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BIG TEN CONFERENCE FOOTBALL MEDIA DAYSJuly 18, 2019P.J. FleckChicago, Illinois PJ FLECK: Always honored to be the head football coach at the University of Minnesota. New season, everybody is really excited for it, 2019. Also brings change in a lot of areas. We see Jim Delany moving on. I want to thank him for all of his work he's done for the Big Ten, but also what a wonderful time for Kevin Warren and Greta Warren, who were neighbors of ours in Minnesota. We got to know them very well, and you're talking about the ultimate power couple, to take the Big Ten from where it is now into the future. So it couldn't be in better hands, couldn't have been in better hands, and now working its way into Kevin Warren as he continues to move forward, so congratulations to him. We've had some change on our campus, as well. President Kaler has stepped down and Joan Gabel comes to us from South Carolina. Want to congratulate her on becoming the new president at the University of Minnesota starting basically now. We're really excited for the season, 17 returning starters. Went from the youngest team in America last year, now I think we're the second youngest, so we moved up one spot possibly. That doesn't mean you can't win. We're just young. And close to 80 percent of our team is only freshman and sophomores, which is exciting. But our upperclassmen have truly done a great job of leading this football team, and a lot of them are here with us today, which we'll talk about. We brought four individuals, one, Casey O'Brien, who is actually giving a speech tomorrow and he will knock your socks off with his talk. You're in for an emotional roller coaster with him. So we're very excited to have Casey helping not only the University of Minnesota program but the whole state of Minnesota, as he'll talk about with the Masonic Children's Hospital and everything he's part of. So we're excited to have him here. Mo Ibrahim, who a lot of you got a change to see last year, maybe you didn't know much about him. When Rodney Smith and Shannon Brooks went down everybody kind of looked at what's going to happen, who's going to take their place. And the third running back walks in and in 10 games he rushes for over 1,100 yards. He's not the biggest, not the strongest, fastest, but he's one of the best human beings you will ever see in your entire life and ever meet. He's one of the hardest runners I've ever been a part of. He's cares a lot. And you can tell by the way he cares by how hard he plays, and he was a wonderful surprise for all of us as we've continued to go through our development of players. Next, Carter Coughlin is also here representing the University of Minnesota and the Big Ten. What a wonderful year Carter had last year. He is a very explosive player, very tough, bloodlines run deep at the University of Minnesota. He's a legacy player, and again, you're talking about a young man who has matured a ton and grown up a lot, and again, one of the best people you'll ever meet. And he was directly part and responsible for that defense flipping last year as we continued to mature and get older. So Carter is here representing us. And then obviously Tyler Johnson, our receiver, who set a bunch of University of Minnesota Golden Gopher receiving records last year, decided to come back for his senior year, which we're very thankful for. Not just for his own draft status and things like that, but to get his degree and to be the first person from his family to have that degree. Not only that, he thinks we're going to be pretty good, and he came back for his teammates. So we're really excited about that. Every year brings a new change amongst staff, amongst everybody. Just because you did something one year doesn't mean you're going to do it another year. There's new ways to win, different teams' identities to win, and we're looking forward to finding out which way we're going to be able to do that as we keep getting to know this football team and keep adding freshmen. So excited for the 2019 season in Minneapolis in the Twin City area. With that, we'll open it up for questions. Q. What flipped in the final four or five games last year? I know you had a change at coordinator, but what else made such a dramatic improvement? PJ FLECK: Yeah, we made a change at defensive coordinator. I thought that was necessary. I'm not going to say that was the biggest -- and the reason why we changed. I think when you had such a young football team -- and you look at us, we had eight freshman starting on offense at one point. And you are the youngest team in America, to have success and to become a champion, I feel like you need both spectrums. You have to fail enough to be successful and you have to go through some of those positive shining moments. The team last year had the entire spectrum, and at one point, I think they failed enough to become successful and they were mature enough to handle it. And our whole theme last year was a race to maturity. We might not be the oldest team, but we can grow up fast by our experiences, and I thought that's what changed. I thought our upperclassmen did a great job of leading the younger guys, and at the beginning, those younger guys who were playing, we were just doing everything we can to get them to line up right. Just line up right, let alone master your craft, get to know all your technique. When you have that many young players playing at once, it's hard to be able to get better. It's just about getting out there and doing your job. But towards the end of the year, I thought we were able to get better in a lot of areas. Q. Being a Chicagoland area guy and starting your coaching career in Northern Illinois, how much does recruiting this area mean to your program, and how much are you going to prioritize, and how well do you know the talent of this area? PJ FLECK: Well, being from the state of Illinois, being from really right here -- my parents are from Berwyn and Cicero and now my family lives in Sugar Grove, Illinois, that's where I was raised -- this is a huge, huge recruiting state for us, recruiting city for us. Brian Callahan, Kenni Burns recruit the area for us, they're both from the area, and they do a great job of it. I know what type of players you get out of the state of Illinois, the type of players you get out of the city of Chicago, and that's what we want to build our culture around. We've had a lot of success here, plan on having a lot of success here in the future, but it's always nice to come back to the state that you're from, the city that you're from, and have some recruiting success. Q. I'm curious to know what you are expecting heading into the Big Ten West this year, a division that seems pretty open, and what you think the chances are of a team from that division finally wrestling the Championship from the East? PJ FLECK: Well, with all due respect, I think the West has gotten a lot better. You look at the coaches who have been hired. I mean, Scott Frost at Nebraska and seeing what they're doing in recruiting right now and the elevation of that program instantly, you can just feel that coming as well as I'm sure a lot of the reporters and you guys have seen. And you look at what Jeff Brohm has done at Purdue and elevating that program on a national stage and the things they were able to do last year. And most all the Big Ten West teams have been able to elevate that. We feel like we're a part of that, as well. And the recruiting success that we've had over the last two years, we feel like we're breaking boundaries and knocking walls down in terms of recruiting to the Twin City area, maybe doing things that haven't been done before. And that's a lifeline of your program is recruiting, so we have to be able to do that. It's a wide open West. There are no easy games. No matter what side of the division you're playing, there are no easy games. One thing I've learned in this conference is there's zero easy games here. They're all hard, no matter who you play, and you have to be at your best every single week. But again, what we're going to be able to do is focus on being better today than we were yesterday. It sounds like a broken record and it sounds boring, but sometimes boring is okay. And that's what we're looking at doing. If we can be better today than we were yesterday, then we'll become a success, and that's in all four areas of your life. We consider ourselves a life program, not just a football program. So we're talking our academics, our social life, our spiritual life. We have the highest GPA in the history of the football program at 3.20, and we're proud of that. We have guys that have gone from 2.4 to 3.7 GPAs. It's not coincidence that they're also becoming really good football players. They're loving their life. They're appreciating their life. They're putting value back into their life in all areas and becoming that complete person. The word, success, has a lot of meanings, and we'll continue to have successful people first. Q. You mentioned the change at defensive coordinator last season. Can you talk about Joe Rossi and what confidence he gives you? PJ FLECK: Yeah, Joe Rossi just as well as all of our coaches -- the number one thing I look for when I hire a coach is are they an elite teacher, are they an elite educator. And I'm a sixth grade social studies teacher at heart. And Joe Rossi is exactly that. When you can get people to respond to you immediately by how you teach and what you say and the gap of the learning curve is way smaller by how you teach, that's efficiency. It's efficiency in your teaching and your coaching, and I want that guy on my staff. Again, Rob Smith did a really good job for us in a lot of areas, but I felt the leadership was needed in a different way, and I thought Joe Rossi came in and did a fantastic job. And especially being able to capture everybody in a tumultuous time. Just came off the Illinois game, a big loss, and it wasn't pretty at those times in the Twin City area. Made sure that the grass was cut back in our home and said hey just make sure you keep all the beds full of mulch because this thing could go on the market pretty quick. End of the day, ended up turning the corner of that year, but Joe Rossi is a big part of it. But again, it has a lot to do -- and he'd say the same thing -- we matured and got better as the season went on, and that's what you want to see, especially from a young football team. Q. I wanted to ask you about last year's team. When you watch those first eight or nine games, it certainly was not an effort issue, it seemed to be overthinking, and then the last part, they just played the game. Is that what you're talking about when you talk about maturity? PJ FLECK: Yeah, I'm a firm believer there's more games lost than there are won in college football. Most people lose the game, they don't win the game. What we had to do is we had to take these young players and teach them how do you win games. So we took this number according to -- here we go again. We had this number 78 percent, and we said -- we did an NFL study, a collegiate study over the last 50 years directly tied to winning. And we came up with three statistics, and that was the turnover margin is directly related to winning, explosive plays, and then the missed tackles. And if you can win those, you're going to win 78 percent of the time, right, in terms of how you're able to judge a number of what that means. When we won the 78 percent battle, we were 7-0. When we lost, we were 0-6. So you immediately take numbers and you show them, this is how you go win a game. And when we did it, we were really, really good. When we didn't do it, we weren't. So that takes the youth out of it. Just focus on these things. It helps practice, it helps young people be able to focus on a little bit more than just this big picture of winning. Focus on these things, and it helps our coaches through individual practice, through the time they spend with the players, what we had to focus on. Now, we can get into mastering our system and even be able to expand on that 78 percent, but more in house with our system. When your hardest workers are your best players, you have something really special. And we're starting to get to that point where our best players are our hardest workers, and then as the new freshmen come in, that's all they see are the best players are the hardest workers, and now that's infectious, and then that carries over into the other years. Q. I wanted to ask you about your run defense because early and in the mid-part of the year, it really struggled especially against Nebraska and Illinois. Yet in the last four games, you were able to really tighten up some things. Is that part of the growth and maturity you're talking about, and if so, what kind of schematic changes maybe accompanied that to enable you guys to stop some of the better running teams? PJ FLECK: Well, I think it was two things. One, we grew up and I think we were a more mature football team as I said. And I think the teaching of Joe Rossi simplified everything. We didn't change systems, we just got a lot simpler very quickly. We wanted them playing faster, and when you had as many young players, whether they started or whether they rotated in, you had to make sure they were in the right spots. Not only in the right spots, have confidence to be able to make the play. Jordan Howden was a walk-on safety for us that started last year after Antoine Winfield, Jr. went down, and I remember that Maryland game must have been the longest game for that young man. By the end of the year, he was one of our best players, but he had to go through that failing to become successful. So I think it was a combination, the maturity process plus Joe Rossi's simplification through his teaching and education. Q. You guys got the first -- you got the axe back for the first time in over a decade. How big of a momentum builder was that for you going into this season? PJ FLECK: Well, getting the axe back, I thought meant a lot for both teams. I know maybe Wisconsin is not happy that we have the axe, but it's healthy for the rivalry. Trust me, Wisconsin didn't let us win. But it's healthy. After 14 straight years of one of the greatest rivalries in college football, Paul Bunyan's axe being one-sided for 14 straight years, there's a lot of things that happen to people's minds especially in our state. They doubt it more. They say "we'll never." They use words like that, "if that ever happens." Well, winning that game, especially how we won it and where we won it and hadn't won there since 1994 -- hadn't won the game in 14 straight years -- breaking that mold creates this hope for the future, and that's what I hope our state of Minnesota understands is we're doing things that haven't been done in a very long time. Maybe ever in some areas. We haven't won a championship in over 50 years, but if people can start to see firsts -- yes, we won our last game of the year and our bowl game. That's the first time in program history that's happened. It's a small never or first that hasn't happened or has happened, but it's something you can show, look, here's what we're doing. And then you add to that and the recruiting success we're having -- and we're having recruiting classes that have been ranked higher than other recruiting classes in the history of our school -- and you're putting those back to back to hopefully back. Now all of a sudden, you start to show people where we're headed because everybody wants proof. Everybody wants to say "show me how we're doing that." Well, academically we're showing people how we're changing; socially, we're showing people how the brand of Minnesota is changing; spiritually, we're showing our lives are bigger than just ourselves; and then athletically, we're doing things that haven't been done in a very long time, some never. And I hope our fans are able to see that, and I'm really proud of our players, the ability to overcome such adversity, especially from where the season was, where we were at to winning that game plus the bowl championship against Georgia Tech in the ACC. That was a huge movement for us, springboarding us into 2019. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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