with Claeys for one more year we would have been looking for a new coach to start this season.
Click to expand...

This is part of why I think Coyle is incompetent. You cant fire a guy after a good year (unless you do it for explicitly non-football reasons), otherwise you set the new guy up to fail. Firing Claeys after a 9 win season sends the message of "only winning 9 games is not only a bad season, it is so bad as to constitute a fireable offense." Teague did the same thing when he fired Tubby after making the second round.

The fact of the matter is, fair or not, when an AD fired a coach for on field performance, that last year becomes a minimum bar for success. Miss it and the next guy is worse, match it and congrats, you got us back to the unacceptable level that got the old guy fired.
 

Does it matter if fans have second thoughts or some media guy asks the question?
 

MNVCGUY said:
I do think this is where a lot of the hand wringing comes from, the assumption that last year would have been significantly better under Claeys than it was under Fleck.

I fall in the camp that thinks last year was going to be rough no matter who was in charge because there was nothing at the QB position (and would have been even thinner without Rhoda being begged to come back) and would have been nothing beyond Johnson at the WR spot. The other well documented roster issues (O-Line, D-Line, DB) would have all been in play as well regardless of who the coach was. We were going to struggle in my opinion and recruiting wasn't exactly looking like anything spectacular either before the change was made.

In the end we will never know how things would have played out but in my honest opinion had they stuck with Claeys for one more year we would have been looking for a new coach to start this season.
Click to expand...

Claeys ran different offense and defense schemes that the players were familiar with executing. As TC said in the article, Green would have been the QB...in a scheme well-suited for him.
 


PMWinSTP said:
Claeys ran different offense and defense schemes that the players were familiar with executing. As TC said in the article, Green would have been the QB...in a scheme well-suited for him.
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Exactly! People love that narrative about the "no qb" because Fleck, whether right or wrong, wasn't sold on Green and did the hustle after Rhoda.
 

PMWinSTP said:
Claeys ran different offense and defense schemes that the players were familiar with executing. As TC said in the article, Green would have been the QB...in a scheme well-suited for him.
Click to expand...

Because Claeys was so sold on Green that he signed a JUCO QB who was projected to start...

The rumors were rampant that Claeys was convinced Green wasn't capable of being the starter - under that system. Revisionist history now that he had confidence and he would have thrived is pretty funny. I'm absolutely not convinced Green would have been serviceable in that offense or any offense, other than the veer/wishbone maybe.

I really do wonder where this team would be at now with Claeys. I think based on his lack of recruiting and the players they have the results wouldn't be much different. But someone else can say they'd be winning national championships and I can't prove them wrong...
 

Lakeville Goldy said:
Because Claeys was so sold on Green that he signed a JUCO QB who was projected to start...

The rumors were rampant that Claeys was convinced Green wasn't capable of being the starter - under that system. Revisionist history now that he had confidence and he would have thrived is pretty funny. I'm absolutely not convinced Green would have been serviceable in that offense or any offense, other than the veer/wishbone maybe.

I really do wonder where this team would be at now with Claeys. I think based on his lack of recruiting and the players they have the results wouldn't be much different. But someone else can say they'd be winning national championships and I can't prove them wrong...
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Fleck also signed a Juco QB who was projected to start.
 


PMWinSTP said:
Claeys ran different offense and defense schemes that the players were familiar with executing. As TC said in the article, Green would have been the QB...in a scheme well-suited for him.
Click to expand...

Revisionist history at its finest.
 


At least when it comes to defense, Kill/Claeys showed they could take a bunch of low rated recruits and make them into a decent defense under their coaching. I think that's why people figure, even with our injuries and lack of depth this year, they could have made them into a functional defense.
 

It feels as though posters here spend way too much time talking about wins and losses and not enough time talking about how the team looks. I'm not overly concerned about the fact that we're losing a lot of games - we've all been through that before. I'm very concerned, however, by how we're losing. We look like we don't belong on the same field as our opponents. We're not even competitive against average-to-poor teams. Nebraska has to run the table just to make a bowl and we lose by 25. Maryland is going to be a 7- or 8-win team at best, and we lose by 29. To compare apples to apples, let's look at Kill and Brewster's 2nd seasons. Both (even Brewster, the "worst head coach in the history of college football") made a bowl game, and here were the margins of defeat in their losses:

Kill (2012) - 18, 8, 25, 22, 24, 16, 3 (avg: 16.57)
Brewster (2008) - 13, 7, 23, 3, 55, 21 (avg: 20.33)

And now, compare them to Fleck so far this year:

Fleck (2018) - 29, 17, 16, 25 (avg: 21.75)

These games aren't even close. Only one game was even within two scores at the end, and even that's a stretch as it would require two successful two-point conversions.

It is worth noting that 3 of the 4 games have been on the road. Brewster was actually 2-2 on the road in the Big Ten in 2008, beating Illinois and Purdue while losing to OSU by 13 and wisconsin by only 3. Kill only won a single conference road game, again versus Illinois.

The trends and stats are, to put it simply, very alarming for anyone except the most hardcore of Fleck sycophants. Will we win a single conference road game (or any conference game, for that matter)? Will we make a bowl game in year 2, a low bar that even a near-universally mocked coach was able to clear?
 

dpodoll68 said:
It feels as though posters here spend way too much time talking about wins and losses and not enough time talking about how the team looks. I'm not overly concerned about the fact that we're losing a lot of games - we've all been through that before. I'm very concerned, however, by how we're losing. We look like we don't belong on the same field as our opponents. We're not even competitive against average-to-poor teams. Nebraska has to run the table just to make a bowl and we lose by 25. Maryland is going to be a 7- or 8-win team at best, and we lose by 29. To compare apples to apples, let's look at Kill and Brewster's 2nd seasons. Both (even Brewster, the "worst head coach in the history of college football") made a bowl game, and here were the margins of defeat in their losses:

Kill (2012) - 18, 8, 25, 22, 24, 16, 3 (avg: 16.57)
Brewster (2008) - 13, 7, 23, 3, 55, 21 (avg: 20.33)

And now, compare them to Fleck so far this year:

Fleck (2018) - 29, 17, 16, 25 (avg: 21.75)

These games aren't even close. Only one game was even within two scores at the end, and even that's a stretch as it would require two successful two-point conversions.

It is worth noting that 3 of the 4 games have been on the road. Brewster was actually 2-2 on the road in the Big Ten in 2008, beating Illinois and Purdue while losing to OSU by 13 and wisconsin by only 3. Kill only won a single conference road game, again versus Illinois.

The trends and stats are, to put it simply, very alarming for anyone except the most hardcore of Fleck sycophants. Will we win a single conference road game (or any conference game, for that matter)? Will we make a bowl game in year 2, a low bar that even a near-universally mocked coach was able to clear?
Click to expand...

Not going to try and pretend the start to the Big Ten season has not been disappointing but we are a little over halfway through the season so maybe wait and see how things play out before making big assumptions.

Kill's margin of defeat goes up 2 points if you take the bowl game out of the mix. The 2018 Gophers could still easily drop below that number with a few close losses over the remainder of the season. Kill's team lost 4 games by more than 2 scores so it isn't like that team was playing a lot of nail bitters either.

As for making a bowl game, both Kill and Brewster benefitted from a 4 game non-conf schedule and only needed to win 2 conference games to get to bowl eligibility. Fleck's team could match that conference win total and end up falling short of a bowl game due to the 9 game conference schedule. Bottom line is from what I see there is not a massive difference in performance in year 2 under Fleck compared to what happened with Kill or Brew. None of the teams were/are very good.

To act like anything that has happened so far this year is all that different from what we have seen in the past from Gopher football is just foolish.
 

BleedGopher said:
per O'Gara:

Since that time, Minnesota lost six straight B1G games by a combined score of 243-86 (-26.2 per game). And every one of those losses was by more than 14 points. Just for a little perspective, Rutgers has been outscored 247-66 by B1G teams in that same stretch, and actually it has a smaller margin of defeat at 25.9 points per game.
Click to expand...

Somebody get this guy a calculator
 

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