2022 Gophers Position Previews: Running Backs

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. Today's post covers Minnesota's running backs.

Likely Starter

I, for one, did not think Mohamed Ibrahim would ever play for the Gophers again.

His season-ending injury in the 2021 opener was truly cruel. To be poised for a big season and a professional career, to be in the position to set program records on his way out, and to make a mark on network television against one of the nation's top teams, only to hobble off the field and into a medical tent is not what anyone deserves.

Ibrahim could have declared for the draft. His age, his height, his speed, and now his injury would all be held against him, but his body of work might have been enough to be picked in the late stages. As a running back, it's crucial to start receiving NFL checks as soon as possible.

However, the day before Thanksgiving, Ibrahim announced that he would return for a sixth season.

pic.twitter.com/Ch8vVxNUaa

— Mohamed Ibrahim (@_MoIbrahim) November 24, 2021

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.

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.

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.

Tweaking the Gophers' Uniforms

We all have uniform takes, and we are all totally convinced that ours are the correct ones.

I, for one, can generally be defined as a traditionalist. A team's colors should be their only colors. While new designs should always try to innovate, being different is not in and of itself a merit, and one should not sacrifice looking good for the sake of being different. A lot of uniforms that survive from generation to generation, or are resurrected after dalliances with whatever is "in" at a given moment, do so because traditional choices tend to look good. The basic tenets of design have existed for a reason.

Minnesota's current uniform set debuted in 2018 the second year of P.J. Fleck's tenure as head coach. It was unveiled on the ludicrously named hyprrelite.com, showing off garish "dart gold" helmets and the supposed ability to mix-and-match just about every part of the uniform, regardless of how a given combination looked. (It's a good thing that we've never seen anthracite jerseys on gold pants on the field.)

At the time, I was not a fan of the set. With time, and the memories that come with it, I have come to appreciate these uniforms. Not to love them, but to see their merit.

Generally speaking, that is. I am nothing if not a pedant and a nerd. I've been designing sports uniforms on my computer or in a sketchbook for years, and I have my own ideas of how to correct the Gophers' current aesthetic.

Rather than burning it all down and starting over, though, I think there are just a few adjustments you can make. Adjusting an element or two, and modifying how each element is deployed, can make the whole set better looking and more cohesive. As long as Fleck is head coach, there's no removing the "Row the Boat" stuff entirely, and the Gophers are going to try and wear 13 different uniform combinations in a season. But we can find compromises here and there, tweaking one part or emphasizing one look over another, all within the conventions of the current uniforms. We can also put in provisions to avoid uniform matchups that don't complement each other perfectly, or to maintain traditional looks in games with history.

Is this exercise self-indulgent? Fully. But it's the offseason, and we have to find something to do.

Minnesota Post-Spring Football Thoughts

Now that the Gophers' spring game has happened, there's some stuff to talk about at least for a little while before we enter the early-summer content wasteland. I was ready to write about it in full, as I did for the 2021 edition.

However, when the chance of lightning forced the game indoors, there was an issue: The camera angles on the television broadcast were terrible.

A year ago, I took stats and felt better about my ability to give the spring game a full, 10-point review, the way I do for the team's actual games in the fall. But that was not going to be possible here. What follows, then, is a series of observations and opinions on where the program stands entering the summer, which touches on some of the things we saw on display this most recent Saturday.

1. The Gophers don't want to run into another running back emergency.

Mohamed Ibrahim not playing in the spring game was not a surprise. He didn't play in the 2021 edition as a way of managing his workload. That he suffered a catastrophic injury just a few months ago made him an obvious candidate to sit again. On top of that, it was Ramadan; a practicing Muslim like Ibrahim couldn't eat or drink between sunrise and sundown, which naturally limited his ability to partake in sports during the day. Trey Potts and Preston Jelen also sat out, having encountering their own medical issues last year.

The Gophers' need to keep their tailbacks healthy is a little more urgent after the transfers of Mar'Keise Irving and Ky Thomas. The two combined for 1,523 yards and 10 touchdowns as rushers last season. Though each of their decisions are understandable — running back is a position with a short shelf life, and Ibrahim's return would have left both on the shelf longer than their talents deserve — it means the Gophers aren't so rich with options to carry the ball.

When Do the Gophers Get Commitments? (And Other Recruiting Questions)

We are in the late stages of college football's first installment of the offseason, that period between the national championship and most spring games. Even with those scrimmages on the horizon, practices underway, and a smattering of news items here and there, this part of the year doesn't come with a lot of substantial conversation topics. So it's a good time to do some big-picture thinking.

In the next few months, the Gophers will receive verbal commitments from prospects in the 2023 recruiting class. A few players have already given their pledges, but there are still plenty of spots available.

When should we expect those spots to be filled? History suggests we could see a series of commitments in April. Prospects can start taking official visits in April of their junior years, which tends to mean a wave of commitments in the spring months. Nearly half of the Gophers' 131 verbal commits in the P.J. Fleck era have come between six and eight months of the December signing day:

The 2017 class is excluded from discussion of Fleck's tenure because it was a
transition class and cannot be treated the same as any other year. Any in-season
commitments would have occurred under Tracy Claeys.

In Review: Minnesota 18-6 West Virginia

It wasn't the destination a lot of fans wanted, nor an opponent who was likely to make things terribly interesting, nor a kickoff time that was easy on either team. But Minnesota's bowl trip ended in a comfortable victory, one that would have been by an even wider margin if not for some early red zone mistakes and a fourth-quarter kneeldown in front of the goal-line.

It was a satisfying way to send off a group of seniors that have played a lot of games since P.J. Fleck's arrival in Minneapolis (and even some games before then). And it capped a weird, often frustrating, but ultimately positive season.

1. The Gophers won on the strength of their ground game.

It was the last college game for four of Minnesota's five starting offensive linemen, the biggest and most experienced group in college football. And they went out exactly as they would have wanted, leading the way in a 283-yard rushing performance.