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Carter Coughlin says special 2019 season ‘just the beginning’ of things to come for Minnesota

Dustin Schutte

By Dustin Schutte

Published:

An eleven-win season is unheard of in Minneapolis. While Minnesota has enjoyed some nice seasons throughout the course of its history, hitting a double-digit victory total has been pretty rare.

But don’t expect this year to be an outlier. If you believe former Minnesota defensive end Carter Coughlin, there’s a lot more success coming for the Golden Gophers on the field.

Coughlin is working on his draft stock this week, participating in the Senior Bowl, scheduled for Saturday afternoon in Mobile, Alabama. Following a practice, Luke Inman of Zone Coverage Minnesota asked Coughlin what makes P.J. Fleck and the culture at Minnesota so special.

He raved about the things Fleck and the staff are doing.

“It’s fundamentally sound as a culture, it’s rooted deep and it’s done the right way and it’s not going anywhere,” Coughlin said. “All the success you saw this year, that’s just the beginning. It’s going to keep building from there.”

Minnesota has experienced growing success over Fleck’s first three seasons in the Twin Cities. The Golden Gophers finished the 2017 campaign with a 5-7 record, and was able to get to 7-6, winning the Quick Lane Bowl the following year.

This year, Minnesota finished 11-2 and defeated Auburn in the Outback Bowl. It was quite an improvement from the previous season.

Fleck and the new Minnesota culture is sticking around for awhile. And it sounds like everyone within the program believes the Golden Gophers are on a high trajectory moving forward. It should be a lot of fun to see what happens in the coming years.

Dustin Schutte

Dustin grew up in the heart of Big Ten country and has been in sports media since 2010. He has been covering Big Ten football since 2014. You can follow him on Twitter: @SchutteCFB