Despite Razorbacks roots, Drake Lindsey is the future of Gophers football

FAYETTEVILLE, ARK.

Back in his hometown, on a purple-accented football field where he led a state championship team, Drake Lindsey is putting in his work as the temperature in the heart of Arkansas Razorbacks country reaches 85 and the humidity creeps up, too.

Lindsey, who will be a Gophers redshirt freshman this season, is the only quarterback among a group of 10 players working out, and he tests his arm on a variety of routes to an eclectic group of targets. There’s Buffalo Bills tight end Zach Davidson. There’s Oklahoma wideout Isaiah Sategna, who was Lindsey’s teammate at Fayetteville High School. And there are others honing their skills, including local small college and prep standouts.

That Lindsey is back for a visit in Fayetteville and training at his high school rather than working out in the Razorbacks’ facilities is a departure from what a few years ago looked to be a Hollywood script in the making. After all, he led the Fayetteville Bulldogs to an undefeated state championship season, passing for 54 touchdowns and 3,941 yards as a senior in 2023. He was MVP of the state title game and was named Gatorade Player of the Year in Arkansas.

His family practically bleeds Razorbacks cardinal. His grandfather, Jim Lindsey, played for the Hogs’ 1964 national championship team, and his father, John David Lindsey, was a wide receiver for the Razorbacks for two seasons. An uncle, Lyndy Lindsey, was a tight end for Arkansas, and Drake’s cousin, Jack Lindsey, was a reserve quarterback for the Hogs from 2018 to ’20. Drake’s sister, Loren, just finished her senior season on Arkansas’ women’s basketball team.

How wouldn’t he become a Razorback?

The Arkansas coaching staff, however, opted to recruit dual-threat quarterbacks rather than the 6-5, 230-pound Lindsey, a drop-back passer. The staff showed interest in Lindsey late in the recruiting cycle, but Gophers coach P.J. Fleck and offensive coordinator Greg Harbaugh Jr. already had built tight bonds.

Said John David Lindsey: “You don’t think about a lot of other places if you lived here your whole life. But it worked out — it worked out really well for Drake.”

Drake went from “Woo Pig Sooie!” to “Ski-U-Mah,” trying to make the most of an unanswered prayer.

“Yeah, I felt like it was destined to happen,” Lindsey said, referring to his early dreams of playing at Arkansas. “God, obviously, had another plan, and for that I’m very blessed.”

First on that adjusted plan for Lindsey: winning the Gophers starting quarterback job.

Lindsey spent the 2024 season as a redshirt, practically attaching himself to the hip of Max Brosmer, the graduate transfer who provided leadership, accuracy, stability and a knack for making a big play during his one season as Minnesota’s starting QB. Lindsey’s job was to be a sponge and soak up whatever knowledge he could from Brosmer.

Now with the Vikings as an undrafted free agent, Brosmer stays in touch with Lindsey and offers pointers. He was impressed with his protégé from when he arrived in January 2024.

“His foundation was pretty strong,” Brosmer said. “You assume as a freshman that you’re pretty immature, and don’t get me wrong, he had his immaturities as every freshman does, but as a football player and as a person, he was light years ahead of where I saw most freshmen in my college career.”

Lindsey’s desire to work and be efficient at it caught Brosmer’s attention.

“He’s one of the guys who I felt like I could say this guy works just as much as I do as a freshman, which is really cool to see,” Brosmer said. “… He took it as a way to grow the team but also to grow himself as the next quarterback."

Drake’s mother, Amy Lindsey, has noticed a more serious approach.

Brosmer sees Lindsey’s skill set as not only advanced for a freshman but one that points to a lengthy career if given time to develop.

“The important thing to remember if you’re a Gopher fan is this will be his first year starting in college football,” Brosmer said. “This is like [the Vikings’] J.J. McCarthy starting in the NFL for the first time. There are gonna be bumps and bruises and a handful of mistakes where fans say, ‘He might not be the guy we hoped for.’ I hope people stick it out with him. I know the coaching staff and the team will because the kid is special.”

While Drake is forging his own ties with Minnesota, his grandfather, Jim, has deep links to the Land of 10,000 Lakes through football. After amassing nearly 1,800 total yards in three seasons as a running back at Arkansas — where he was teammates with Jimmy Johnson and Jerry Jones of Dallas Cowboys fame — Jim became a second-round draft pick of the Vikings in 1966. He played seven years in Minnesota, retiring after the 1972 season and finishing with 566 rushing yards and six TDs in 84 games, mostly as a reserve and a special teams player.

Jim Lindsey, 80, considered staying in Minnesota and even interviewed for the Gophers coaching vacancy in 1972, according to John David Lindsey. That job went to Cal Stoll, while Jim used money from a $75,000 signing bonus from the Vikings to invest in real estate and golf course development in the Fayetteville area. The Lindsey Management Co. Inc. is in charge of more than 40,000 apartment homes, more than 160 apartment communities and 42 golf courses in the mid-South. John David Lindsey leads Lindsey & Associates, the real estate arm of the Lindsey group.

One of those golf courses is at Paradise Valley Athletic Club in Fayetteville, and Drake grew up adjacent to the scenic course. He developed a love of golf at an early age, became competitive nationally in his age group and considered making it his primary sport until the football bug bit him. Still, you can find him on a course as often as his schedule will allow.

“In golf, every shot is super independent, as in you could hit a really good tee shot and still make a triple bogey based off your next shot,” he said. “Relating it to football, there’s 60 to 70 plays in a game on offense. I try to emphasize that every play is independent and can bring a different coverage or a different pressure.”

On this July evening, Lindsey and Sategna begin a round at 6:45, aiming to get in as many holes as possible before sundown. Lindsey makes par on the first four holes, then has a birdie opportunity after a solid second shot lands about 4 feet from the hole. Lindsey’s putt just misses, and Sategna quickly delivers the line of the night.

“Koi would’ve made that,” he said, referring to Gophers All-America safety Koi Perich, who has become a good friend and golf rival of Lindsey.

“I like to talk crap to Koi, and he likes to give it back to me,” Lindsey said. “It’s an awesome relationship.”

And it might be an even more important relationship this fall because Fleck and Harbaugh aim to work Perich into some offensive packages.

While Fleck doesn’t award starting jobs during spring practice, the pecking order established showed that the QB1 role is Lindsey’s. He received the bulk of the snaps during the spring, with Boston College senior transfer Emmett Morehead and Virginia Tech sophomore transfer Dylan Wittke expected to compete for the No. 2 role.

Lindsey saw action in five games in 2024, completing four of five passes for 50 yards and one touchdown. He was held out of games late in the season to preserve his redshirt season but was featured in a package in the Duke’s Mayo Bowl victory over Virginia Tech. Brosmer lobbied Harbaugh to include Lindsey in the game plan, even jokingly threatening to not play.

“It was kind of an ongoing joke,” Lindsey said. “After the Wisconsin game, I said to Max, ‘Bro, we need to play together in the bowl game. And he was like, ‘Oh, yeah. I’ll get it done.’ ”

That led to a “Purple Wildcat” play in which Lindsey took a shotgun snap, faked a reverse handoff to a motioning Brosmer and hit tight end Jameson Geers for a 15-yard gain.

Plays like that showed Lindsey’s potential, and he followed it with a solid performance during spring practice.

Fleck rewarded Lindsey by naming him one of the four players the Gophers will take to Las Vegas for Big Ten Media Days on July 22-24, joining Perich, running back Darius Taylor and defensive end Anthony Smith.

Lindsey called that designation “a huge honor” and vows to be ready for his new role.

“I’m a guy who’s going to do everything I can to win,” he said. “I want to put everything on the line to make a play happen when we need it. Go take every single play like it’s the last play of the game. And make the fans happy, make the state happy as well.”

Lindsey has much more on his plate this year with the increased responsibility required of a starting quarterback. It’s a role he embraces and knows is evolving.

“Going into January, one of the main things I had to really home in on was being there for guys and being able to be the voice and earning that voice,” Lindsey said. “It’s a challenging role, for sure. At the start, I tried to be more like Max, because that’s what I had watched for a year. Then, as I got comfortable with the guys, I kind of turned into my own version of a leader.”