Gophers Notebook: Minnesota 34-37 Northwestern

P.J. Fleck is not on the hot seat. I figure it's best to start with the big picture, since the gravity of this loss has surely pushed some fans to ignite their torches and many of Fleck's detractors to raise theirs in schadenfreude. The first text I got from a friend at the end of the game, in fact, posed this very question.

Fleck probably will not be on the hot seat unless Minnesota misses a bowl this season and has a bad start to 2024. That is both the reality and probably how it should be. He just signed a new contract last December, and he has a $7 million buyout. It is rare that a school pays that much to fire a football coach, and that's before considering the significant possibility that the U of M has to find a new men's basketball coach soon as well.

Besides that, the overall job Fleck has done as Minnesota head coach has been good. He is an effective program runner. In their last three full seasons, the Gophers have gone 29-10. They've beaten Wisconsin three of the last five times. They haven't lost a bowl game since Jerry Kill was coach.

In the aggregate, things are going well. Fleck was athletic director Mark Coyle's first big hire, and the university has shown little interest in non-performance reasons to look unfavorably on Fleck. Barring any shocking developments, he is staying.

As long as he stays, though, Fleck will cost his team with poor game management. Punting multiple times from within the opponents' 40-yard line. Turtling early in the fourth quarter when the lead was not insurmountable. Passing just 19 times when his pedigreed young quarterback was having a solid game and as the rushing attack was slowing down. Kicking a field goal from the 2-yard line as the first team to go on offense in overtime.

None of this is new. It's how Minnesota keeps losing Floyd of Rosedale. It's how they blew a late lead against Maryland in 2020. It's how they suffered an appalling upset against Bowling Green in 2022, only to suffer the exact same fate against Illinois less than two months later. It played a big part in how the Gophers lost their most important game this century.

Fleck has seen ample evidence that the way he coaches games and the style he requires his offense to play are problems. Not weaknesses that naturally come about as some corollary to a strength elsewhere, not just an unpopular set of tastes he happens to have for how to approach a football game. Problems. Chronic, game-wrecking problems.

No matter what recruits and transfers Fleck gets to play for him, no matter how good his defensive coordinator is, and no matter how much his players and staff buy in, Fleck repeatedly stands in his own way. Even if the Gophers stay where they are in the new version of the Big Ten, somehow making bowls every year in a tougher league, Fleck will put a ceiling on what is possible for his team. That's because because the average caffeine-fueled 13-year-old playing Madden online until 2:00 a.m. every night knows better than Fleck when to go for it on 4th down and how to manage the clock.

There is no reason the Gophers had to lose this game. They were easily the better team. They had a 21-point lead entering the fourth quarter. And in fairness to Fleck, sometimes 11 guys stop playing football as well as they have before, something a coach can only control so much. But he did not put his players in position to succeed. If the head coach had done his job more competently, the Gophers might have had a close call but still likely would have won this game.

Fleck must change. I've said that too often to believe he ever will.

Minnesota's pass defense broke too many times. For three quarters, everything was fine. It wasn't perfect: The Gophers' secondary allowed some space downfield that Ben Bryant just wasn't accurate enough exploit, aside from a deep touchdown to Bryce Kirtz. But the Wildcats only averaged 4.6 yards per play on their first nine possessions.

On their 10th possession, the Wildcats made gradual gains: a missed tackle here and a completion on a comeback route there, capped by a short touchdown run by Cam Porter. Not exactly what the Gophers wanted, but an 11-play drive lasting more than five minutes will not kill a team that still leads by two touchdowns.

Then the U of M offense stalled out with a pair of quick, run-heavy drives. Justin Walley and Tre'Von Jones each gave up long completions on corner routes, and Bryant fired the ball over the middle of the field to Kirtz. The linebackers, dropping into zone, didn't drop deep enough and couldn't react in time.

The Wildcats' last drive didn't have to mean anything. The Gophers rebounded and forced a punt. On their ensuing series, they got David Braun to use his last timeouts, making it to Northwestern's 36 yard-line. They lost ground on 3rd down, however. With only 3 yards to go from well within opposing territory, Fleck punted. So with just over 2 minutes, the Wildcats had one more shot.

Fans complain a lot about prevent defense because it's frustrating to watch the other team mount a long drive, but the tactic itself does not have to be at fault in the cases where it goes wrong. Conceding small chunks is fine when what the other team really needs is a touchdown and when they cannot afford to let the clock run.

It falls apart, though, when those chunks become bigger and when the offense is able to stop the clock. On the Wildcats' final drive of regulation, the Gophers did not execute the prevent effectively because they let those two things happen. Here, Jones missed a one-on-one tackle and allowed Thomas Gordon to just about reach the sideline.

The cameras on Big Ten Network showed Gordon's knee came down in bounds, but the Gophers should not have let him get close enough for the officials to mess up a split-second decision. It was a 1st down, anyway, so there still would have been a momentary clock stoppage.

On the next play, Danny Striggow and Devon Williams let Cam Johnson squirm past them and dive for a new set of downs. If they had made the tackle, Northwestern might have had time for just one more play in regulation.

Also note how Kyler Baugh cut through the Northwestern interior but failed to even get a hand on Bryant. The Minnesota pass rush, usually just three men, was another problem on this drive. Bryant didn't face enough pressure, even on the plays where he couldn't find an open target. Jah Joyner nearly forced a 3rd-and-long in Northwestern territory, but Joyner negated his sack by bringing Bryant down by the facemask.

After a well-covered fade didn't work, Northwestern had 5 seconds left from the 11-yard line. Joe Rossi called a stunt that turned into a five-man rush when Porter stayed in the backfield to protect. Joyner dropped into coverage, Tyler Nubin was the lone safety, and the other four defensive backs were in man coverage.

Nubin is a ballhawk. He always wants to make a play on the ball. As he showed as recently as Week 1, Nubin is plenty skilled enough to make that work: He frequently jumps routes at crucial moments and comes away with interceptions, the same way his predecessor Antoine Winfield Jr. did. He is an aggressive player. That usually pays off.

When a safety is so keen to make a big play, however, that aggressiveness can backfire. When Bryant looked off Nubin and pump-faked to the outside, Nubin jumped out of his place in center field. A.J. Henning ran a quick slant, and Darius Green couldn't run with him.

On the last play of the game, the Gophers came out in Cover 6, also called quarter-quarter-half coverage. To the field side, Green and Jones played as if it was Cover 4 or quarters coverage: taking deep zones, with Jones converting to man coverage if the outside receiver took a vertical route. Nubin, the boundary safety, was responsible for the deep half of the field, as if it was Cover 2.

On this play, Jones did have to follow Kirtz downfield on a deep post, which meant Green was all alone as the deep safety on his side of the field. Green, seeing Johnson go vertical as well, tracked his run.

Crucially, however, the inexperienced Green did not hand off Johnson to Nubin. Charlie Mangieri leaked past Maverick Baranowski. While Baranowski should have kept his eyes on Mangieri, he needed safety help that was not there.

While it's true that Bryant was far better in the fourth quarter than he was the rest of the game, this collapse had at least as much to do with the Gophers' sudden shortcomings. Every key player at every position, regardless of age and experience and overall talent, erred. The unrefined underclassmen and the veteran studs did not execute. This was a collective failure.

Those failures extended to the punting unit. In the first quarter, Quentin Redding made an excellent play to catch a punt on the fly, pinning the Wildcats 5 yards from their own goal line.

This is important to highlight because, like on defense, Minnesota was delivering on special teams. Mark Crawford put three punts inside the 20, and he hit another 45 yards. Dragan Kesich even added a 50-yard field goal. This was a fairly good performance for a time.

But when the offense and defense faltered, so did the special teams. Crawford undercooked his first punt of the fourth quarter. He nearly coffin-cornered his second but instead put it out for a touchback.

Thanks to his head coach, Crawford's third punt was from NU's 37-yard line. He needed to be precise. To gain anything from a punt so close to the opposing end zone, Crawford had to really make Northwestern drive the length of the field.

Crawford nailed it. The ball flew high enough to give his coverage team the time they needed to get downfield. It bounced around the 5-yard line and took a great bounce: forward, but not so fast it was bound to end in a touchback. Redding and long snapper Brady Weeks were both in great position to down the punt. Until...

Redding didn't realize where he was on the field. It was an honest mistake, the kind that any person could make in the moment and that genuinely deserves empathy. He knew immediately he screwed up.

That mistake was nevertheless costly. Had Redding downed the ball at the 1-yard line, we don't know what could have happened. Maybe the Wildcats, playing with even more urgency against a defense clearly not at its best, would have equalized anyway. But the Gophers really could have used those extra 19 yards.

Brevyn Spann-Ford's hands need to improve. According to Pro Football Focus, Spann-Ford's drop rate is 13.1 percent since the start of last season. He currently leads FBS tight ends in drops for 2023. Even if Athan Kaliakmanis often lacks touch on his passes, and even if what counts as a drop and what doesn't can be a subjective exercise, the overall point stands. Spann-Ford — who is so often Kaliakmanis' favorite target under pressure, who has the size and athleticism to get open and win contested balls, and who surely has NFL aspirations — has to hold onto the ball.

Once again, Spann-Ford's head coach magnified the impact of this mistake by kicking on the following down instead of trying for a touchdown. By itself, it was still a terribly timed recurrence of an issue that's been haunting one of Minnesota's best players.

Darius Taylor had another great game. This bit is going to get lost in everything else for obvious reasons, but Taylor is quickly becoming the star of this offense. He shouldn't be shouldering as great a load as he is (where were Sean Tyler and Zach Evans?), but so far he is handling it. Taylor already has more than 500 yards for the season despite taking just one carry in the opener. Against the Wildcats, he was strong and balanced and explosive. Criticism of his performance would be nitpicking. If his late-game injury is not too serious, Minnesota will still have a high-level tailback.

The season is not over. But the road ahead does not look pretty. Entering Saturday, Northwestern looked like the worst team in the Big Ten. They probably still are. There is almost definitely not a conference opponent left on Minnesota's schedule who is as flawed as the Wildcats.

According to the Massey Ratings, Minnesota is projected to win 3.8 games the rest of the year. Making it to any bowl game will be a challenge with narrow margins for failure.

There is a lot of inexperience on this team. It is not a talentless group, and in 2024, they will likely perform substantially better than we saw them be in Evanston. To make anything of this season, though, the whole team — the youth, the upperclassmen, and perhaps most of all the head coach — make progress now.