P.J. Fleck isn’t on anyone’s hot seat. At all.

Let the record show that those words were written before the rest of what you’re about to read. And while you might not agree with the following sentiment, hopefully it at least makes you think.

Call me crazy, but I think there should be plenty of pressure on Fleck to deliver in Year 2.

By “deliver,” I’m not saying that the Gophers have to take down Wisconsin en route to a B1G West crown. Delivering at Minnesota is getting back to the 8-9 win mark that it was at two short years ago. And obviously the roster that Fleck inherited was not going to win 8-9 games. Everyone knew that.

Even though it only yielded five wins, Fleck’s first season was all about laying the foundation. It was getting “Row the Boat” on every piece of Minnesota merchandise available. It was “establishing the culture to become elite.”

Now is the time for Fleck’s program to show that it made those necessary steps, and that those words were more than, you know, words.

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This is second year of the two-year window for Fleck to capitalize on the opportunity that he has at Minnesota. At least it is in terms of a marketing standpoint.

There’s a certain amount of brand power that Fleck carried after his 13-1 season at Western Michigan. As arguably No. 2 up-and-coming coach at the time — Tom Herman probably had the No. 1 spot — Fleck knows better than anyone that you have to strike while the iron is hot. All it takes is a couple of down seasons and suddenly those catchy catchphrases become national punchlines. That’s how quickly the college football world operates.

When Fleck was hired, there were some concerns from Minnesota fans that he was almost too up-and-coming. As in, he was going to have one nine-win season and bolt as soon as a bigger job opened up. Gopher fans can sleep easier knowing that there isn’t any imminent danger of that happening.

They’d probably sleep even easier if their team was knocking on the door of 9-10 wins, though.

As of right now, that’s not the case. Shannon Brooks’ season-ending injury didn’t put Minnesota any closer to that. Fleck will have one less weapon to turn around the Gophers’ No. 109 scoring offense.

Minnesota’s offensive revival hinges on getting better quarterback play. College teams can be decent without having a particularly accurate passer (Nick Fitzgerald completed 56 percent of his passes for Mississippi State last year) as long as they have a mobile quarterback. The Gophers had neither.

If Fleck is going to keep his reputation as an offensive-minded coach, that has to change in 2018. Two years of woeful offenses killed Jim McElwain’s reputation even after he won consecutive division titles at Florida. As McElwain learned, it becomes difficult to sell your offensive prowess in the recruiting world after consecutive seasons of disappointing offenses.

Want an example that hits a little closer to home? How about Jim Harbaugh?

He basically put the kibosh on his off-field antics because even after all of those offseason headlines, winning speaks louder than any of that. And if you don’t believe that was a significant change, perhaps you missed Michigan’s noticeable recruiting drop off in the 2018 class.

Right now, Minnesota is recruiting at a rate that it never has before. Signing highly-touted recruits from IMG Academy was Fleck’s doing. But if he’s going to sustain that, winning in Year 2 has to happen or else Minnesota becomes a much tougher “on the rise” sell.

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There’s also the need to capitalize on the newly-opened Athletes Village, which took a cool $166 million to build. The 338,000 square-foot facility was as big a game-changer as Minnesota could’ve asked for. Fleck has probably talked about the new state-of-the-art facility every day since he was hired. Shoot, it was one of the reasons he said he came to Minnesota in the first place.

That’s a “no excuses” type of investment into athletics at Minnesota. Fleck is part of that. A big part of that.

He said entering fall camp that he didn’t want freshmen to think they “are just freshmen.” He knows that even though his roster is 72 percent freshmen and sophomores, there aren’t any excuses in Year 2.

This could be considered Fleck’s sophomore year at Minnesota. In his sophomore year at Western Michigan, he turned one win into eight. Fleck found his quarterback in Zach Terrell, and the Broncos went from a doormat to a force in the MAC.

That’s obviously a tougher thing to do in the B1G. And, that’s also obviously what Fleck signed up for. There will be critics who will pile on Fleck’s unique style if Minnesota doesn’t rise above mediocrity in 2018. He put Minnesota in the national spotlight, which means he’s subject to all the pressure that comes with it.

Only time will tell how elite Fleck and the Gophers can be. Maybe “Row the Boat” reached its peak in 2016. Or maybe it’ll be the rallying cry of a program that finally has decade-long success for the first time since World War II.

Fleck’s window is now. In order to accomplish all of his big-time aspirations, Year 2 is the time to turn talk into results.

If he doesn’t, he could be rowing upstream for the rest of his time at Minnesota.