Minnesota Golden Gophers Preview 2022: Previewing, predicting, and looking ahead to the Minnesota season with what you need to know and keys to the season.
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Minnesota Golden Gophers Preview
Head Coach: PJ Fleck, 6th year at Minnesota, 35-23
11th year overall, 65-45
2021 Preview: Overall: 9-4, Conference: 4-3
Offense, Defense Breakdown | Keys To The Season
Season Prediction, What Will Happen
Minnesota Top 10 Players | Minnesota Schedule & Analysis
Minnesota Golden Gophers Preview 2022
Full disclosure, I grew up in Minneapolis.
I was there for the 84-13 Nebraska win over the Golden Gophers.
I was there when a Lou Holtz-led team almost ended an Oklahoma national championship run before it started.
I sat through a whole lot of really, really, really bad college football.
I point all of that out only because the 1980s version of me would’ve killed for a program good enough to win three bowl games in four years, screw up a team as good as Wisconsin a few times, and win 11 games in a season and nine more two years later – let’s just skip 2020. So it doesn’t feel right to suggest this …
Yeah, Minnesota is winning now, and it’s enjoying some success, but this is the sixth year under head coach PJ Fleck. It’s time to do more.
To the credit of Fleck, he has never expected or pushed for anything less than big things at a program that’s hasn’t been used to big things for a long, long time.
It wasn’t a fluke that last year’s team pushed Ohio State in the opener. It wasn’t crazy that it stuffed Wisconsin, and rolled through the midsection of the schedule, and totally shut down Colorado on the road and West Virginia in the Guaranteed Rate Bowl. But it did all that, and …
Who loses to Bowling Green? Not even Akron lost to Bowling Green. Who gets six points in a loss to Illinois? Even Northwestern scored two touchdowns against the Illini.
To go cliché, the Gophers are able to hang with just about anyone with the way it plays, but it’s also able to lose to almost anyone. Those bad losses last year were an aberration – the program has been good against the bad. This year, there can’t be those misses with a schedule that’s sneaky-tough – more on that in a moment.
There’s an established style. The running game will be great, the defense will find parts to fill in, and every game is going to be entertaining.
Minnesota is relevant. That might not seem like enough, but trust me, that’s pretty good.
Offense, Defense Breakdown | Keys To The Season
Season Prediction, What Will Happen
Minnesota Top 10 Players | Minnesota Schedule & Analysis