Don't count P.J. Fleck among those surprised at Gophers' struggles

When the Gophers football team takes the TCF Bank Stadium field Friday against Indiana, P.J. Fleck will be working his 20th game as coach. With that milepost in mind, let's take a look at where his team stand based on some old-school analytics: wins and losses.

They are 8-11 with Fleck on the sideline.

They are 2-11 in the games that count most, the Big Ten contests.

And they are coming off what so far might be the low point of Fleck's time in Minnesota: a 53-28 loss at previously winless Nebraska in which the Cornhuskers romped for 659 yards.

These certainly are not the results fans had in mind in the 17 months that followed athletic director Mark Coyle handing Fleck a five-year, $18 million contract. The prized coach in January 2017 was coming off a 13-1 season and a Cotton Bowl appearance at Western Michigan.

But it's the Gophers' reality 19 games in, and it's what Fleck will try to remedy in the final five games of the season, beginning Friday against the Hoosiers (4-4, 1-4).

"Onward and upward," Fleck said Monday. "That's what we're doing."

For Fleck, the results aren't unexpected. He is trying to build the program through recruiting and developing, rather than attempting the quick-fix remedy of mining junior-college talent.

"We said Year 2 was going to be very difficult," Fleck said on his KFXN-FM radio show this week. "We're going to be very young, very inexperienced. Some people are shocked. I'm not sure why they're shocked. We said that."

Fleck's building plan requires patience. That's a tough sell to a fanbase that hasn't seen a Big Ten football champion since 1967.

To show progress for the rest of the season, the Gophers first must fix what ails them most: a defense that has allowed an average of 43.3 points and 503.8 yards in Big Ten play. Only Illinois has worse defensive stats.

Nebraska amassed 10 plays of 20 yards are longer, and defensive coordinator Robb Smith said the struggles are "100 percent on me." Fleck said he has "100 percent faith in every single one of our coaches."

"Tell me what freshman [who is] playing and you sit there and say, 'Man, he is awful,' " Fleck said on KFXN.

Fleck pointed to his team's incremental development, and then asked for that precious commodity of patience.

"We want to be here a very, very long time. We want to make sure that we can give something to Minnesota that they haven't had a in a very long time," Fleck said. "To get something that you haven't had in over 50-some years, you can't just sit there and say, 'OK, we're going to do this one way and it should work tomorrow.' There's a whole process.