Year 7, one of the most pathetic losses in my 45 years.

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Gophers1992 said:
Sometimes I feel like I watched a different game than everyone else on GH. Our offense put up 430 yards and 31 points but somehow 80% of comments are blaming the offense more than the D.
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Fair point.

But what's wrong with putting up 56 on a team? Fleck follows the tressel model of getting up and then playing 100% conservative. Its fine if your defense is lights out. But if your D isnt, then it's recipe for disaster
 

Gophers1992 said:
Sometimes I feel like I watched a different game than everyone else on GH. Our offense put up 430 yards and 31 points but somehow 80% of comments are blaming the offense more than the D.
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How many yards did we have on the second half? I'll tell you, about 120. This was 100% percent due to PJ fleck and his gutless, play not to lose attitude, instead of stomping your cleats down on your opponents throat. He lives on Lake Minnetonka but his balls still reside in Michigan. Gutless.
 

Devastating. I've been transported back to the metrodome. PJ needs to change his FN best!
 

I seen a lot of collapses in Gopher football. The Badger punting fiasco, along with others in the Mason era but this one might be the worst. This wasn’t supposed to happen under Fleck . As a fan I could care less about watching this product anymore .Enough is enough, I wonder where attendance will head after this . This will be an interesting crossroads to see if the interest in this program goes south quickly. It’s not like it was great before. To lose to this Northwestern team is beyond unacceptable. A video enhanced slogan of This is Golden Gophers football as the punt gets downed in the end zone seems fitting.
 
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I have a question. Why are people saying Northwestern is horrible? This is what they've done so far this year:

lnGoJ00.png


Two losses are at Rutgers and at Duke (same time as we were losing to UNC, in fact).

Duke beat Clemson and is now 4-0. Rutgers, you can go look on the other games thread here and see people talking about how much better they are, they're going to give Iowa and Wisc a hard game, etc.


I don't see anything showing that NW is horrible. I'm by no means claiming they're a great team.

But they're a Big Ten team (and a great school academically). Especially with the transfer portal now, they're always going to have some pretty decent players.

I don't buy them going winless in their final six Big Ten games. Nope
 

MplsGopher said:
I have a question. Why are people saying Northwestern is horrible? This is what they've done so far this year:

lnGoJ00.png


Two losses are at Rutgers and at Duke (same time as we were losing to UNC, in fact).

Duke beat Clemson and is now 4-0. Rutgers, you can go look on the other games thread here and see people talking about how much better they are, they're going to give Iowa and Wisc a hard game, etc.


I don't see anything showing that NW is horrible. I'm by no means claiming they're a great team.

But they're a Big Ten team (and a great school academically). Especially with the transfer portal now, they're always going to have some pretty decent players.

I don't buy them going winless in their final six Big Ten games. Nope
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NW has been a better program than MN recently with greater success, but the context of NW’s season matters.

Even if they are not “horrible”, we should be far-and-away better. The context of the game matters also - a team that came in with poor passing numbers absolutely carved up our team at will when we had a 21 pt lead in the final quarter. We could all feel this classic MN failure and it happened exactly as we felt.

This also cripples MN’s opportunity to win a pathetic West division before that task becomes much more difficult.

Finally, when recruits are watching WI or Iowa play in the B1G title game while MN sits home bowl-less or another low-tier bowl against a MAC opponent, that carries weight.

Just an awful loss with brutal consequences.
 

I'm not hitting the panic button yet. There is still time to fix the defense, and I have to believe that Rossi stayed up all night in a fever pitch trying to figure it out.

Athan threw the ball better.

There's still time. 8-4 regular season, even West title if some other things happen, are not off the table.
 

GopherWeatherGuy said:
Lol come on. This game was embarrassing but where’s that obese introvert coaching now?
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This isn't a knock on the current staff but the obese introvert Claeys knew how to coach, game plan and call a defense. It is likely no coach would hire him because being obese when trying to recruit and coach football players is not an asset or healthy. Can't have your football coaches dressing like and looking like a slob.
 
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Rossi took over from a D-Coordinator that was filling the players with too much detail and theory...just simplified the playbook and they took off from there.

Assuming this "more basic" approach is still in place, what direction do you go now? I refuse to put this entirely on the players and lack of execution. Something bigger going on.
 

Gophers1992 said:
Sometimes I feel like I watched a different game than everyone else on GH. Our offense put up 430 yards and 31 points but somehow 80% of comments are blaming the offense more than the D.
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They lost to Northwestern.

This wasn't a loss to Florida State or even Maryland.

Northwestern, the worst.

Think about the impact.
 

gopherdudepart2 said:
This isn't a knock on the current staff but tge obese introvert Claeys knew how to coach, game plan and call adefense. It is likely no coach would hire him because being obese when trying to recruit abd coach football players is not an asset. Can't have your football coaches dressing like and looking like a slob.
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There are sloppy and obese football coaches everywhere, including the NFL. Claeys was, thankfully, let go because he is a dud.

Egad enough with this guy. I wouldn’t want Claeys back if he coached for free.
 




MplsGopher said:
I have a question. Why are people saying Northwestern is horrible? This is what they've done so far this year:

lnGoJ00.png


Two losses are at Rutgers and at Duke (same time as we were losing to UNC, in fact).

Duke beat Clemson and is now 4-0. Rutgers, you can go look on the other games thread here and see people talking about how much better they are, they're going to give Iowa and Wisc a hard game, etc.


I don't see anything showing that NW is horrible. I'm by no means claiming they're a great team.

But they're a Big Ten team (and a great school academically). Especially with the transfer portal now, they're always going to have some pretty decent players.

I don't buy them going winless in their final six Big Ten games. Nope
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Because they were one of the worst teams in the nation last year and are in off the field shambles.
It’ll be interesting to see where they go from here.

You may be right and they may be an average team. Making them a west contender
 

hello-world said:
We are objectively not talking about the same shit which is a big part of the reason that I'm not sitting here calling for PJ's job right now.
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Do you think his seat is warm?
 




hello-world said:
Oh come on:
  • 2021 BGSU
  • 2015 Michigan
  • 2014 Illinois
  • 2011 NDSU
  • 2010 SDSU
  • 2010 NIU
  • All of 2007
  • 2006 TTU
  • 2003 Michigan
Are all in the same neighborhood. This game is in great company.
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I look at that list and think at least some of those made more sense than last night.
  • 2003 Michigan, a team that went on to win the Big Ten
  • 2006 Texas Tech, a good, 8 win team on its way to peaking two years later in 2008
  • 2011 North Dakota State, a good FCS team taking advantage of a rebuilding year
  • 2015 Michigan was a 10 win team that dominated Florida on New Year's Day
Last night and 2021 against Bowling Green just feel like they don't compute. I know a loss is a loss regardless, but those are just tougher to swallow all things considered.
 

Spoofin said:
It his presser PJ said our strategy works 99% of the time and this was that 1%. Doesn’t sound like a guy who is going to change his best.
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I guess a fair amount of that 99% didn't translate into wins...
 

gopherdudepart2 said:
This isn't a knock on the current staff but tge obese introvert Claeys knew how to coach, game plan and call adefense. It is likely no coach would hire him because being obese when trying to recruit abd coach football players is not an asset. Can't have your football coaches dressing like and looking like a slob.
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It's funny how quickly people forget about the Michigan and Penn St blown losses, the close non-conference wins against bad teams, and the defense getting shredded by two terrible Rutgers and Purdue teams.
 


GopherWeatherGuy said:
It's funny how quickly people forget about the Michigan and Penn St blown losses, the close non-conference wins against bad teams, and the defense getting shredded by two terrible Rutgers and Purdue teams.
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Yeah. It’s also funny how people still haven’t let go that we fired our interim coach in the midst of an off the field scandal 8 years ago because he won 9 games once.
Even though the current coach has won 9 games 3 times.
 

Harrymannback77 said:
How many yards did we have on the second half? I'll tell you, about 120. This was 100% percent due to PJ fleck and his gutless, play not to lose attitude, instead of stomping your cleats down on your opponents throat. He lives on Lake Minnetonka but his balls still reside in Michigan. Gutless.
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And it still should have been more than enough. Giving up 21 points in a quarter is simply unacceptable. First quarter points count the same as 4th quarter points. The offense scored enough to win, plain and simple. I’m not saying we should be praising our offense, I’m saying this loss rests 100% on the defense. It’s not like we turned the ball over or did a terrible job punting. They allowed multiple long TD drives in short time in Q4.
 

Gophers1992 said:
And it still should have been more than enough. Giving up 21 points in a quarter is simply unacceptable. First quarter points count the same as 4th quarter points. The offense scored enough to win, plain and simple. I’m not saying we should be praising our offense, I’m saying this loss rests 100% on the defense. It’s not like we turned the ball over or did a terrible job punting. They allowed multiple long TD drives in short time in Q4.
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Yeah. Offense could’ve won it for the team. Didn’t.
Defense lost It for the team.
 

JimmyJamesMD said:
Fair point.

But what's wrong with putting up 56 on a team? Fleck follows the tressel model of getting up and then playing 100% conservative. Its fine if your defense is lights out. But if your D isnt, then it's recipe for disaster
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Absolutely would have liked to
Put the foot on their throat. And your point is right but we didn’t even need the D to be lights out in the 4th quarter. We needed them to not put up a historically awful performance. Simply being bad would have been good enough to win.
 

GopherWeatherGuy said:
It's funny how quickly people forget about the Michigan and Penn St blown losses, the close non-conference wins against bad teams, and the defense getting shredded by two terrible Rutgers and Purdue teams.
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But Claeys. Pj is your guy and he is proving to be nothing special. Just admit the loss last night was largely due to coaching decisions.
 

MplsGopher said:
I have a question. Why are people saying Northwestern is horrible? This is what they've done so far this year:

lnGoJ00.png


Two losses are at Rutgers and at Duke (same time as we were losing to UNC, in fact).

Duke beat Clemson and is now 4-0. Rutgers, you can go look on the other games thread here and see people talking about how much better they are, they're going to give Iowa and Wisc a hard game, etc.


I don't see anything showing that NW is horrible. I'm by no means claiming they're a great team.

But they're a Big Ten team (and a great school academically). Especially with the transfer portal now, they're always going to have some pretty decent players.

I don't buy them going winless in their final six Big Ten games. Nope
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Since when is UTEP Miners a quality win? Northwestern has not one quality win, except the Minnesota debacle.

1695568707360.png

Northwestern ranked last in Big Ten in preseason rankings:


The ongoing hazing scandal and dismissal of coach Pat Fitzgerald is the biggest storyline surrounding this program and team going into '23. Interim coach David Braun inherits a squad that won just one contest last year and brings back only seven starters. Getting Cincinnati transfer Ben Bryant to man the quarterback spot helps, but the Wildcats will need massive improvement on both sides of the ball to have a shot at avoiding the West Division cellar.


Northwestern was a unanimous pick among panel to finish last in West:

www.cbssports.com

Big Ten expert picks 2023: Most overrated and underrated teams, projected order of finish, bold predictions

Taking a close, detailed and opinionated look at the Big Ten ahead of the 2023 college football season
www.cbssports.com www.cbssports.com
 

Vandy said:
His defenses never gave up 21 in a quarter to ANYONE.
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Besides giving up 24 in Q2 to Michigan in 2011:

Gave up 28 in Q2 to NDSU in 2011
24 in Q1 to Purdue in 2011
24 in Q2 to Nebraska in 2011
21 in Q1 to Northwestern in 2011
21 in Q2 to Iowa 2012
21 in Q2 to Wisconsin 2015
21 in Q4 to Wisconsin 2016. Although Mitch helped a lot with that.
There was a 19 point 4th quarter to Indiana in 2013
There were also five 17 point quarters.
 

BarnBurner said:
But Claeys. Pj is your guy and he is proving to be nothing special. Just admit the loss last night was largely due to coaching decisions.
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Never said it wasn't. PJ is unquestionably a better coach than Claeys by any measurement. Arguing against that is complete stupidity.
 

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