Former Gophers defensive coordinator Joe Rossi is having a rough season with Michigan State.

Coming into Saturday’s game against the Gophers, Rossi’s Spartans’ defense is last in scoring in the 18-team Big Ten Conference (32.5 points per game) and 15th in total defense (380 yards per game).

Last week, Rossi moved from his regular perch in the coaches’ booth down to the sideline for Michigan State’s 31-20 loss to then-No. 25 Michigan. That’s where the former Minnesota defensive coordinator will be on Saturday at Huntington Bank Stadium.

Michigan State head coach Jonathan Smith, who is 3-5 this year and 8-12 overall in East Lansing, liked Rossi’s presence on the field.  “We needed to obviously fix some things defensively,” he said. “I did think the effort defensively —  those guys played with passion throughout the night.”

Michigan State still allowed 276 rushing yards and four touchdowns on the ground while losing its fifth straight conference game. At 0-5, they sit in the conference basement with Purdue and Wisconsin.

Rossi left Minnesota after the 2023 season, but Gophers head coach P.J. Fleck said they stay in touch via text messages and bump-ins while on the recruiting trail.

“They play exceptionally hard,” Fleck said of Rossi’s group. “Coach Rossi did a tremendous amount for this program at University of Minnesota, and (I) have a lot of respect for him and what he’s done. He’s got an unbelievable family. He’s a great husband, great father, just an awesome man.”

Not planned

Against Iowa last weekend, Fleck said the game plan was to punt the ball out of bounds and not allow Hawkeyes returner Kaden Wetjen get his hands on the ball.

But punter Tom Weston kicked only two of his seven punts out of bounds, and Wetjen was allowed four returns for 80 total yards, including a 50-yard return for a touchdown. One of Weston’s punts was a touchback, and another was shanked for a net of 13 yards.

“It wasn’t just offense, it wasn’t (just) defense, it wasn’t just special teams — it was all three,” Fleck said about the 41-3 loss to the Hawkeyes. “That is not a good formula to win, especially when you are playing a team like Iowa, who is so good in all three, and forces you to play really precise.”

Minnesota fell to 5-3 overall and 3-2 in Big Ten play.

Taylor’s prognosis

Fleck offered no update Monday on the heath status of running back Darius Taylor, who left the blowout loss to Iowa after one carry and three total snaps.

If Taylor can’t play against Michigan State, and with backup A.J. Turner out for the season, the U will likely stick with redshirt freshman Fame Ijeboi and graduate transfer Cam Davis in the backfield.

Minnesota has averaged 1.8 yards per carry in games against Iowa, Ohio State, Purdue and Rutgers. The Big Ten outlier is 5.3 yards per carry in a tape-to-tape victory over Nebraska. Taylor put up 148 yards on 24 carries with one touchdown against the Cornhuskers.

The Spartans are 14th in the Big Ten in rushing defense (149 yards per game), so Minnesota should still muster a ground game this weekend.

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SUGAR LAND, Texas — Former Vikings running back Adrian Peterson remained jailed on Monday after being arrested a day earlier in a Houston suburb on charges of driving while intoxicated and unlawfully carrying a weapon, according to authorities.

Peterson was taken into custody Sunday morning by the Sugar Land Police Department, said agency spokeswoman Alicia Alaniz. It’s the second DWI arrest in seven months for the 2012 NFL MVP and three-time league rushing champion.

Alaniz declined to provide additional information about the circumstances surrounding Peterson’s arrest in Sugar Land, which is located just southwest of Houston.

Peterson, 40, remained in the Fort Bend County Jail on Monday, according to the county’s sheriff’s office. Jail records did not list an attorney for Peterson who could speak on his behalf. He was a high school football star in East Texas and has lived in the Houston area.

Peterson spent the first 10 years of his NFL career with the Vikings, which drafted him No. 7 overall in 2007. He was arrested on suspicion of drunken driving in Minneapolis in April after appearing at an NFL draft party for Vikings fans.

Peterson was pulled over for speeding before his arrest in Minnesota, where he rushed for a franchise-best 11,747 yards and 97 touchdowns. He is one of nine running backs to rush for 2,000 yards in a season. He had 2,097 yards for the Vikings in his MVP season of 2012 and finished his NFL career with 14,918 yards and 120 touchdowns over 15 seasons.

He played for six teams during his final five seasons.

In the last week or so, thousands of St. Paul voters received mail fliers from two “Vote Yes!” campaigns related to the city’s Nov. 4 ballot. The first flier urges a yes vote for a special 10-year school district property tax levy. The second urges a yes vote for a charter amendment that would allow the city council to fashion administrative citations, or non-criminal fine ladders for ordinance violations.

Both are labeled “Supported by: Saint Paul DFL.”

There’s just one problem with that claim, at least in the eyes of ballot question opponents. No such organization effectively exists.

Lacking a chair or vice-chair, with leadership dwindled down to a single board member and short on cash and volunteers, the St. Paul DFL went on hiatus this year. It held no precinct caucuses or ward caucuses or a city convention. It did not endorse candidates for mayor or in a special Ward 4 council election this summer, and in August it rescinded its own constitution, which is being rewritten in light of the city’s upcoming switch to even-year elections.

Officials who had been active with the previously St. Paul DFL and the state party’s central committee have defended the wording on the two campaign fliers, which they say accurately reflects written letters of support and a unanimous vote carried out on the city committee’s behalf in late September, albeit under the auspices of four state Senate district DFL committees and the Ramsey County DFL.

“There’s a lot of overlap between groups. … Technically the unit does exist in the eyes of the state party, even as it goes under this major revision work,” said Quentin Wathum-Ocama, an outreach officer with the Minnesota State DFL, who also chairs the “Vote Yes for Strong Schools” committee.

“I think the confusion is using ‘Saint Paul’ (in the flier), but it certainly has official DFL support in the eyes of the state party,” Wathum-Ocama said.

Complaint filed

Not everyone sees it that way. Over the weekend, former City Hall employee Peter Butler emailed media outlets to point out the irony of attempting to approve administrative citations to hold landlords, business owners and others accountable for rule-breaking, while “blatantly misleading” voters and “claiming support from the defunct DFL.”

Butler on Saturday mailed an official complaint to the Court of Administrative Hearings, citing state statute around campaign practices.

“The Minnesota Fair Campaign Practices Act prohibits making false claims of support,” said Butler, who assembled enough petition signatures this year to force a public ballot over administrative citations, blocking the city council from enacting a charter amendment on their own. “A party unit called ‘St. Paul DFL’ does not exist.”

If the court calls for a judicial panel to look into the matter, a decision would not be issued before the Nov. 4 election, Butler acknowledged.

In 2009, a judicial panel fined the St. Paul Better Ballot campaign — which advocated for ranked-choice voting — $5,000 for claiming support from the St. Paul DFL and other politicians and political groups who had not weighed in on the ballot question. That decision came down in December 2009, about a month after voters went to the polls to approve ranked-choice voting.

‘Letters of support’

In early August, St. Paul DFL treasurer Rick Varco asked the state party to cancel the party unit’s existing constitution and review a new one.

While that process gets underway, the party unit’s reins have been handed to the Ramsey County DFL, which chose to delegate the authority to a member to assemble a “Letter of Support” committee.

The process behind issuing “letters of support” when no local party unit exists is laid out under Article 12 of the state party’s constitution, Varco said.

“The St. Paul DFL party unit has terminated operations under its current constitution and is awaiting approval by the DFL State Central Committee of a new constitution based on even-year precinct caucuses,” reads a call for letters of support, posted on the Congressional District 4 DFL website. “In absence of a St. Paul unit, the Ramsey County DFL holds authority and this Call is issued pursuant to that authority.”

Nobody nominated ‘Vote No’

The Sept. 28 committee gathering, which drew “a couple dozen people” to Carpenters Union Hall on Olive Street, was open to all St. Paul-based members of the four DFL Senate district central committees in the capital city, Varco said.

“There was a mailing, and the call was mailed to everybody who was eligible and emailed out to everybody who was eligible,” he said.

Varco said the group met and “voted unanimously to approve a letter of support for each ballot question. ‘Vote Yes’ is the St. Paul DFL-supported position. … Nobody nominated ‘Vote No.’ Nobody voted for ‘No Position’ on either one.”

The Sept. 28 vote was focused on the narrow matter of whether to support the two ballot questions, and not on any particular candidate or other outside issues, and “no other letters of support or endorsements may be considered,” reads the written call for letters.

Wathum-Ocama said the committee meeting “was pretty quick — we were in and out in an hour. Letters of support, they’re not the same as being endorsed … but they’re pretty common, particularly in our suburbs where they don’t have DFL units.”

Varco, who acknowledged the process was “an unusual situation” for St. Paul, said he was hopeful the new constitution for the St. Paul DFL would make it to the state party’s central committee agenda by their December meeting and receive approval.

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Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz announced $4 million in state aid for food shelves at The Open Door in Eagan on Monday, Oct. 27, just hours after the USDA said SNAP funding has “run dry” from the shutdown.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz discusses the state’s ability to backfill SNAP funding losses during the federal government shutdown on Monday, Oct. 27, 2025, at The Open Door in Eagan. (Mary Murphy / Forum News Service)

Walz said the $4 million boost from the state will not be enough to make up for the loss of federal SNAP funding.

“I want to be very clear: It will not make up and backfill everything that is going to drop off starting on Saturday (Nov. 1). We do not have that capacity,” he said. “We put out about $74 million a month in SNAP benefits, just so you know the scope and the scale of this. Those are Minnesota tax dollars that went to the federal government.”

In a press conference at the beginning of the shutdown, Minnesota Management and Budget Director Ahna Minge warned in early October that the state’s current available SNAP funding would run out by November. The shutdown, which has stretched 27 days as of Monday, is the second-longest in U.S. history.

The additional state funding also comes as Minnesota’s food shelves are seeing record visits, with 9 million in 2024 alone — a number that tops the early pandemic years. Walz said 440,000 Minnesotans are on SNAP benefits, 38% of them children and 18% seniors.

Jason Viana, Open Door executive director, said that before the shutdown began Oct. 1, the pantry was already helping about 30% more people than last year.

Jason Viana, director of The Open Door in Eagan, talks about the increasing need for food shelves and food pantries amid the federal government shutdown on Monday, Oct. 27, 2025. (Mary Murphy / Forum News Service)

“This shutdown and reducing benefits that are available to our clients are absolutely a step back that are going to be felt in households across the state of Minnesota. I will tell you that in our footprint, we have heard increased concern, anxiety from our families, and we are seeing more families than we’ve seen since 2020,” he said.

Tikki Brown, commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Children, Youth and Families, said Monday the state tapped into existing funds from the Family First Prevention Services Act and emergency Department of Human Services funds to come up with the $4 million.

Brown said the money will be distributed to The Food Group, which will be tasked with distributing the funds throughout Minnesota’s roughly 300 food shelves, with the aim of prioritizing SNAP recipients.

Walz said most of the state’s money is not fungible and has already been appropriated for other reasons. He said he probably wouldn’t want to tap into the state’s rainy day fund — which has roughly $3 billion in untouched funds — and added that the Legislature would need to be called back to appropriate that money.

Brown said she received word from the USDA that any state funding disbursed to make up for SNAP funding losses would not be reimbursed.

“It’s Day 27. Doesn’t appear like there’s really any sense of urgency out of the folks in D.C.,” Walz said. “As this continues to go on, it will become much more of a crisis. And it may not feel like a crisis for some folks … but it will eventually all start to come home.”

Will you lose food benefits in November? Please contact reporter Molly Guthrey at mguthrey@pioneerpress.com to be interviewed for a story.

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