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Here’s what Minnesota coach P.J. Fleck had to say at his Monday press conference
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Minnesota Golden Gophers head coach P.J. Fleck spoke to the media during his weekly press conference Monday, and he did not have a whole lot of positives to offer after Iowa beat his team 35-7.
When speaking about his team’s offensive struggles this weekend, here is what Fleck had to say(via Ryan Burns of 247Sports):
“First of all, it starts with me. 100%. Everything that happened on Friday night, just like everything that happened this year is 100% my responsibility,” explained Fleck. “I think there was just too much inconsistency. We were not detailed enough, right? Whether it’s a depth of a route, whether it was a drop of a ball and we had eight drops. That’s not like us.”
He also didn’t get a lot of help from quarterback Tanner Morgan as Morgan had his worst game of the season to date. He completed 16 of 33 passes for 167 yards with one touchdown and two interceptions.
Fleck also talked about Mariano Sori-Marin who’s been struggling a bit for them this season:
“I think that when you look at Mariano, it’s sometimes when you do have experience and you’re surrounded by people with inexperience, you try to do their job too,” said Fleck. “And then you try to do too much. And I think that’s where Mariano’s falling into right now, and I love that. That’s something you can fix. When someone’s doing too less, that’s hard to fix right, but someone doesn’t want to do something that’s different.”
The defense was a big topic of the discussion at the press conference too, especially after Minnesota gave up 35 points this past Saturday. It marked the third time this season that the Gophers have given up at least 35 points. Here’s what Fleck had to say about the defense and the importance of getting better down the stretch:
“Yeah, I think everybody has their own philosophies,” Fleck explained. “Based on how we play, you have to have a dominant defense. We had a dominant defense last year, and we had a really good offense. I think we were probably more experienced and we were better on defense. And you can see it as we had seven/eight seniors leave.”
Minnesota will have to play much better in all three phases this Friday if they are to beat Purdue. That game will start at 7:30 p.m. ET.