Minnesota coach P.J. Fleck on Michigan run game: 'We got a lot of respect for what they do and how they do it'

The box score of Iowa‘s 31-14 win over Minnesota last weekend is oddly similar to that of Michigan‘s 27-24 triumph over USC. The Hawkeyes bludgeoned Golden Gophers with 272 rushing yards, while Michigan ran all over the Trojans to the tune of 290 yards on the ground.

Michigan will look to keep things rolling in the run game, while Minnesota will strive to shore up its defensive woes — the Gophers missed 13 tackles.

Minnesota head coach P.J. Fleck called his team’s loss a “tale of two halves.” The Gophers led 14-7 at halftime but only amassed 66 total yards to Iowa’s 227 in the second half. The game turned into a blowout but was closer than the final score indicated, per the eighth-year head man.

Michigan’s run game has been its calling card of late — combining for 591 rushing yards in the last two games.

“In terms of their offense, they’re going to run the football,” Fleck said. “They did that with [former head coach] Jim Harbaugh, they’re doing that with [first-year head man] Sherrone [Moore] and they’re doing it in a lot of unique ways, especially with the quarterback change.

“They’re big, they’re strong. We’ve got to be able to stop the run, and we know that. Now, they’re going to have things off of that with the play-action pass when you are doing that.”

Fleck is confident his group can turn around their fortunes, even against a strong Michigan rushing attack.

“If it was a big schematic issue, I would sit here and be like, ‘OK, I’m really worried. There are people nowhere to be found.’ We have people everywhere where they need to be,” Fleck explained. “We just gotta be able to make the play. Part of the reason last week is we wouldn’t fire our gun and shoot tackle, which the first few games we were pretty good at. And for whatever reason, we weren’t doing that very well in the second half. 

“But that’ll be a big emphasis, is to be able to slow that run game down. I don’t know if you stop Michigan’s run game, but you can slow it down by a lot of different things, and that’s what we’re working on right now.

“We got a lot of respect for what they do and how they do it. They do it at will. That’s the one thing — Michigan is Michigan. They do it at will; they run the football at will. That’s what they do, and they use their personnel very well.”

Minnesota hit the practice field Sunday night, and Fleck got the vibe that his team is motivated to bounce back after their second loss of the season. The Gophers lost to North Carolina, 19-17, to open the campaign but came back and notched two-straight shoutout victories — 48-0 over Rhode Island and 27-0 over Nevada.

“We talk a little bit about, we don’t let the circumstance dictate our behavior,” Fleck said. “If there’s a close loss, does it hurt more, or does a blowout hurt more? They all hurt the same. A loss is a loss.

“Each game is its own entity. You have to be able to be trained to just let that go — like a goldfish — flush it and move on.

“Our team is really good at doing that. … They’re disappointed. It’s not like they’re like, ‘Oh, we lost, let’s move on.’ They’re very disappointed. That game means a lot to a lot of people — our fans, our state, our alumni, our players, our university, our student body, our staff, everybody — and it’s hard to go through that loss. But they’ve been really good at flushing it and moving on to the next one, just like they were yesterday. And you can always get a vibe of that when coming out on Sunday.”

Minnesota simulating crowd noise in practice

Saturday’s game will mark the 99th meeting between Michigan and Minnesota with the Little Brown Jug on the line. The Wolverines have won the last four meetings, including three with Fleck on the opposing sideline. Michigan won at Minnesota last season, 52-10.

The last matchup in Ann Arbor came in Fleck’s first season on the job, in 2017 when the Maize and Blue won 33-10.

“The environment they create, we create a lot of that,” Fleck said of how his team will deal with the atmosphere at Michigan Stadium. “You can’t hear in practice anyway. Our guys can’t hear.

“The Big House is not called ‘The Little House’ — it’s called The Big House for a reason. But we can’t let the circumstance dictate our behavior. You gotta be able to play anywhere in the Big Ten. We’ve been preparing for that all offseason.”