2025 Gophers Position Previews: Secondary

On the other side of this interminable heat, humidity, and rain is a precious thing in Minnesota: fall. To get you ready for it, Ski-U-Blog is again previewing this year's Gopher football team, one position group at a time. The final area of the defense is the one that could be responsible for the most headlines this season, both good and bad: the secondary.

Likely Starters

I don't know what any of you expected from Koi Perich's debut season, but I guarantee it was not that. After a few weeks on special teams, Perich stepped into the starting lineup against USC and was instantly one of the best players in the Big Ten — and that's just considering his defensive performance. He was everywhere. Crashing the box to stop the run:

Tracking one of the best players in college football in man coverage:

Making huge interceptions:

He can do everything you want from a safety. And he expects to do everything: For every ball in his vicinity that he cannot catch, Perich reels in frustration that it was not a yard closer to him, or else it would have been his. As P.J. Fleck tells it, Perich is disappointed when he does not play every possible snap. He is a cocky player with high expectations for himself, and he regularly meets those expectations.

In his introduction to the college game, Perich became the first Minnesota true freshman since Darrell Thompson in 1986 to make the All-Big Ten first team. The Sporting News, one of the five consensus All-American selectors, named Perich to their second team. With his increased presence on offense and a full season of a starter's workload on defense, he should turn more heads as a sophomore and make a run at even higher honors.

Perich is a superlative talent, but it needs to be said that he is not the Gophers' only genuine star at safety. I am just as excited to watch Kerry Brown for a simple reason: Brown is the best one-on-one tackler on this team. While his record in coverage last season was a more up-and-down, I am prepared to couch that in 2024 being his redshirt freshman season. He finished with four pass breakups and two interceptions anyway, and his bad moments were usually not too bad.

Watching Brown's tackles, though, is deeply satisfying. Whether coming from deep or from the slot, he is a ball magnet, and he finishes the play. What's more: Over the course of the season, his tackling got better. Brown started off just throwing his upper body at the legs of the ballcarrier, putting his head and neck at risk. (In fact, he missed the UCLA game.) By the end of the season, he combined force with sound technique, wrapping up in a perfect gator roll tackle.

There were several times in writing this preview series that, while revisiting one game or another, I was trying to focus on a different player only to marvel at Brown's tackles. Just look:

The Gophers have a glut of safeties and will rotate them heavily, but Brown will be one of the three they want to have on the field as much as possible. Expect him to bounce between nickel and boundary safety, but he might cover Perich on the field side as well.

By comparison, Aidan Gousby is not as exciting, but it bears noting his value. It's just hard to see. Sometimes impossible.

Here's what I mean: According to Pro Football Focus, Brown and Perich played a deep safety role just under half the time they were on the field, and Gousby was back there on three-fifths of his snaps. And by back there, I mean back there. Do you see Gousby in this picture?

Hint: He's not in it.

Corey Heatherman significantly increased the amount of Cover 1 and Cover 3 the Gophers played, and that meant the guy in center field was often 15 or more yards downfield. Most broadcasts may show that depth pre-snap, but as soon as a play starts, the main camera tends to zoom in and focus on the pocket. It's a constant problem with trying to analyze safeties who, like Gousby, play a valuable role in big-play prevention but do not make attention-grabbing plays. It's hard to talk about the passes someone prevents a quarterback from even trying by taking away his options downfield.

But for what it's worth, the Minnesota pass defense improved from 73rd in explosiveness allowed in 2023 to 10th in 2024. Though Gousby individually was only part of that, he still played a significant role with the other two underclassman safeties in keeping the lid on a post-Tyler Nubin secondary.

Gousby does have some more tangible strengths and weaknesses. He is best in the deep part of the field because playing man coverage or an underneath zone, receivers can shake him and find open space. But like his flashier partners, Gousby has become a hellacious tackler when he is actually in on the play.

Gousby is an important player in this defense who still has another year of eligibility after this one. He's not a playmaker, but he does a needed job.

Darius Green missed two-thirds of last season after an injury and comes back in a different role than before. Always a defender who craved contact, Green is moving into the slot full-time for his last college season.

Nickelback has probably always been his most fitting position. He had difficulty tracking the ballcarrier from the deep secondary, taking wild angles or looking indecisive as he came down to fill. Last season's Iowa game was particularly bad, with multiple Green errors allowing Kaleb Johnson into the third level.

Closer to the line, those mistakes should be both less costly and less frequent. Green can afford to be more aggressive now, and he has shown an aptitude for blitzing the quarterback from the edge of the box. Depending on the opponent or game state, he might feature less, but Green will approach a starter-level snap count most weeks.

Whatever Is Going On at Cornerback

As good as Minnesota's group of safeties is, cornerback is a much more precarious situation. Only two cornerbacks on the team have seen any meaningful FBS action. Transfers out, single-year transfers in, apparent recruiting misses, and minimal rotation have left a mostly unproven set of players at the position in the wake of Justin Walley and Ethan Robinson's departures.

Redshirt sophomore Za'Quan Bryan is somehow the most established of them all, and he is the only one we know will start. Bryan was ostensibly the third corner on last year's defense, to whatever degree there was a "third" corner. After Walley's injury against Nevada, Bryan started trophy games against Iowa and Michigan but averaged half a dozen snaps per game from Walley's return to the end of the regular season.

While the Hawkeyes and Wolverines' passing games were not the greatest tests, and Bryan was not perfect, the important part was that he never looked like he didn't belong on the field. Normally, teams would pick on such an inexperienced player, especially one under 6 feet tall, but teams did not challenge him. He battled with receivers at the line and did not shy away from physicality.

Bryan's start in the bowl game essentially confirmed what we thought before, with a can-of-corn interception added on for good measure in the fourth quarter. If Bryan has upside, great. For now, the Gophers just need someone who knows what he's doing and can establish a floor at field corner.

Because opposite Bryan, manning the boundary, it's anything but a sure thing. Any one of four players could be the first choice against Buffalo, and redshirt freshman Mike Gerald may be the leading candidate. I liked Gerald's athleticism last August; he jumps off the screen playing for a 2-8 team in the highest division of Texas high school football. I just wanted to see more of him playing cornerback.

Twelve months later, I still want to see more of Gerald playing cornerback. He had two snaps against Virginia Tech but otherwise has not participated in any games as a Gopher. Week 1 against Buffalo is outsiders' first chance to evaluate Gerald as a college football player.

That will be Jaylen Bowden's first appearance in a Minnesota uniform, but he at least has a season of starts under his belt at FCS North Carolina Central. Bowden earned no accolades and broke no records but was a fine player for the Eagles. He had a solid performance at North Carolina (despite a dubious pass interference call early), suggesting he can hold his own against power-conference opposition. On the season, he broke up seven passes and allowed a team-best 40 percent completion rate, per PFF, owing to his ability to stay in phase with opposing receivers downfield and catch up when they create separation.

This was a fun game, by the way.

At a slender 180 pounds, Bowden is predictably an inconsistent tackler. He made some solid plays against the Tar Heels and showed some potential for improvement, but he's almost always giving up something physically. Whether or not that — or the increased speed at this level — prevents him from becoming the first choice, Bowden looks like capable depth at worst.

While Iowa transfer John Nestor has spent more time in the Big Ten, he has hardly appeared actually at cornerback, spending his first two years of college ball as a leading special teamer for the Hawks. In his limited defensive time in 2024, did not look ready for a bigger role. Late in the blowout win over Washington, Nestor made a great 4th down run stop...

...but gave up a decent gain and then a 4th-and-goal touchdown in isolated coverage. His performance at Michigan State was much worse and more costly. Nestor was quickly called for pass interference after entering up the game, allowed three catches, missed two tackles that led to 1st downs, and then gave up this wide-open touchdown:

Nestor had another terrible missed tackle in red zone later, but I think you get the picture. The Spartans ate his lunch. His next appearance, the Nebraska game, was less eventful but not exactly a bounceback performance. If Nestor is ready to do more than cover kicks and come on in obvious running situations, he will have taken some major leaps in the offseason.

The most surprising player in this competition is Naiim Parrish, who was not even the highest-rated cornerback in Minnesota's 2025 signing class. He is also officially one of the smallest Gophers, tying true freshman receiver Legend Lyons as the second-lightest non-specialist on the roster at 175 pounds.

But Parrish is in the mix. He comes in with more experience at safety than at corner but still managed to break the career interceptions record at prestigious Bergen Catholic High School (New Jersey). He has the speed and smarts to get his hands on the ball and take the right pursuit angle for a tackle, though he does not wrap up much when delivering a hit. Parrish's tape is good, but it is not so extraordinary that I fully understand what got him into the conversation to start as a true freshman. Whether he makes it or not, Parrish will play enough this season to show what kind of player he is.

Key Backups

Jai'Onte' McMillan serves a very specific purpose on this defense: When it's time to go light, McMillan is the guy. The converted corner packs less punch than Green, but his quickness and long arms make him a better fit on passing downs. If the Gophers' safety quartet stays healthy, that might make McMillan strictly a dimeback outside of the Ohio State game and 2-minute scenarios.

I don't know if Garrison Monroe will actually play much, and I wonder if the glut of safeties on the roster will mean he eventually follows Coleman Bryson out the door for a starting job elsewhere. Monroe is still only a redshirt sophomore, though — not to mention a Shakopee product — and coaches and teammates have consistently had good things to say about him. However small a place he has in this year's defense, he may well be an important part of next year's.

Notables Unlikely to Contribute

It does not seem like redshirt juniors Evan Redding and Rhyland Kelly are at all in the cornerback competition. Each had cameos on the defense in 2024. Kelly briefly entered the Illinois game in place of Walley and immediately conceded a touchdown to Zakhari Franklin, which was the biggest moment in either player's season. They both have prominent places on the coverage and return teams, which is where they will stay.

Getting passed over by freshmen is probably less of an indictment on Samuel Madu and Simon Seidl. Madu had the tiniest appearance in the Rhode Island game, registering no snaps, and that was it for either of them in their first season on campus. I do not see paths onto the field for them currently, but there is still time.

Zack Harden moved between cornerback, safety, and the slot in high school and will join the corner group as a Gopher. You can see Harden can read plays well enough to jump routes and get in on the play. He has at least a willingness for physicality but probably needs to improve as a tackler. He will probably not see any of the field this season.

Minnesotan walk-ons Ethan Carrier and Harrison Brun are at the bottom of the depth chart at nickel and boundary safety, respectively. Zahir Rainer, a from last year's signing class, is presumably in the same place at field safety. One or two of them might get into blowouts this season.