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

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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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I don't remember this at all. He added a JuCo guy but that was likely because he had two RS FR competing for a QB position. He was going to sign a JuCo QB regardless of his trust in Seth Green.

As far as Seth Green's ability, it's really tough to say. He certainly seems like a quality athlete, it's hard for me to imagine he wouldn't have been a M. Gray-level QB in that system. Every rumor that I heard surrounding Green was that he was essentially the QB in waiting under Claeys.

As far as where we'd be under Claeys, I'm with you, who knows. I don't really care anymore other than when people talk about PJ like he inherited the program post-Wacker. The program was in decent shape and three of our better players in recent memory (A. Winfield, Coughlin, Johnson) were all signed by Claeys.
 


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?
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I admit that I was expecting the Big ten games to be more competitive and I am concerned. I do think losing two key players have hurt, but really the defense should not be this bad.
Looking back at the roster in 2012 on defense the team had some players already (Kill inherited some decent defensive players from Brewster)
- Hageman was a junior
- Botticelli a soph
- Wilhite a Sr
LBs
- Cooper a senior
- Hill junior
- Manuel Junior
Secondary
-Carter a Sr (Kill turned him around)
-Stoudemire Sr

If this defense doesn’t start to improve or gel It will be a disappointing year. If this is happening next year on defense we need an intervention.
 

Brewster lost to NDSU and USD; Kill lost to NDSU. We have SDSU on the schedule next year. I hope Fleck doesn't lose that one or there will be a meltdown
 

Wonder how many more of these threads will have this year?
 


Denver_Gopher said:
Brewster lost to NDSU and USD; Kill lost to NDSU. We have SDSU on the schedule next year. I hope Fleck doesn't lose that one or there will be a meltdown
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If Fleck loses to USD next year, he's done here.
 


Bob_Loblaw said:
I don't remember this at all. He added a JuCo guy but that was likely because he had two RS FR competing for a QB position. He was going to sign a JuCo QB regardless of his trust in Seth Green.

As far as Seth Green's ability, it's really tough to say. He certainly seems like a quality athlete, it's hard for me to imagine he wouldn't have been a M. Gray-level QB in that system. Every rumor that I heard surrounding Green was that he was essentially the QB in waiting under Claeys.

As far as where we'd be under Claeys, I'm with you, who knows. I don't really care anymore other than when people talk about PJ like he inherited the program post-Wacker. The program was in decent shape and three of our better players in recent memory (A. Winfield, Coughlin, Johnson) were all signed by Claeys.
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Don't forget Green was still in the mess with the EOAA at the time also. No guarantee he was going to be back


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bleedsmaroonandgold said:
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.
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You mean like a gang bang sex scandal followed by a player boycott of a bowl game that the coach endorsed?
 



bleedsmaroonandgold said:
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).
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I think it’s fairly obvious Claeys was fired for explicitly non-football reasons.



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pharmacygopher said:
You mean like a gang bang sex scandal followed by a player boycott of a bowl game that the coach endorsed?
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I kind of thing this should be made a sticky on top of all these dumb wish we still had Claeys threads.
Maybe Fleck will not be the answer, but not seeing that Claeys had to go is mind boggling.
 


Good lord, give the guy some time. Media jackals are awful.
 

We are being compared and likened to Butgers West. Fan apathy is pretty high if you read the Reusse article comments. This doesn't bode well for attendance rest of year at TCF.

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gopherdudepart2 said:
We are being compared and likened to Butgers West. Fan apathy is pretty high if you read the Reusse article comments. This doesn't bode well for attendance rest of year at TCF.

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Reading the comments section of any Strib article is detrimental to your health, especially a Reusse article. Don't ever use the comment section as a barometer of public opinion.
 

Word said:
Reading the comments section of any Strib article is detrimental to your health, especially a Reusse article. Don't ever use the comment section as a barometer of public opinion.
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Can we use the thousands of empty seats despite having the most sought-after, promising young coach it the game?
 


gopherdudepart2 said:
We are being compared and likened to Butgers West. Fan apathy is pretty high if you read the Reusse article comments. This doesn't bode well for attendance rest of year at TCF.

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Sounds ominous.
 

PJ Fleck is realizing that rebuilding a program in the Big Ten is more daunting than rebuilding a MAC program. There are simply so many leaks to fix in his boat. Unless he fixes them, Ski-U-Mah is Sunk-U-Mah at the moment.

Oh, he is going to do it. It just takes time, intestinal fortitude, and divine patience.

He is right on one thing. He has to out recruit the current talent if he wants to bring Gopher Football to the next level(s).

I don't know. It is just getting tiresome as a long suffering fan. How in the world did Purdue get so lucky that they were able to turn their program around so quickly? In fairness, Darrell Hazell left the larder stocked for Jeff Brohm.
 
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Word said:
Reading the comments section of any Strib article is detrimental to your health, especially a Reusse article. Don't ever use the comment section as a barometer of public opinion.
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Word!
 

dpodoll68 said:
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?
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This is the realistic (and fair) perspective. Fleck can't be fired after two years and we have no choice but to wait and hope his teams performs better in the future. But, people who sneer and call people "idiots" when others suggest that he may be no better than Brewster, should look inside themselves instead because they are the ones not dealing with reality. Fleck may be better than both Brewster and Kill in the future, but right now he's underperforming both in their second years and there isn't any clear present evidence that he is a better coach than either of them.
 

scools12 said:
I think it’s fairly obvious Claeys was fired for explicitly non-football reasons.



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No, I think, to a degree, those other reasons were window dressing. I'd say football reasons were the primary motivator. A particularly important factor was that he was undoubtedly the cheapest Power 5 coach to fire. Reason #2 was to send a reminder to coaches about who are the real bosses at the university (Notice that Pitino didn't say boo when Reggie was suspended). #3 was that his firing could also be a table scrap thrown to the social grievance lobby.
 
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hungan1 said:
PJ Fleck is realizing that rebuilding a program in the Big Ten is more daunting than rebuilding a MAC program. There are simply so many leaks to fix in his boat. Unless he fixes them, Ski-U-Mah is Sunk-U-Mah at the moment.

Oh, he is going to do it. It just takes time, intestinal fortitude, and divine patience.

He is right on one thing. He has to out recruit the current talent if he wants to bring Gopher Football to the next level(s).

I don't know. It is just getting tiresome as a long suffering fan. How in the world did Purdue get so lucky that they were able to turn their program around so quickly? In fairness, Darrell Hazell left the larder stocked for Jeff Brohm.
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If that is the case he should ask for an extension like Kill did since it is worse than he thought.:D
 


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