I firmly believe that college football is difficult to coach. Winning is harder. Winning consistently is… well, I don’t know, I’ve never really experienced it as a Gophers fan. There is no formula that works, and even when it seems like things are going in the right direction, there are bumps in the road.

I’ve also had a front-row seat to the rise and fall of a handful of Gopher coaching staffs. All but one (sorry Tim, but there hasn’t been much debate about that) have gone through a period of great debate among fans about whether or not it’s time to move in a new direction.

This debate, for the first time with PJ Fleck, is rearing its ugly head within Gopher Nation. His team’s 2-2 start and home loss to Iowa last week left the faithful riled up.

Is it too early to seriously consider replacing PJ Fleck? Yes, I think it’s way too early.

The Minnesota program has been stuck in mediocrity or worse for decades. After finishing just one season under .500 (with the exception of his first season, affectionately referred to as Year Zero), I don’t think we have nearly the authority to fire coaches if they have two consecutive seasons close to finish 5-7 (should we call this “Mr. Frost’s Neighborhood”?).

Is it fair to be incredibly frustrated and ask difficult questions when the team has missed several opportunities to go a step above average over the last four or five seasons? Yes, absolutely.

Following Minnesota’s loss to Iowa, here’s what Fleck had to say:

“I love our team. I’m proud of the determination, but we didn’t play well in the second half. And if you don’t play well for 60 minutes, either on offense or defense or special teams, with really good teams and the Big Ten as it is, you get beat like that. Unacceptable, falls on me.”

He’s right. You’re going to get so beaten when you come out in the second half and get your ass kicked at the line of scrimmage. When you helplessly watch the game and notice that your defense is not making an effort to stop the opposing offense while your offense is unable to move the ball and score the points. He’s right, that falls to him.

Again, it’s entirely reasonable to be frustrated, not because of this particular game, but because a pattern is emerging under Fleck. Iowa’s second half was eerily similar to North Carolina’s second half. This isn’t specifically about second-half adjustments, but rather a style of play that focuses on not losing rather than finding ways to win.

Playing games where you reduce your chances of losing is a different philosophy than playing games where you try to increase your chances of winning.

The game of “not losing” has helped the program snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Examples are easy to find…

• North Carolina 2024
• Northwest 2023
• Illinois 2023
• Iowa 2022
• Bowling Green 2021
• Illinois 2021
• Iowa 2019

And there were also many “near misses”. Miami (OH) in 2021, Fresno/SDSU/Georiga Southern/Purdue in 2020 are great examples.

Over the last two or more seasons (2022, 2023 and early 2024), the Gophers are 6-5 (10-6 if you include 2021) in Big Ten games in which they are the favored team. In games as underdogs, they are 2-6 and beat Wisconsin in 2022 and Iowa in 2023.

It’s been two full seasons, with Minnesota finishing just over .500 in Big Ten games in their third season, where they are favored and only win 25% of games as underdogs. The average point spread in games we favored was -8.5 and as an underdog it was +6.5. This team is always underperforming as favorites, which is what happens when you aim not to lose.

I understand the philosophy. Reduce risks, score points whenever you can, and do the little things you need to do to win the game. This is what Iowa does and has done well for years. The problem is that we make too many mistakes, we’ve been missing some key fundamentals the last few seasons, and we’ve struggled at the line of scrimmage and on special teams. The margin for error is very small.

We haven’t been able to do the little things well enough and the record shows it.

PJ Fleck has done a lot of great things here in his eighth season with the Gophers. There’s no denying that 2019 was an elite year. After the Covid season, he put together consecutive nine-win seasons. Technically, he has a Big Ten West championship. This program has excellent academic ratings, it has brought more players into the NFL than at any time in decades, and the foundation appears to be so high that a bad season results in a 5-7 record.

I believe that making a program like Minnesota a consistent winner is difficult and requires painful patience. These things really take time and improvements are not linear progress. But 2019 seems like a long time ago and there have been some big missed opportunities in recent seasons since then. At some point the time for talking will be over and this program needs to punch above its weight class every now and then instead of being outdone.

Fleck ended his post-Iowa game press conference with this:

“Don’t give up on this team. This team has a lot of football left, I promise you, and we will give you everything we have in the future. We will learn from this second half, I promise, and we will correct that.”

Here too, the time to talk about it is over. The sarcastic calls to “change for the best” are over. The problem for Fleck is that apathy is creeping in and their next two opponents aren’t exactly in the same Big Ten league as them. The opportunity is there, will they open the door?