Everything P.J. Fleck said on Monday as Minnesota begins to prepare for Northwestern State
On Monday morning, Minnesota Golden Gophers‘ head coach P.J. Fleck met with the local media to provide final thoughts on the program’s week one win over Buffalo and begin looking ahead to their week two matchup against Northwestern State.
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Opening Statement
“I’m really proud of our team for being 1-0. That was the whole objective of going into last week and we were able to accomplish that, got a lot to work on between week one and week two. It’s about ourselves. It’s about improving all the things we need to improve on.”
On major coaching points coming out of week one
There’s a lot of fundamental details, techniques that we’ve got to clean up. I think that we saw in game one, the great thing about playing Buffalo, they’re a really good football team. I’m not saying there’s a number one or number three in the country matchup. I’m saying that they’re a really good football team with a lot of returning starters and we got tested in a lot of different areas. Got a lot of situational football. Got four minute, we got two minute. At one point we had to delay a game with the clock going down. Those are things that you’re working out with your football team of when you, as a head coach, can call timeout. And when you know that ball is gonna actually be snapped. We didn’t play particularly well in some areas, played great in some other areas. So it’s really just the whole overall consistency, Andy, of the fundamentals, technique, situational football, executing to the capability of the way we can play. And I think our guys were really, really honest about that. I’m not saying we played bad, I’m not saying that. We played really good in a lot of different ways. But saw some things that I didn’t see out of this football team with some inconsistencies, some drops here and there. Just some other things that schematically that we need to be able to get cleaned up. But I’m glad that we played a really good opponent that was gonna test us in a lot of areas that was really their Super Bowl. When you look at Mid-American Conference teams playing Big Ten teams, and a team that returned most of the starters from a nine win team a year ago. I thought we had three when you look at it, and the score looks at 23 to 10. But I look at three empty possessions, and I say empty, but you had the one, that was a fourth and one we didn’t get inside the green zone. And then two, the crazy knock off the ankle interception. But the play of the game is Darius Taylor chasing that all the way down. And that was the first clip we showed our football team, and what the how means, and what it means to play at the University of Minnesota, and the expectation of how hard to play. And then we have a nine minute, 45 second drive to end the game, which we’re on the 18 yard line, and it’s first and ten. So there’s no points in that either. So I think when you look at it, it looks closer than maybe it was, and the total yards, and things like that. But I was really proud of our team finding a way to win, and respond. And they had to respond in a lot of different areas with their back against the wall, and you wanna see that out of your football team early. And I think you got a chance to see this team’s DNA right away. Buffalo’s defensive line, I think a lot of people don’t realize how good they are. It looks like your offensive line maybe got better as the game went on.”
What stood out about the offensive line’s performance?
“Yeah, I thought Greg Johnson had a tremendous game. I thought Ashton Beers had a really good game. I thought our young left tackle’s gonna get a lot better as he keeps playing. But I thought Nathan (Roy) played pretty well. Right side, same thing, some inconsistencies here. But I expect that with guys playing together for the first time on that right side. We’ll continue to hopefully play even more people on the offensive line as we keep moving forward. But I really thought that going into the game that they were gonna do, they showed us one thing. And to their credit, did a lot of other things throughout the game, throwing every type of front blitz they possibly could at us. And if I was them, I’d probably do the exact same thing, especially when you’re in the game. But I thought our guys handled it with really good poise. Ran for 150 yards, and Darius did a really good job of breaking some tackles. And I thought they created some really good holes. And then we all set that with a pretty good pass game too. Without a few drops, I mean, that would have really looked very different on the stat sheet, which it already did. But we just gotta be more consistent in some areas.”
On the Gophers’ final drive and Darius Taylor getting the majority of the touches on that drive
“Yeah, I’ll answer your question in hopefully the way I understood it, because of the last part, how you asked the Darius part. Darius had really nothing to do with it. It had to do with going out there in four minute. With four minute meaning nine and a half minutes left in the game. But being in that type of mindset where you’re gonna have to bleed the clock, you’re up two scores, but you still got nine minutes in the game. So there’s gonna be a mixture between running the football and being able to pass to continue to keep the chains moving. That you’re not in a true four minute drill where you’re truly working just against the clock and looking at Buffalo’s timeouts. That’s a true four minute drill. But you have that four minute mentality of you wanna possess that football. Last year, I didn’t think we did a great job of that. This was a huge emphasis in the off season to be able to do it. Finish games, find a way with nine minutes to go to end the game. Now, I’m not saying it’s gonna be easier as we move forward, especially in the Big Ten, but that mentality of taking all the spring ball, all the emphasis of the offseason, talking about it in training camp, teaching it in training camp, showing us that if we’re gonna get to where we wanna be, we’re gonna have to be really good in situation of ball. That was a great example of it. So I know we didn’t get any points at the end, but we’re on the 18 yard line first and ten, and it’s a nine minute, 45 second drive. That’s one of the longest drives we’ve had here at the University of Minnesota since we’ve been here, and we’ve had some really good ones like that. So I think that was a mindset drive, and that was a character building drive. And that’s gonna help us as we keep going throughout the year, you hope.”
On Drake Lindsey’s performance after further review
“Yeah, I mean, he played incredibly poised. I think he was very mature. We’re talking about a freshman. I think you looked across the country. There was a lot of football played this past weekend. A lot of young players played really well. A lot of young players didn’t play well. A lot of older players played well. A lot of older players didn’t play well. So when you’re looking at who we have as our quarterback, I don’t think anything shocked me. Because I think that I get to see that every single day. I get to see his composure. I get to see his poise. There’s a lot of things he learned. You can’t take a sack down there in the green zone. You can’t take that in that particular moment. I think he understood that. You think you understand it, and then you gotta go do it. Remember, there’s an easy way and a hard way of learning things. The easy way is learning from being coached, learning from other people’s mistakes, learning through the video, learning through different situational things that the head coach puts in team meetings. The hard way is you gotta go out there and do it yourself. And some people need to learn the easy way and the hard way. And I think that those are some of the things, like I said, that I’m glad we got tested in a lot of different areas, including making some mistakes early in the season that we can’t make as we continue to move forward throughout the season. So there was so many things like that that I’m glad that we got to experience and really get a chance to teach as we keep moving forward.”
On Lindsey being coachable on the sidelines, particulary after taking a poor sack in the first half
“Yeah, I mean, there wasn’t really an earful. It was just telling him and coaching him that he could not take a sack there. And it’s one thing about that’s the difference between knowing and doing, okay? And there’s a big difference between teaching and coaching, telling and coaching, knowing and doing. You can know it all you want. Like you can know it, you can repeat it, you can say it. You can say it in the meeting. You can say, hey, what can’t we do here? Can’t take a sack. And then you do it. And where’s the disconnect, right? And those are the things that you go back as a head coach. Okay, so I thought he knew it. And I obviously didn’t do a good enough job of coaching it. And in that moment, though, you got one chance because I’m a firm believer in the way we coach. You’ve been at practice, Andy, a long time. The coaching is immediate here. Within five seconds, if you’re not coaching something, they already forgot about what you’re talking about. They’re already onto the next play. The impact isn’t going to be as big because just like as a little kid, right? And you did something and your parent caught you and you were on it. I mean, it jolted you a little bit. Yeah, I remember that. I remember that lesson. If you talk to me two, three days later, I’m like, what are you talking about? Like, what do you mean? An hour later, I’m going to tell your dad when your dad gets home. Okay. And the dad got home and the story doesn’t even make sense. I don’t know what mom’s talking about. I mean, they kind of happened that way. It’s got to be immediate. And that’s when we had our moment on the field where he knew that you just can’t take a sack in that moment. He knows it, but now he’s got to go do it and continue to transfer that over into the doing piece.”
On the Gophers’ clean tackling against Buffalo (zero missed tackles versus 22 last year in season opener against UNC)
“Well, I think that when you look at it, you want to get better in tackling. I mean, that’s one of our big three in the 78% statistics we talk about, ball tackling and explosive plays. I think Danny Collins does a really good job of teaching it. I think we do a really good job of emphasizing it. And I think we’ve done it more than we ever probably have in an off season. And I’m not saying tackling just each other in practice. We did that a little bit more in training camp than we probably have, but it’s the drills starting every single practice with the tackling convention, the tackling circuit, it’s the emphasis from the coaches, even our pass rush circuit, everybody’s a pass rusher. So if you’re going to get what you emphasize, and I thought in the off season, we emphasize tackling in a major way. And we have a lot of guys who have played a lot of football for us on that side that should continue to get better. But that’s something that we’re going to have to be really good at. This football team, for us to have, however you want to consider success, has to do the little things really, really well. The little things, the blocking, the tackling, the catching, the breaking tackles, the tackling the ball carriers. I mean, those things, we’re going to have to do really, really well. And I thought it was a good start in that department.”
On Darius Taylor’s performance in week one and his development
“I think the furthest he’s come is I think his vision. I think being able to see the schemes for what the schemes are. I think that was one of the hardest transitions for him when he first got here. Great athlete, could catch the football, could break tackles. He’s a big player. He’s really good in space. He’s tough. He’s good in pass pro. He’s smart. But I think the understanding of all the run concepts we have, this isn’t just inside zone and outside zone. Our run game is way more extensive than it used to be with just Mohamed Ibrahim, but it’s, and just having a huge offensive line where it’s just vertical. This is a little bit more extensive. And I think he’s got a really good understanding of conceptually of what we’re doing and where he needs to take his eyes and what we’re doing with the run game. And I think he can continue to get better. Don’t get me wrong, but I think that’s where he’s taking the big jump.”
On the tush push in the first quarter
“Yeah, that’s a bad call by me. Move on. That’s a horrible call. I mean, it doesn’t, and I’m sitting, that’s just, that was a horrible call. Okay, you put that on you. 100%, yeah. Question is, do you feel like you have sort of a—When you’re sitting there as a head coach, saying, I think I should call timeout right here. Really think I should call timeout right here.”
“Well, really, I mean, it was a tush push with the tight end and a certain formation and it was a really yard and a half-ish. So to me, bad call. I mean, we have the tush push. We have 15 different ways to do it. I mean, I’m not out on the tush push because of one play, but that particular play, I didn’t like it. And that was, you know, you go back and you all know me. I’m not a hindsight guy. I mean, it is what it is. You have a chance to call a timeout. I didn’t, I learned from it. You know, I’ve got to be better as head coach. I think just the way they swarm, the way they play together.
The most exciting aspect of how the Gophers’ defense played on Thursday
I mean, Danny calls it the havoc defense and rightfully so. I think that described how we played and we swarmed everywhere. I mean, there’s two plays. There’s the interception that we have that sets up three points for him. And then there’s a double move on Kerry. And one thing about Kerry Brown is if Kerry Brown ever makes a mistake, he’s never going to make the mistake again. He’s one of our better cover guys, one of our better football players on this team. But I’m glad that happened early in the season to him. And it’s only going to make him better. But other than those two plays, I thought we shut them down. I mean, literally shut them down, shut down their entire offense. They have an all-MAC running back. They’ve got a really good, maybe the best offensive line in the Mid-American Conference. So I thought that our guys did a really good job tackling, really good job swarming the ball, creating havoc. The only thing we just didn’t do was create the takeaways that we need to continue to create so to have success this season.”
What did he learn about his wide receivers and tight ends?
“I really, I mean, I like them a lot. I mean, I like our receivers. I’m not going to let three drops sit there and say, okay, well, you know, I don’t like them. I mean, I really like them. They just have to realize that when, as we keep growing together, that this is, this has a chance to be a really special passing game. And it doesn’t come around very often when you have a chance to be really, really special in the pass game. And we cannot take that for granted on either side, whether the quarterbacks or the receivers. And not that they’re taking that for granted, but you can’t. Let’s, you know, Jalen Smith’s a freshman and he’s running a dig. The only ball, the only place that ball could have been thrown was exactly where that ball was thrown. And it wasn’t thrown there on accident. That was Drake knowing exactly where that ball had to be. And the slide piece and then getting hit on top, that’s going to happen, right? But a young person who hasn’t necessarily done that, played Big Ten football, played in the Big Ten yet, played at this level, doing that, now he understands that every contested catch, or most contested, most catches in the Big Ten are going to be contested catches and you’re going to get hit. You can take the pad all you want, right? And hit person after a catch, right? We do in practice every single day. Same thing I talked about earlier, between knowing and actually doing. But when you slide and those people are going to come over you on top of that ball, it’s just a different experience than what maybe what you’re seeing in practice. Every time we do something, we will learn from it. And this team has done that all year since January and continued to show that all through training camp. And I expect us to respond in week two, but I’m very encouraged by what I saw, even the run after the catch with Javon Tracy, his dig route that he caught and what he was able to do with that afterwards. The explosive play ability that we have that we can get behind people. We just have to execute at a higher level and we will definitely do that.”
On avoiding a letdown-type game against Northwestern State on Saturday
“I know that they’re going to be really, really excited to come in here and play and rightfully so, anytime you break some type of streak. I mean, I remember, you know, if you think back to when I always say that one of the turning moments for us in our tenure here is when we beat Wisconsin at Wisconsin after 14 straight years of losing. You know, when I got recruited to Northern Illinois, they were on a losing streak and took the goalposts into the lagoon, you know, and then from there, the whole program turned around. And so those are program defining wins that can really jumpstart a whole program. You know, we’re just getting started on them as of yesterday and spent the whole day on them, but I do know that, you know, they’re going to be really, really confident coming in here. They’re a very different team than they were last year, a lot of turnover in their roster, but the focus is us. The focus is on proving on the things that we weren’t very good at in game one to go to game two. It’s simply about us. It would be the same way, no matter who we play. A lot of you have been around me a long time. I don’t believe in the biggest jump you make is between game one and game two. It’s game one to two, two to three, three to four, four to five, and I’ve said that every single year. We want to keep developing and keep getting better through every single game that we play. And there’s a lot to get better at from game one to game two that we have to clean up, and we’re going to have to play harder. We’re going to have to play better. We’re going to have to play smarter, and we’re going to have to play a really good, really good style of football to win this game. And that’s always going to be the expectation here. So it’s about the Gophers. It’s about us playing really good football on Saturday afternoon.”
Evaluating his special teams performance in week one
“I mean, one thing about me is when you’re talking about, like, I’m a very process-driven person. I’m a very process-driven coach. I’m not necessarily just like, oh, good, we got the result. Obviously, to be 1-0, you want to be 1-0, but then the best part about being a coach is how’d you get to 1-0? And there’s a lot of things you don’t like that you got to 1-0 with. There’s a lot of things you do like that you got to 1-0 with. And I think when we look at our special teams, there’s a lot of things we can keep improving on, the cleanliness of it, the execution piece of it. But I think those were three big kicks that we made, and those were huge in the game and what we needed to accomplish. But we can be a lot cleaner, and I think everybody came in with that type of mindset in special teams. Got a lot of fair catches, and the return game, I don’t know if it was as significant, but we were able to go three for three, which is a great result. Just has to be a lot cleaner. Yeah, same thing, just a little bit cleaner, whether it was protection, whether it was timing, whether it was allowing our gunners to be able to get down the field properly, whether it was sky punt, there was a lot of things that we could do better. You see the very end result of that. Our guys do a really good job saving that ball on the one-yard line, that’s fine. But you’re that close from that being, not a catastrophic play, but I would have just went for it. Like, I hate when the ball goes in the end zone. Like, nothing irks me more than the ball going in the end zone, and I see it every Sunday, I see it every Saturday. The ball lands six yards in the end zone, I’m like, what are we doing? If you just tell me you’re gonna put the ball in the end zone, then I’m gonna go for it. Just tell me if that ball’s gonna go in the end zone, and I’m gonna go for it. So our punters have a rule that it doesn’t go in the end zone.”
On his team’s health heading into week two
“It’s a great question. Great way to ask the question, Andy. Two hours before the game, the injury report will be released. I expect to get some guys back, which will be great.
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