If the Gophers football team’s passing game takes off this fall, the group of skill-position players responsible might point to a launching pad located in Georgia.
New starting quarterback Max Brosmer is behind a volunteer get-together with his new teammates over the next week. The Roswell, Ga., native started hosting retreats at his home base in the Atlanta suburbs during his five-year run at the University of New Hampshire, and he kept it going during spring break of his first semester at the U in early March.
“(When) you are talking about most people’s spring break — you hear Panama City (Fla.), you hear Miami, you hear all these things,” Gophers head coach P.J. Fleck said to kick off spring practices in late March. “Nope, he took a bunch of players back with him and they worked out during the spring break.”
In March, a much smaller gaggle of Gophers receivers with Georgia ties joined Brosmer for a few days of work and bonding, but now that spring semester classes and exams are finished, a dozen key offensive players are expected to convene for a week’s worth of workouts and hangouts through next Friday.
No. 1 receiver Daniel Jackson headlines the list; the all-Big Ten receiver was sidelined during spring practices and could use some time in the chemistry lab with QB1. Brand-new transfer receiver Tyler Williams, a four-star Floridian who spent his freshman season with the powerhouse Georgia Bulldogs, will catch his first balls from Brosmer. And U wideouts Le’Meke Brockington and Kenric Lanier are making return visits.
Top tailback Darius Taylor and three tight ends — Jameson Geers, Nick Kallerup and Pierce Walsh — will round out the pass catchers present.
The Gophers’ two-deep offensive roster is well covered on that guest list, and that level of attendance speaks to Brosmer’s leadership. He was named a team captain during spring practices.
Before practices began, Jackson was asked about his first impression of Brosmer; he offered one word instead — a “general.”
“He takes over the offense; he constructs the offense,” Jackson said. “You know he brings in his own little flair to it, something that we’ve never seen before.”
Maybe the biggest sign of Brosmer’s encompassing leadership is that all four Gophers quarterbacks are along for the trip to Georgia: true freshman Drake Lindsey, new Virginia Tech transfer Dylan Wittke and walk-on Max Shikejanski of Stillwater.
Fleck often talks about competing with, not against, teammates, so the entire QB group in Georgia must have the head coach nodding approvingly in Minnesota.
Brosmer said the spring break trip was more “spur of the moment,” but still “a blast” to do. He called it a “mock retreat.” The intention in March was always to have a larger group join in May, the month between the end of mandatory spring practices and summer workouts starting in Minneapolis in early June.
Brosmer first joined his new team during the week leading up to the Quick Lane Bowl in December, and he impressed teammates and coaches with how he quickly absorbed the playbook during that time in Detroit.
At that time, the Gophers were coming off a letdown 5-7 regular season that saw redshirt sophomore quarterback Athan Kaliakmanis transfer out days after loss to Wisconsin in the regular-season finale.
“I’ve never seen a person (Brosmer) walk into a situation, probably more uncomfortable of a situation,” Fleck reflected. “Because you are the new guy and connect as many people as quickly as he has.”
Fleck immediately saw Brosmer “on a mission.”
“He knows what he wants,” Fleck said of a chance to play at the Power Five level and set himself up for the NFL. “Him even coming here and getting all his goals and objectives out of (what he wants) in a program. I think this place fit, not just Minnesota, our coaching staff, our culture. but the situation he was walking into. We talked about how we needed a quarterback that could walk into here and connect the entire football team. That was going to be a tall task for anybody.”
Gophers offensive coordinator Greg Harbaugh said Brosmer was his “first real experience with recruiting a high-profile portal guy.”
Instead of giving his spiel, Harbaugh was listening to what Brosmer, a finalist for FCS player of the year, wanted in a new program.
“Then thinking about how I can put that into place to fit his needs, into what we want to do,” Harbaugh said. “It’s different than other relationships I have with players. Max and I look at it as a partnership. It’s one of those things we are working together constantly to put the best product out there.”
During the NFL playoffs, Brosmer sent Harbaugh a screenshot from a telecast of one of the Detroit Lions playoff games. It was a quote from quarterback Jared Goff on offensive coordinator Ben Johnson: “He listens to his players and adapts to what we do well.”
“He’s challenged me; he’s changed me,” Harbaugh said of Brosmer. “I think that is the coolest thing about our relationship that I hope you will be able to see on the field.”
In Harbaugh’s first season in charge in 2023, the Gophers passing game was outside the top 120 (out of 133) teams in the nation in passer rating (112.6), yards per attempt (6.0), attempts per game (24) and yards per game (143).
“We are taking a vested interest in attacking people and throwing the football,” Harbaugh said. “That’s always part of the plan. We want to be balanced. We wanted to be balanced last year. We did our best at certain times during the course of the year.”
But that fell well short of anything resembling a 50-50 balance a year ago, and the Gophers’ passing game turtled as the season finished.
During open spring practices in March and April, Brosmer found himself on a steeper learning curve, given the faster speed, bigger size of linemen and smaller passing windows at the Big Ten level.
Brosmer acknowledges he doesn’t have the strongest arm and has had to step up in other ways.
“I’ve always felt behind,” he said in comparison to other QBs. “Just because they’ve been able to throw the ball farther and harder than me.”
Brosmer said for years he’s worked on the proper anticipation of throws, knowing when and where those holes will open inside the defense and building a foundation of preparation with pass-catchers to thread them.
“I can’t throw the ball to a spot if the receiver is not going to be there, and vice versa,” Brosmer said. “So without training with the guys for hours and hours and hours on end, there’s no way that it can happen anyway.”
The Gophers are working in Georgia this spring to be able to make it happen in Minnesota this fall.
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