P.J. Fleck Show: Coaches thoughts on Purdue loss and Iowa ahead

The P.J. Fleck Show is presented by Window Concepts and Affinity Plus Federal Credit Union. Our how is everything. How you do something matters. Culture. How. Next time is how. That better be first. The P.J. Fleck Show starts now. Hi everyone and welcome into the P.J. Fleck Show. Joined as always by the head coach of Gopher football, P.J. Fleck. Alongside former Gophers wide receiver Ron Johnson. KFAN's Justin Gard I'm Pierre Nugent The bye week is now a thing of the past And the Gophers are now turning their attention To this Saturday's matchup against Iowa We'll talk more about that game a little bit later in the show But first PJ you guys are back in action I know the last time we saw you in action Things didn't go your way What do you recall really from that game Against Purdue And what was the message to the team Going into the bye week to turn the page Yeah I mean it was pretty simple I mean you have one team who plays really well and plays complementary football. You have another team who does not play complementary football. We lose a turnover battle, and that's why the score goes the way it is. I mean, it's like a magnet with a plus and a minus and just gets so far from each other really quickly. You know, we didn't play very well. We didn't tackle very well. I wasn't a very good head coach in our preparation. We did not look as fast as we did in Michigan or Washington. That was a tough three-week stretch, and we just didn't have enough to get that one done. We're still only down two touchdowns, which as bad as we played beginning of the fourth quarter, we muffled punt, unfortunately. And that could change the game. That's a call that changes the entire game, right? And never know what happens. But we didn't earn the right to win the football game. We didn't play well enough to win the football game. And how we played, we're on extreme ends. And when you do that, the score is going to reflect it. In this conference, no matter who you play, and Purdue's doing very well, and they're way better than they were last year, that's for sure. And when you look at your defense, you know, six ranked in the Big Ten as far as total yards given up. But when you look at the run game of that game specifically, what did the team do that you're like, hey, we can't do that again? Or what did they learn from that, not being able to stop the run? Well, it's amazing because it's the same team that shut down Michigan's running game. Michigan's really good at running the football, right? And so that's college football. Mississippi State scored a lot of points their entire season, and they scored zero this past week. It's part of college football. And sometimes you don't know exactly what you're going to get, but there's reasons for it. We did not tackle well. we did not swarm to the ball very well you got to give them credit in some of the scheme that they have but we just looked slower we just looked like we were like not our football team and that goes to the head football coach and you go back to look at your preparation of what you could have done better but you got to give them a lot of credit because they executed at a really high level and this is a team that turned the ball over five times this past week against Washington and we're still in the game towards the end like think about that so this is a really good football team we did not play well enough uh and the school you have to make some decisions late which allow the score to get even a little bit further apart uh when you're making decisions inside your own zone late in the game where you know they're probably going to score from it but uh again we got to play way better if we want to win football games from here on out with your own running game same team that against washington and michigan rushed for over 100 yards just 27 against purdue is that availability and health of the running backs is it offensive line is it game script because as you say you're down you're probably not going to be running and chewing up a bunch of clocks so kind of assess that side of it as well i mean yes i mean besides that how was the play Mrs. Lincoln right so you you hit it right on the head it was a combination of all of that but no i mean they were eating up the clock they were winning the time of possession we couldn't make this game slower we had to score score as much as we possibly could move the balls as fast and as efficient as we possibly could so it changes your game plan a lot we've had two games this year that it's changed our game plan pretty quickly and unfortunately but that's the Big Ten and that's what's going to happen you better be ready for it you better be able to bring your best every single week unfortunately we didn't play our best football and we ran into somebody who played really really good football and in this league it's not there there's there's no forgiveness for that and sports are not kind they never have been kind and when you don't bring your best you're going to get beat the numbers for Drake Lindsey in that game don't necessarily look particularly bad by any means but he did throw one interception albeit on fourth down but that's four straight games with an interception though for Drake what do you attribute that to and what does he need to do in order to prevent turning the ball over yeah he's also had a lot of good throws and throws for first downs and throws for touchdowns there's no question you know you don't want to throw interceptions I mean he should have thrown a ball away against Washington and then you know this is on a fourth down play where you're trying to force something and I understand that but Drake's all about constant improvement you know and Drake is the first one always look at himself our receivers everybody's got each other's backs but it doesn't fall on one person we lose the the the turnover battle and you saw when we lose a turnover battle we're not going to win a lot of games it's just most teams don't so we lost the turnover battle we didn't tackle well we didn't break a lot of tackles and we lost the explosive play battle so if you lose all three of those you're going to lose the game and then if you're not playing complimentary football on top of that and field position the score is going to get bigger and bigger so you know drake's doing a really good job of getting us in the right scheme right play right the right runs uh but we have got to help him out on our end and do some other things a little bit better as coaches too because we're all in it together yeah and the one thing i will say though i saw that play and i know like he's going to watch that and realize like my eyes are going to take the underneath defender to where i'm trying to go so you know it's it's just part of the game but when the one thing i said was i said Jalen Smith was going to have a big play like i called that in a pregame show thanks Greg Harbo for making me look great but you know Jalen Smith goes out there you know finally you know gets another big play we know he's a big play waiting to happen every game but what does that look like for that receiving group as a core because every week it seems like somebody different takes over yeah i think that's exactly right that it doesn't matter who it is somebody's going to be called upon to make big plays and if we want to get to where we want to get to uh we play six games either they're all ranked right or the rivalry games and some of the rivalry games are ranked opponents so this might be the hardest schedule one of the toughest schedules we've ever had and for us to have success everybody's going to have to do their part and it doesn't matter who gets the ball when they get the ball make the play every ball is an elite ball and they all want the ball they all want 10 catches but what i love about the room is they're very selfless but when the ball comes to them right and they have an opportunity they go make plays and if we're not going to do that we're not going to be very good so they they understand that same thing with our backs and tight ends as well anything else you'd like credit for or that we can talk about the times he has a PJ i give PJ credit i give PJ credit for that touchdown no because the one thing the announcers even said is most receivers will throw the ball up or do something or drop it too soon you see that happen a lot and Jalen Smith actually kept the ball the entire time through the end zone found the referee gave him the ball then he celebrated so i got to give PJ credit for that i wish we got 21 points for that that would help you get 21 points for Handing the ball to the official, that would have been good. I do struggle to see you hand the ball to the official like they do every single time. If he was my coach, I would do it because I don't like to get in trouble. But, yeah, no, I wouldn't have thrown the ball away. I remember a lot of your catches. We just crossed the anniversary of the Ohio State game. You're doing the first down signs. The ball is fine. You would never have just handed it back. It would have been true. The quarterback would have been chasing after you to grab it and hand it because that's what they have to do. Anyway, I digress. You're down 20-3 at halftime. You have to go in and say, okay, you've got to deliver the message, right? That's the job of the head coach. So I'm curious, when do you start thinking about that? You've got a long walk. You've got to stop and talk to me first. I'm sure you're not thinking about it then. You can be. It won't offend me. But what was the message or what is the message in a situation like that? Couldn't have played any worse. All right? So the second half is going to be better because we couldn't have played any worse. So it only goes up from here. And explain why, right? The takeaway battle, right, our tackling and breaking tackles, and then the explosive play piece. And now you're going to have to – and being transparent, we're adjusting our entire game plan. Everybody's going to be involved in this pass game. We've got to get off the field on defense, and we've got to maximize our possessions on offense to get back in this game, right, one play at a time. And we come out and we don't succeed on the first drive. It was all about let's come out, let's put a nice drive together, let's go down 20-10, no problem, 0-0. let's go take one play at a time and we still weren't able to execute at a really high level so that message didn't work at all But yeah, you think about it a week before you're down at halftime and you're like we should be winning the game nobody be mad yeah like that message gets through yeah that message got through so that was good i should have used that one again but i couldn't that i would have lied to him yeah because that one was we dominated the game at Michigan we are down 14-7 besides two plays we have dominated that game so no one hang their head we're going to go out and play even better second half we're going to win the game and we did because that was the truth the truth was we couldn't have played any worse so we have to play better and we still played inconsistent and so if we were able to play better we had a chance to be in that game but we didn't earn the right to win the game that's for sure so that being said in the previous two weeks obviously you had tremendous success at Washington and against Michigan, and then you'd take a step back against Purdue. So what's the message now moving forward now that the bye week's over? You have the second half of the season ahead of you. Yeah, I mean, we're a really good football team. That's the message. We're a 4-2 football team, right, who lost at Purdue, right, when we didn't play well. We lost to a ranked Mississippi State team, right. We beat multiple ranked teams this year. This is college football. It's going to be tough every single week. And now in the next six, taking one at a time, This isn't like season to season or even week to week. This is day to day. This is taking six seconds at a time and being the best we can be. And that's six seconds in the play. And we're drawing on our past to create our future, learning all the things we can learn from those six games. We've learned that when we don't play well, and the three things I mentioned, the ball tackling, explosive plays, and then the penalty discipline, if we don't win those, we're not going to win games. If we can play true complementary football, where offense, defense, and special teams are constantly working together, We're scoring points, setting up field position. We're taking care of the ball. We're getting takeaways. This team in particular, if you go back, like you always say, if you go back to what I said when I was right, I said, what is going to make this team really special? If we can play complementary football, more than any team I've ever had here, if we can really come together and play complementary football and understand what that means, we're going to be really good. And four times we've done it, two times we haven't. So they have the proof and the data. Now they've got to trust that and go out there and execute in the second half of the season. And we look at the bye week, coaches handle it one way, and then you have your players. And I've always been taught, don't lose the bye week as a player. Like, don't do anything to hurt the team while we have time off. What do you encourage the players to do, and how do you guys kind of handle the bye week? Yeah, well, the first week when they're here, I mean, they get Sunday off, and then we bring them back in. They get Monday, and then Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, they're in the building of that bye week, going into that bye week off the weekend. But then we're working on ourselves. So Tuesday's Minnesota versus Minnesota. to a lot of the young guys practice Wednesday it's just meetings and lifting then we go Thursday and we start Iowa then the varsity the guys who have played come back because they get some time to really kind of restore their bodies then we practiced again Sunday night uh you know in the stadium for Iowa uh that was like a Tuesday's practice and then we're in the normal game week so coaches go out recruiting players spend some time being able to catch up on their bodies a lot of their school work but it's not an off week people always ask me like where'd you go on your bye week did you go on vacation no you don't go on vacation it's a bye week it doesn't mean off just an open game week weekend but i thought our players handled it really well and iowa has one too and um you know we'll see uh how we handled that well we're just getting started here on the pj flex show when we come back we'll be joined by defensive lineman tj bush you don't want to miss that conversation next on the PJ Flex Show welcome back to the PJ Flex Show welcome back into the PJ Flex Show everybody uh joined now by a very special guest here on said defensive lineman TJ Bush joining the show. TJ, appreciate you taking the time. Thank you. Let's start with what we saw recently with you guys. Obviously, things didn't go your way against Purdue. What did you take away from that game and perhaps what might not have been clicking in that game that was in the previous two weeks? I just think it comes down to, you know, we didn't play complementary football in all three phases and, you know, I felt when that doesn't happen, it just reflected on the field. What I mean, we had a great week last week. I felt it was great because we looked internally you know our biggest thing was you know looking in the mirror and asking yourself you know what can I do to better this team moving forward you know I thought we had a great week last week got after it and I wanted this week. It's your first year here you played at Cal last year what did you see as kind of your role when you got here when you were in the portal looking around at options what appealed to you about Minnesota for how you could help out? I mean the biggest thing for me was when I came on my visit and just talking to coach Fleck you know just how real he was you know I felt a lot of coaches you know tell you what you want to hear and not what you need to hear and the biggest thing that stuck out to me was you know he told me I'm a hard coach to play for and you know most coaches you're like you wouldn't say that and I appreciated the realness and that's what attracted me here. Is that true? Is he a hard coach to play for while he's sitting right next to you? He expects your best every day and that's what I love from him. Yeah well how much fun is it to play with Anthony Smith? I imagine that appeals too and I know you guys, I saw you guys running around at the state fair together and Jackson Howard was there as well that had to be appealing as well. Definitely, I mean just, I mean you just look at the guy, I mean Yeah, I mean, that's all I got to say. But, I mean, he's a great teammate to play for. And, I mean, even better person off the field. PJ, I remember before we did the first PJ Flex show of the season at the State Fair, I saw Anthony Smith. I saw Jackson Howard. I saw this young man, but I didn't know his name. I know his name now. What has it been like coaching this young man? What type of impact has he made on this program? He's a joy to coach because he loves ball. He's relentless. He's a student of the game. He's a throwback player. You know, he's got this nice flowy hair here. he wears this dirty just white shirt under his jersey, it's all loose, it just looks like a throwback player that would have been awesome in like the, the mid to early 90s, late 80s and the way he plays, we played against him at Cal and if you can't beat him, join him, right? And he was so disruptive and you have no idea who's going to go in the portal and who's not, but the minute we knew he was going in the portal and he went in, we were like, this is the guy, and uh it happened really fast, it happened really quick because he made our life a nightmare that night at Cal and Cal Berkeley, and when he went into the portal we felt like this was a great fit and one of the great compliments to him was the first week he was here, Anthony Smith, Maverick Baranowski walk into my office and our coach, I'm just telling you T.J. Bush fits and when your captains say that after one week being with somebody as a head coach you're like, all right, because not everybody gets that type of attention from the captains and that just says a lot about TJ. Did the fit feel as immediate for you as well? Definitely, I mean the guys were super welcoming, you know, I feel like especially in the portal you know you don't feel if someone's going to be welcoming, I mean especially you just played against them last year so but I mean the guys were super welcoming, I mean it felt like home. So your style that Coach Fleck talked about is that something that's been curated over a number of years, have you tinkered with it? or is this just who TJ Bush has been his entire life I'm just a simple guy. You know, I'm not into the jewelry or anything like that. So, I mean, I think I've gone through maybe two long sleeps since I've been here in the summer. You know, it's put on my loop every day. So, I mean, it's probably had that long sleep since March or February. So, it's definitely gone through some miles. So, why change it? If it works, don't change it. There we go. I love how we talked about fitting in almost apologetically. Like, sorry we beat you guys last year. Yeah. Remember that late night game? Long flight home? My bad. Yeah. But, TJ, this is going to be your first experience of the Minnesota-Iowa rivalry. How much are you looking forward to this game? And are you kind of aware, getting the sense of how much this game means to the fans here in town? Definitely. I mean, earlier today, people were coming up to me and asking me if I'm ready for the game. So I was just like, I mean, I can sense it. You know, it's definitely building, so I'm excited for it. How much do you think it would mean in terms of winning this game? It's another trophy game. You win a trophy against Michigan, you could possibly win another trophy against Iowa. but you get two of those big trophies in one season. What do you think that would mean to this program and the fans? I feel it would mean a ton to everyone, you know, but, I mean, the biggest thing is it would mean so much because it's the next one. You know, obviously, you know, it's a rivalry game, but, you know, just that one-on-one mindset feels so important. If I remember right, you were the first to the jug. Oh, he sprinted. It was a dead sprint. So how much pride do you take? I mean, that's pretty impressive to just be a first-year guy, learn about the trophies, and go be number one. He beat Anthony to it. He did. I saw it. Take us inside that moment. So, I mean, you know, obviously, offense on the field, they're in victory you know and I kind of scooted over a couple yards out of the coach's box so I can kind of have a good angle and the funny thing was we couldn't find it at first we didn't see the lady holding it so we're like where's the jug and I finally found it and as soon as I was gone right to midfield yeah we're right out of the blocks when you haven't won it since 1977 at home and it was three stadiums ago you don't really know where they're holding it right it was like a scavenger hunt yeah you know like you don't really know what it looks like in real life how How big is it? What do we know? Yeah, now we know. Now we know. Well, TJ, we certainly appreciate you taking the time. Best of luck this week against Iowa. Once again, appreciate you being here with us on the BJ Flex Show. Thank you. All right, TJ Bush, everybody. When we come back, we'll take a closer look at this weekend's opponent, the Iowa Hawkeyes, will be in town. What's it going to take for Minnesota to knock off their rival and get back in the win column? We'll discuss that with the head coach when we come back. You're watching the PJ Flex Show. Welcome back into the PJ Flex Show, everybody. Buddy, time now to focus on this weekend's opponent. I don't really have to say much. All I have to really say is Iowa. That's the opponent. I think we all know how much this game means to the fan base. PJ, let's talk about their team a little bit here. They've got not one, but two quarterbacks that they like to play and rotate. One starts the game. One might come in the game later. How much of a challenge is that preparing for a team that likes to play two quarterbacks? Yeah, they're both really talented. The one thing is ones, you know, they have very similar styles of play. They're not the same player, but you're not having, okay, this guy only runs and this guy only throws. So the problem with that is they both do a lot of things well, and I'm sure they're the ones that know what the true skill set of both of those guys are and then game plan around that, right? And they're the ones that actually really know that. But we're going to treat them pretty close to being the same because you have to because they both are really talented. They get the ball to the open receivers. They both can move in the pocket. And, you know, they've won a lot of games for them. And you look at Kamara, majority of their carries. You just faced another really, really good running back with Purdue. What is the plan going into this game to kind of limit his chances? You're going to have to, first of all, lock down the pass game on the outside the best you possibly can. But you've got to stop the run. You're going to have to tackle better. You're going to have to fit better. You're going to have to get off your blocks. Iowa does such a great job in the run game by sustaining blocks. They do not allow you to violent disengage. And if you do, you're going to be okay. If you don't, they're going to swallow you up. They come off the ball really hard. They've got really good schemes with the mid-zone, outside zone, with some gap schemes. They always keep your eyes moving. They might have two – they have a formation. Well, there's probably six different plays with all different types of plays out of those six formations, whether it's an outside zone, a mid-zone, a reverse, a few passes out of that, a naked, a bootleg, all looking the same. They do such a great job. Coach Lester does a great job, and they scored a lot of points this year. You've talked a lot in the past about having to play the long game against Iowa. Explain that a little bit. Yeah, I don't know. I don't even know if playing the long game against Iowa with Coach Lester there is just this formula. That's the only way to beat Iowa. They can score points. They can score them quickly. They can keep it on the ground. They can hit it in the air. Their receivers are way better than they've had in the past. Quarterbacks push the ball down the field. They're mobile. They can move. so there's just a lot of different elements to this Iowa offense that you have to worry about yourself you've got to sustain drives you got to stay on the field you got score points and your defense has to play lights out and then your special teams have to connect that we saw how important special teams were last year when we didn't win and how fast that game was over before it even started so we've got to play way better football than we did last week but we've got to have we're gonna have to play our best football of the year and have a chance to win this football game You were telling TJ Bush off camera, if he's going to run to another trophy, just be careful with this one, the Floyd Rose bowl. Because I don't even think I fully realize, it's how many pounds? 98 pounds. 98 pounds of bacon there. You've never lifted it. You've never lifted 98 pounds. I won't even pretend to try. My back's already hurting from picking up my three-month-old off the ground. Like I'm just a physical freak. Ron has. You've held it. Ron does it every day. This morning. Yeah, this morning. You've held it, though, before. You got a tip for holding that trophy up? Do not grab it by the little stubby legs because if you think you can grab by the legs, that's where the balance gets thrown off. You've got to put that thing up on your shoulder, and that's how you've got to carry it. Or hold it on each side, and if you're really strong, you lift it up. 98 pounds. Five shoulder surgeries, I'm not getting that done. No, 98 pounds. Avoid the little stubby legs. Okay, just remember that, folks. So you row the boat. We appreciate you tuning in to the P.J. Flex Show. Don't forget to join us this Saturday for the Gopher Pre-Game Show when we catch you down to kickoff between the Gophers and the Hawkeyes. We'll see you next week, everybody, for more of the P.J. Flex Show.