UCLA Football Preview: P.J. Fleck Has Had Mixed Results at Minnesota
Despite having worked for several very good head coaches, P.J. Fleck hasn't been able to turn the Golden Gophers into a Big Ten powerhouse.
Minnesota head coach P.J. Fleck is a member of several prominent coaching trees. Fleck began his coaching career at Ohio State working as a grad assistant under Jim Tressel. After a year at Ohio State, Fleck returned to his alma mater Northern Illinois and was one of just two assistants retained by Jerry Kill when he took over the Huskies’ program. After a year working for Kill, Fleck headed East to Rutgers when he became Greg Schiano’s wide receivers coach during Schiano’s first stint at Rutgers. After two seasons there, Fleck was hired to be Dave Doeren’s offensive coordinator back at Northern Illinois, but the day after accepting the job, he chose to leave to follow Schiano to the Tampa Bay Bucs as the team’s receivers coach.
After just one season in Tampa, Fleck was hired to be the new head coach at Western Michigan, even though he had never even been a coordinator before. His first season with the Broncos was dreadful. The team finished 1-11, but they improved to 8-5 in each of the next two seasons before going 13-1 in 2016. He left for Minnesota after that but he’s had mixed results in Minneapolis.
Like Western Michigan, the Golden Gophers improved during Fleck’s first three seasons. But then came 2020, and with it, the COVID-shortened season which left Minnesota with a 3-4 mark. They bounced back to 9-4 the next two seasons before dropping to 6-7 last season. So far this year, the Gophers are 3-3, having just upset Southern Cal at home this past weekend. Overall, Fleck is 53-37 at Minnesota.
Fleck has a pair of co-offensive coordinators. One of the team’s co-offensive coordinator is Matt Simon, who also coaches the team’s wide receivers. Despite being the more senior of the two, Simon isn’t the guy calling plays for the Gophers. That job goes to Greg Harbaugh Jr., who is also the team’s quarterback coach. He also serves as the team’s play caller, and despite his famous last name, Greg is not related to Jim or John Harbaugh.
Over on the other side of the ball, Corey Hetherman is the Minnesota defensive coordinator. Hetherman was the first defensive coordinator for Indiana head coach Frank Cignetti at James Madison. Hetherman runs a 4-2-5 nickel defense as the Gophers base defense.
The one other Minnesota coach worth mentioning offensive line coach and running game coordinator Brian Callahan. He’s worth mentioning for who isn’t. He isn’t former Bruin Brian Callahan, the son of former Raider head coach Bill Callahan. That Brian Callahan is the head coach of the Tennessee Titans, not the Gophers’ offensive line coach.
Let’s look at the Gophers’ special teams.
Special Teams
The Golden Gophers will have just one guy handling both placekicking and kickoffs. That’s super senior Dragan Kesich. While Kesich has made all 19 PATs he’s tried, he’s a pretty mediocre kicker, at least this season.
He’s made just seven of his twelve field goal attempts. In fact, in every game where he’s tried more than one field goal, he’s missed one at least one. He didn’t miss one against Iowa because he didn’t try any in that game and he made the only one he tried last week against Southern Cal, but he missed two against North Carolina, and he missed one each against Rhode Island, Nevada and Michigan.
It doesn’t seem to be a range issue for Kesich as he’s made field goals of both 52 and 53 yards this year, and he hit his career long of 54 yards last season. Interestingly, he’s already missed more attempts this season than he did all of last year.
He’s better on kickoffs. He’s averaging 64.8 yards per kickoff and 26 of his 30 attempts have gone for touchbacks. None of his kickoffs have gone out of bounds. So, opponents have only returned four of Kesich’s kickoffs.
Super senior Mark Crawford is another punter from Australia. Crawford is averaging 43.0 yards per punt and he’s punted 23 times. His longest was a 58 yarder and he’s had four punts go more than 50 yards. Nine of his punts have been fair caught while six have landed inside the 20.
Freshman Koi Perich is the primary kick and punt returner for the Golden Gophers. While he is averaging 22.50 yards per punt return, that number is slightly inflated by his longest which was a 60-yard return. Not including that big one, he’s averaging just 15 yards per return. So, if UCLA can make sure their coverage doesn’t break down, he can be contained.
Perich has also returned seven kickoffs for an average of 17.71 yards per punt. His longest was just 21 yards. So, he isn’t very dangerous on kickoff returns.
Redshirt junior Quentin Redding is the other Gopher kick and punt returner. Redding has returned two punts for a total of five yards and he’s returned one kickoff for 14 yards.
Le'Meke Brockington has also returned two kickoffs for 27 and 14 yards, respectively while super senior Daniel Jackson returned his lone punt return for just three yards.
Go Bruins!
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Minnesota: Second favorite team last weekend. Second most hated team this weekend.
To be fair the Golden Gophers are never going to compete with likes of Ohio State.