2022 Gophers Position Previews: Receivers and Tight Ends

The sixth season of the P.J. Fleck era at Minnesota begins Sept. 1 against Jerry Kill's New Mexico State. Ski-U-Blog will have previews of the Gophers' notable players in each position group. As in 2021, this series begins with the receivers and tight ends.

Likely Starters

At the college level, a supposed "50-50" ball is not actually that. It's a good bit more titled in the defensive back's direction. Over the last three years, according to Pro Football Focus, the national contested catch rate has sat at about 44 percent. If you take out running backs, tight ends, and anyone who isn't specifically a wide receiver, that rate does not improve. A receiver who can even make a jump ball a real 50-50 proposition is a real weapon.

Chris Autman-Bell, entering his sixth season in the program, is one of those weapons. Since 2020, Autman-Bell has succeeded on two-thirds of his contested catch opportunities. Only one returning FBS receiver with at least 20 contested targets — Thayer Thomas of NC State, at 70 percent — has been better over the last two years.

Despite missing time due to a preseason injury, Autman-Bell was the Gophers' leader in targets, catches, receiving yards, and receiving touchdowns. After stints as a short-game receiver and as a deep threat, Autman-Bell stayed closer to the latter but was considered a top option at all levels of the field.

Autman-Bell has yet to earn more than an honorable mention for an all-conference team but should have the ability to do better if able to play a whole season. While lacking elite speed, he has shown often enough he can be more than just a long-armed jump ball target on the outside. His PFF grade last year was 6th among Big Ten receivers who are coming back for 2022. He'll be hoping a big year brings both accolades and a late-round selection in the NFL Draft next April.

We Are Maroon and Gold Episode 201

Beginning our Gopher football preview with our first preseason question: Which position or position group most needs to improve for 2022 to be a successful year?

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Can a Good Season Lead to a Short-term Recruiting "Bump"? (Part II)

Bobby Petrino has a knack for making his exits noteworthy. He signed a 10-year contract with Louisville and left for the Atlanta Falcons five months later. After a terrible start to his time with the Falcons, he decided he'd had enough, posted laminated farewells to all the players in the locker room, and left for Arkansas. He had a good tenure with the Razorbacks but lied to his bosses about an affair with a staffer, which only came out because he crashed his motorcycle. The lasting image of not just the scandal, but Petrino's Arkansas tenure, is the neck brace he wore to a press conference after the crash.

Petrino's lone year at Western Kentucky was far more mundane, unfortunately. He got in, he won eight games to show he still had it, and he got out. And for a while, it seemed like his second crack at the Louisville job was going to be just fine: He won 34 games in four years. As part of an exceptional 2016 season for the Cardinals, Lamar Jackson won the Heisman. It was all going smoothly.

And then Petrino just gave up. In 2018, Louisville lost eight games by 21 points or more, finishing winless against ACC opponents. Petrino didn't see the end of the season, as the school decided after allowing 77 points to Clemson that it was worth paying Petrino's ludicrous $14 million buyout. The news broke of his firing while his pre-taped weekly television show was on.

The scroll of Bobby Petrino being fired came across during the airing of his Coaches’ show pic.twitter.com/lAWShlWwSV

— Matt Jones (@KySportsRadio) November 11, 2018

Missouri State is Petrino's current home. Unfortunately, since it's an FCS program that was so willing to the Bobby Petrino experience that they hired him, I don't expect we'll see another high-profile, extravagant flameout.

But I want to focus on that last season with Louisville. It's hard to find a more immediate or steep collapse in the last decade than Petrino's 2018. Unsurprisingly, the school took a major step back in recruiting. After averaging roughly the 34th-best class in the country over the previous four years, Louisville fell to 70th in the 2019 recruiting rankings.

In the first part of this study, we finished by establishing a positive relationship between a team's single-season winning percentage and how good their recruiting class is both that year and the following year. It wasn't very strong, but it appeared to be there.

What I want to do this time is look specifically at the extreme ends of the spectra of winning and recruiting, though — still excluding Group of Five and Blue Chip Ratio schools, and still sticking to the Playoff era, but trying to find the seasons and classes that really stick out within our population.

We Are Maroon and Gold Episode 200

Various Gophers notes and reviewing everything that's happened since the 2021 football season.

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Can a Good Season Lead to a Short-term Recruiting "Bump"? (Part I)

The 2020 season was the best for Indiana football in decades. Caveats about the pandemic-shortened schedule aside, the Hoosiers posted their highest winning percentage (.750) since 1967, when they split the Big Ten title and made the Rose Bowl. Starting with a miraculous overtime win over Penn State, Tom Allen's team became one of the few truly fun parts of a dour year in the sport.

Following their 14-6 win at Camp Randall Stadium, Allen's players disrupted his postgame interview to tell everyone watching that he was the "best coach in the nation," encouraging high school prospects to sign with Indiana.

That it was only about a week until National Signing Day meant there wasn't enough time for this pitch to land. Indiana's 2021 class ranked 50th in the country — not dramatically far from the program's average rank over the previous seven seasons, about 52nd.

The next fall, the Hoosiers' on-field fortunes weren't so exceptional. Their record plummeted to 2-10, the first actually bad season in Allen's generally competent tenure but the school's 17th time this century missing bowl season. They looked less like Indiana: 2020's miracle and more like... well, Indiana.

There was one place where IU saw success, though: recruiting. Allen signed four four-stars as part of the 30th-best class in the country and fifth-best in the Big Ten. It looks like the 2020 season paid off, potentially setting up a better future for the Hoosiers than their most recent results indicated.

We Are Maroon and Gold Episode 199

Trampled by Turtles in Duluth and previewing the bands who will play the Minnesota State Fair.

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We Are Maroon and Gold Episode 198

Big Ten realignment and where the Wolves stand after the Rudy Gobert trade.

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We Are Maroon and Gold Episode 197

Parker Fox's injury and the NBA Draft.

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