Everything that PJ Fleck had to say following the Maryland loss

Minnesota didn’t have an elite start to their 2020 road season on Friday night as the Gophers blow a three-score lead and lose in overtime to the Maryland Terrapins, 45-44. Here’s video and everything that coach PJ Fleck said following the loss. 

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Q. What do you tell your team after such a hard loss?

Fleck: I told him we’ve been in close games before, especially for the older guys in the room. I said this is what the other side of the locker room feels like. We’ve won some really close games and we’ve finished some close games, and we were on the other end of those games and it was a very celebratory locker room. This is what the other one feels like. 

With so many young players on defense. so many guys that are inexperienced and getting experienced for the first time, they’ve got to be able to build that leather skin and feel the way they felt today. That’s part of the process. This league is really, really tough every single week going right into Big Ten play. And it doesn’t matter who you play. 

We had plenty of opportunities to win the game and we put ourselves in a huge massive crater hole at the beginning of the game. Got our way out of it, got ahead and usually we can we can find a way to finish that game, but we weren’t able to. We’re a first down or two away from finishing that game and that’s how close to the margin for error is.”

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Q. Did you have any thoughts about going for two at the end of the game?

Fleck: I did, but I probably would have thought about it maybe on the second one, but not the first one. I felt like we had them in a third and long at one point, and I felt like we were getting ball back as we just scored. Being able to go down there and score and put the pressure back on them. It really never went through my mind, especially after the first one.

I felt like Brock (Walker) has done a great job filling in and we’ve had kicking situations and things this entire year with COVID know a lot of other things so. But he been doing a great job and pushed it to the right, but the extra point isn’t the reason why we lost the game.”

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Q. I’m curious for your thoughts on your defense’s performance tonight and what kind of changes need to be made to get them going in the right direction?

Fleck: When you look at our defense, I mean we lose seven starters and we knew that this year would be a little bit different. We knew we’d have to be able to go through a growing year on defense, hopefully having the offense being able to score more points at the end of the game. Especially with what some of the things we dealt with the defensive side of the ball, but it’s unacceptable.

With that many yards, that many explosive plays and there’s got to be a lot of accountability that goes around but everything starts with me. This is the way we’re going to build our program. It’s going to be a developmental program to do that. But when you look at how many explosive plays they had and what they were able to do. Too many missed tackles, too many people in a position to make a play and make a tackle and weren’t able to do that.

I always evaluate when I go back and look at the film I always look at three things. I always look at the scheme. Is it the fundamentals, techniques or is it the the actual personnel?  And I’ll go back and look at all that and we’ll evaluate that again. We have a lot of young guys on that defensive side of the ball, and some things happen. It’s hard to be able to know exactly who’s the guy to be able to go in there.

Now we have data. We have information. We’ll be able to make some decisions, see if we can patch up some holes and go from there but everything starts with me.”

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Q. How would evaluate Tanner Morgan’s game tonight?

Fleck: I think there was some really good and I think there was some really bad. I think there was some inconsistency but the fumbles are not necessarily on him. But there’s a few different reads that we’ve got to make better. I didn’t think we protected well tonight. I’m going to go back through and look at the protection. But again, nobody protects really well as I think the one team that protected really well against Michigan was Alabama and Ohio State. I think those are two people I’ve watched protect well against that front against Don Brown defense.

But when you look at Tanner, he was inconsistent. I wouldn’t call it bad, I wouldn’t call it great. I would call just inconsistent. And I know he wants to be a lot better.”

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Q. Did you think about having Michael Lantz do field goals and extra points with him back, and what did you say to Brock Walker after the game?

Fleck: Well, I just told Brock that I love him. I told me that he’s done a great job. I said that is not the reason why we lost this football game. There was plenty of opportunity. There’s plenty of blame to go around and plenty of plays to go around. The reason why we lost the game. He did a great job. He had a great field goal that gave us a chance to go up three scores and he’s done a wonderful job. Lantz was back in the lineup, but he was JUST back in the lineup. So for him to go right into the field goal kicking, I felt like staying with Brock was the right decision for that time. But again, he made every other extra point. Brock did, but it’s just so unfortunate.

I’ve been part of something like this back with Western Michigan and Toledo. I remember a game like this that came down to that and those are hard things to swallow, but we’ve been on both sides now. These are the things as you build your program, these are the ones you remember. The hard ones to swallow, but I told them we are going to swallow this pill. I’m not going to ignore it, we’re not going to run away from it. We’re going to embrace it and we’re going to get better from it and we’re going to learn.”

Q. You guys had a big commitment to the run tonight, what did you like about that and what’d you think of Mo’s four touchdown game?

Fleck: I thought Mo played tremendous and he’s back in his home state. But he played really well. We thought we could be able to finish drives with him. I thought we ran the ball really hard and really well. We had really efficient drives, effective drives and we scored 44 points. That’s pretty good when you start out in a hole. Being able to stay calm and stay poised and stay with what we do and how we do it.

But we had way too many explosive plays on defense, and it put us in a really tough position of being able to manage the game, and also be able to keep the chains moving, let the clock keep running down plays. So I was really pleased with the run game, and how we were able to do that. We got to get a lot better in a short amount of time, that’s for sure.”

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Q. With the excitement coming into this season after 2019, and the start that you’ve had in 2020, what’s the mood of the team?

Fleck: The mood of the team is we got to get better, and we can’t wait to get back to work. This is football and  last year doesn’t matter.

Just because we did that, that hadn’t happened since 1904. And we’re playing a Big Ten schedule only football in the middle of a pandemic. And everybody’s affected differently. It’s not just how you handle it, it’s how it affects you. How it changes the game plan. How it changes how you call plays. Who opted out? Who is injured? Who had COVID right before we play?

There’s so many things that affect this thing, and I told him that’s two games. It’s two games down. We have six left, plus one. And we’re just going to keep our oar in the water and we got to continue to get better. We didn’t deserve to win the football game, and they’re going to take all this knowledge and I expect us to get better this week and come out and find a way to be able to be 1-0 in the Illinois season. 

But this is college football in 2020. And look, we’re really youthful and inexperienced on defense, not an excuse. But we got to be able to get better. Even if we won that game, we got to get better at the exact same things.”

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Q. You talked about data points defensively, what did you see that was different with your defense from Michigan to Maryland?

Fleck: I think Maryland spread us out a little bit more and they were able to get their athletes in space. Their quarterback is really talented, and the kid can really run.  A lot of things they did tonight, they never really got going in Northwestern. So you really didn’t even know what they were going to be able to do with us, but we had an idea. But the kid is a really good player and we just couldn’t get to him. We’ve got to be able to stay at the level of the quarterback. We were blowing by him, we were going under him and a few times when we got the sack late. That’s exactly what how it’s supposed to look.

And we just got to find a way to get better at that, period.”