There is a certain amount of audacity in declaring you have “a really good football team,” as Gophers coach P.J. Fleck did shortly after a 39-point defeat.
But if we take him at his word and buy into the not-wrong idea that Ohio State is just a different class of program than Minnesota (and perhaps the rest of the Big Ten ... and perhaps the rest of college football), we can view Fleck’s declaration for what it is.
OK, you’re not going to compete with the Buckeyes. At least not this season and not in most.
But if the Gophers (3-2, 1-1 Big Ten) are a really good football team, they need to show it in the win column starting Saturday night against Purdue (2-3, 0-2).
Three of the next four games are at home, including the homecoming tilt against the Boilermakers in which Minnesota is favored by more than a touchdown.
A really good team would win at least three of these next four: home against Purdue, home against Nebraska, at Iowa, home against Michigan State.
An OK team would win two of them, which is what ESPN’s Football Power Index suggests might happen.
Excluding a road trip to powerhouse Oregon, six of the Gophers’ final seven games are against teams in the Gophers’ weight class, as Star Tribune writer Randy Johnson described the matchups on Wednesday’s Daily Delivery podcast. The two after the Oregon game: at Northwestern and home against Wisconsin.
