Minnesota head coach P.J. Fleck met with the media on Monday as the Minnesota Golden Gophers prepare for the Iowa Hawkeyes on Saturday. Here’s everything Fleck said.
Opening Statement
All right, thanks everybody for being here. Proud of our guys during our bye week. Got a lot of work done, and coaches got out recruiting as well. Now we’re back ready to roll. We were able to get a day ahead, two days ahead, and really get on Iowa. The next six games, they come at you one by one. They’re either a rivalry game or a ranked opponent. So we start with Iowa at home for Floyd, so it should be really, really exciting. With that, we’ll open up for questions.
Fleck on the Bye Week and Upcoming Schedule
All right, thanks everybody for being here. Proud of our guys during our bye week. Got a lot of work done, and coaches got out recruiting as well. Now we’re back ready to roll. We were able to get a day ahead, two days ahead, and really get on Iowa. The next six games, they come at you one by one. They’re either a rivalry game or a ranked opponent. So we start with Iowa at home for Floyd, so it should be really, really exciting. With that, we’ll open up for questions.
Fleck on Special Teams Play and Room for Improvement
I think there’s a lot of good. I think there’s things we have to clean up. You know, we had a blocked punt. When you look at the field position piece, I think they’ve put us in really good positions at times. Offense, defense, and special teams—when they say complementary football, you want to be working together. As I said before in training camp and in the spring, for us to have success, complementary football is going to have to be very, very good and very consistent.
When we’ve been good, it’s been very consistent; when we haven’t been good, it’s not very consistent. We need to score on special teams, which we’ve done and got to continue to do. But then we’ve also got to continue to win field position. There’s been times we’ve done it and times we haven’t done it, because that’s the bridge that connects the offense and defense. When you’re relying on complementary football—whether that is the punt, kickoff coverage, kickoff return, punt return, scoring points on field goals, or taking points off the board with field goal blocks—all of those matter. So there’s been some really, really special moments, and then there’s certain things we’ve got to clean up. That’s what the bye week was for.
Funny enough, the field goal kicking has been pretty good. You’re only as good as what you just did, right? Through six games, we added it up and there’s a lot of room for improvement in every area. But I know our guys are working really hard to fix those things.
Fleck on the Purdue Loss in Hindsight
I mean, we moved on pretty quick from that one. You had to absorb it pretty quick. I stand by exactly what I said after the Purdue game. To Dave’s question, when you don’t play complementary football, you’re not good at it—offense, defense, and special teams. The other team played as close to perfect as you’ll watch them play, and they played complementary football. You turn the ball over and they don’t; you don’t get takeaways, and then you lose the penalty battle…