Gophers football team will be better than USA Today’s prediction
USA Today is not a big fan of the Minnesota Golden Gophers football team.
A lot of people are curious about how the Minnesota Golden Gophers football team will do this upcoming season. With new head coach P.J. Fleck running the team, anything is possible, really. Mediocrity is what USA Today thinks is going to happen with the Gophers.
On Tuesday, USA Today unveiled their prediction for all 130 of the FBS teams. They were not kind to the Gophers with their prediction of 4-8 overall and 2-7 in Big Ten play.
For starters, there is a fighting chance that the Gophers could legitimately start 7-0 on the season. The Gophers could win almost double the games that the USA Today predicts they’ll win before they lose. That’s a crazy thought.
The Gophers have three non-conference games. Two of those should be wins for sure with matchups against Buffalo and Middle Tennessee. The other matchup against Oregon State is another winnable game. I assume USA Today has the Gophers losing it, but I think the Gophers win the matchup.
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Big Ten play starts for Minnesota with three home matchups with Maryland, Michigan State and Illinois and one away game against Purdue. Purdue and Illinois are both teams that even USA Today thinks will be worse than the Gophers, so that gets us to two wins and the Gophers should at least win one game out of the Maryland and Michigan State two-step.
Sure, the second half of the conference schedule is brutal with road games against Iowa, Michigan and Northwestern and home games with Wisconsin and Nebraska, but the Gophers will still be better than the mediocre USA Today record.
I don’t expect, and no one should, the Gophers to compete for the Big Ten championship this season. They still will be a decent team. The defense should still be very good and P.J. Fleck’s energy might just supercharge a team and it’s fan base.
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