A person approached P.J. Fleck at the Minnesota State Fair this year with a burning question.
The Gophers football coach recalled the fan asking him: “‘Why do you keep running the same inside play?’”
Fleck took it as a fair question and showed a willingness to coach up his arm-chair quarterback.
“I was like, ‘You know there’s 57 ways to run that inside play?’ ” Fleck relayed, picking a number based on the multitudes of formations, motions/shifts and blocking schemes used for that inside zone run, a staple of the U offense. “They looked at me like I had eight heads because they didn’t expect that answer back.”
The observer still wasn’t satisfied, so the pair agreed to politely part ways.
But after two weeks of the Gophers’ season, that supporter probably appreciates some of the new wrinkles and variety within Minnesota’s offense going into a Week 3 matchup against Nevada at 2:30 p.m. Saturday at Huntington Bank Stadium.
“It’s just to evolve,” Fleck told the Pioneer Press this week. “You have to be able to change with the times.”
Fleck’s philosophical foundation of a strong running game to control time of possession and suffocate opponents will likely never change, but the Gophers are incorporating more quick passing concepts this fall. Fleck said a revamp of coaching schemes goes into each offseason, but he was willing to have this change be considered among his biggest shifts since he become the U coach in 2017.
“I think if you want to call it one of the bigger ones, sure, but I still don’t see it as huge,” Fleck said. “I see it as a change, and I see it as very different. But I don’t sit there and say, ‘Oh my gosh, we’ve completely reinvented the wheel.’ ”
The sample size has been small — only two games — and the biggest tests of the new schemes loom after this weekend: Iowa, Michigan and USC to start the string of nine Big Ten contests.
But the Gophers have deviated from heavy doses of the run-pass option (RPO) scheme they used so frequently with ironman tailback Mo Ibrahim to an attack that focuses more on new transfer quarterback Max Brosmer’s ability to process what coverages are being presented and distribute the ball as widely as he sees fit.
“It was kind of fun,” offensive coordinator Greg Harbaugh said about the offseason tinkering. “Because you put a lot of time and effort into that. It’s been the thing that, No. 1, we’ve studied, we’ve continued to work at (and) we addressed it with Max.”
Minnesota has still run the ball 56 percent of offensive snaps through two games, but that’s down from 62 percent across the entire 2023 season. Part of that shift is due to the Gophers’ current issues along the right side of its offensive line, which has contributed to only 2.7 yards per carry so far this season.
“We were going to take what the defense gave us,” Fleck said, while pointing out how Rhode Island committed to stopping the run with more defenders in the box. “We can sit there and be stubborn. … What you just said, whatever we’re averaging (per carry), and we need that average to go up. Or we could do what it takes to win the football game.”
Against Rhode Island, the Gophers’ 27 total completions (Max Brosmer’s 24 and Drake Lindsey’s three) combined for a single-game high across Fleck’s tenure at Minnesota. The Gophers also had 12 pass catchers against the Rams, another high since at least 2018. (Reminder: Rhode Island is a lower-level FCS school.)
“The key for us to have success is the ability to spread it around,” Fleck said about a season-long objective. He has routinely mentioned the added depth he sees on his team this season.
Fleck revealed that the Gophers coaching staff continually ranks their best players on offense and defense, from No. 1 to 20. (They do the same thing on defense, too.) It’s an effort to look in a slightly different way at how to get their best 11 players on the field.
When that list has included more offensive linemen — and Ibrahim or, say, Rodney Smith — the Gophers have run the ball at a higher clip.
“You rank them, you sit there and say, ‘OK, well, we got to find a way to get these guys the ball and have them impact the game as much as possible,’ ” Fleck said. “… So you’ve got to be able to adapt to that, too. And I think that’s what we’re doing.”
Through two games, Gophers receivers have had 60 percent of all pass targets, with tight ends at 15 percent. The most noticeable shift in the pie is running backs have received 25 percent of targets.
Standout sophomore tailback Darius Taylor, who played receiver in high school in Michigan, netted four receptions (on four targets) for 48 years against Rhode Island.
Harbaugh estimated three of Taylor’s grabs last weekend came on check-downs from Brosmer, who goes through his progression, starting with options downfield first. When they weren’t open, he quickly gets the ball to the running backs closer to the line of scrimmage.
The term “check-down” can be considered a pejorative in football, given its low-risk nature. But that’s not how Harbaugh sees it. He pointed to Taylor turning one check down into a big gain against Rhode Island; Jordan Nubin, for example, did a similar thing against North Carolina.
“I think Max does an excellent job when he feels those underneath defenders get out, he’ll either show that he’s going to take a shot and he’ll come down knowing that the shot isn’t there,” Harbaugh said. “… It goes back to what I said, probably in the first time I talked about Max: (His) high-end processing ability. If the pictures screwed up right from the start, he knows exactly where to go, right from the get-go.”
Part of the Gophers schematic alterations has included using more two-back formations. Sometimes it has been two running backs (Taylor and Oklahoma transfer Marcus Major); other times it has been a running back and a receiver (Daniel Jackson or Cristian Driver).
That formation is another nod to getting the Gophers’ best players on the field at the same time.
When Brosmer was brought in from New Hampshire — where he often threw to running backs — a quote from Detroit Lions quarterback Jared Goff was circulated before spring practices. Goff was describing offensive coordinator Ben Johnson: “He listens to his players and adapts what we do well.”
That has been Brosmer’s experience so far in Minnesota. “It’s pretty well defined in this spot,” he said this week. “I think Coach Harbaugh and his staff collectively have done an amazing job putting us as a team in a really good spot.”
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