B1G Time: Overlook PJ Fleck and Minnesota at your peril

As the clock wound down Friday night at Huntington Bank Stadium Minnesota leading Nebraska 24-6 the reaction to the result was predictable. Nebraska, ranked for the first time since Week 3 of last season, blew it. Matt Rhule, who was mentioned at the suddenly vacant position Penn State job all week, ruined it too.

I get it. This is how it works when the teams with the numbers next to their names lose to the teams without them. In the immediate aftermath, however, I had another takeaway. I thought, “Boy, PJ Fleck doesn’t get nearly enough recognition for what he did in Minnesota.”

The win improved the Gophers to 5-2 on the season and 3-1 in the Big Ten. They are one win away from their fifth straight bowl appearance, which would tie the school’s record for consecutive postseason berths. It also improved Fleck’s record to 37-37 in Big Ten play. If you take out his first season, the Gophers are 35-30 in Big Ten play, and if you ignore 2020 (and, honestly, we should all ignore the results of the COVID season, as they have largely proven meaningless), he is 32-26. Those numbers won’t surprise you, but in the context of where Minnesota has historically been in the Big Ten over the last 75 years, it’s impressive.

Minnesota has won seven national titles in its history, but none since 1960. If we just look at the modern era of college football (since the BCS began in 1998), Minnesota has finished with a winning conference record eight times in 27 seasons. Fleck is responsible for four of those and is two wins away from his fifth.

What Fleck did in Minnesota reminds me a lot of what Hayden Fry and then Kirk Ferentz did Iowa. He’s come from a Big Ten program that isn’t considered one of the league’s best and has consistently found ways to exceed expectations each season. Coincidentally, Fleck’s Gophers will face each other this week in one of the Big Ten’s traditional rivalry games.

There’s a bronze pig on the line, folks!

Before any Iowa fans throw heavy objects at me, Fleck hasn’t taken Minnesota to the same heights that Fry and Ferentz reached in Iowa. Hayden Fry took the Hawkeyes to the Rose Bowl three times. Kirk Ferentz has two Big Ten titles, a Rose Bowl appearance and an Orange Bowl appearance to boot. Fleck has never won the Big Ten and his biggest bowl was a Cotton Bowl appearance Western Michigan that led to him landing the Minnesota job.

My comparison is more about what Minnesota has become under Fleck. Some may have seen Nebraska heading to Minnesota and losing in a big upset. Maybe it was scattered to the point, but it wasn’t a shock to anyone paying attention. Just as Big Ten teams found it difficult to get to Kinnick Stadium and face the Hawkeyes, the same thing is happening with road trips to Minneapolis.

On Friday night, it was No. 25 Nebraska that lost. Last season No. 11 USC entered Huntington Bank Stadium and fell 24-17. A month and a half later, it was No. 4 Penn State that narrowly avoided disaster in a 26-25 victory.

In a year when it feels like so many Big Ten programs are questioning who they are and what their place is in the league, Minnesota has an identity under Fleck. The Gophers may surprise you, but not themselves.

Let’s rank rivalry trophies

Okay, since Rosedale’s Floyd is on the line Saturday in Iowa City, and I love that damn pig, it feels like a good time to rank the top five Big Ten rivalry trophies. These rankings are final, and if you don’t agree with them, it’s because you’re wrong and need to reevaluate everything you’ve felt or thought in your life thus far. Maybe then you will find out why your ranking is wrong.

Anyway, here we go.

1. Floyd from Rosedale
2. Paul Bunyan’s Ax
3. Illibuck
4. Paul Bunyan Trophy
5. Little Brown Jug

To the surprise of no one, Wisconsin was dominated by State of Ohio in a 34-0 loss. This performance followed a 37-0 loss to Iowa the week before. That’s right, the Badgers haven’t scored a point in a football game since they kicked a 39-yard field goal to cut Michigans led to 24-10 with 2:43 to play. It’s been 122 minutes and 43 seconds of playing time since the Badgers put a point on the board.

They were outscored 122-20 in four Big Ten games. No other Big Ten team has scored fewer than 64 points in conference play this year. Things are pretty bad, but I don’t know if these numbers really explain it, so let’s take it one step further.

There have been 36 Big Ten conference games played so far this year, and Wisconsin’s average of -0.42 EPA per snap was the second-worst performance of the season across all those games. The worst? Well, that was Wisconsin’s 37-0 loss to Iowa last week. It averaged -0.58 against the Hawkeyes.

What is that? Do you want it to hurt more? Well, I have good news for you sick people: No other Big Ten team has had an average EPA per game lower than -0.34 this year, so Wisconsin not only has the two worst performances, but by a mile!

Oh, and Wisconsin’s -0.20 performance against Maryland is the tenth worst this year. So the Badgers claim three of the ten worst offensive showings of the Big Ten season. No other Big Ten team has more than one of the worst 10, and what’s even crazier is that all three teams are from Wisconsin At home.

Their best performance was -0.15 against Michigan, which ranks 15th worst. Seriously, everyone, it’s been really bad.

Dylan Raiola can’t stop getting fired

Dylan Raiola was sacked nine times in Nebraska’s loss to Minnesota, which is clearly the most he has ever been sacked in a game. But this is not a new problem. Raiola has been sacked regularly this season. After being sacked 25 times last year, he’s now down 26 times in 2025, and we’re barely halfway through the regular season.

The only quarterback who has been sacked more times than Raiola this year is that Chestnut brown Jackson Arnoldwho is 27. I place a lot of the blame for this on Raiola’s shoulders.

It has a pressure-to-bag ratio of 2.81. For those who aren’t clear, this just means how many times the QB is pressured for each sack he takes. Of the 116 qualified quarterbacks, Raiola’s ratio ranks 116th. Jackson Arnold is 115th at 3:00.

Some people will want to blame the offensive line, and I’m not going to absolve that unit, but Raiola is only under pressure on 29.1% of his dropbacks. That ranks 54th out of 116 qualified QBs. While the PFF grades are far from a holy grail, PFF gives Nebraska’s offensive line a pass-blocking grade of 78.7 this season. That ranks 13th out of 136 FBS teams.

I’ve been critical of Raiola on the Cover 3 Podcast this year. I don’t think he’s a fundamentally good player, and it bugs me because from a talent perspective, there aren’t many people in the country with his arm talent. He has great arm strength and tremendous accuracy. He can make every throw in the book, and he can do it in a variety of ways. But he’s getting sloppy with his footwork and that’s leading to misses that shouldn’t happen too often.

Then there are the bags he takes with him. Many of them are products of his desire to make plays happen off-script. Sometimes he does something spectacular, like this.

More often, instead of stepping into the pocket to escape pressure, he backs up or tries to roll right or left to buy more time to do something incredible, only to end up in the waiting arms of a defender.

The sacks put Nebraska’s offense in tough positions, putting more pressure on Raiola to do something great, which led to more sacks. It’s something he and the Cornhuskers have gotten away with in non-conference games, but it’s hurting them in Big Ten games.

Until Raiola begins to understand that boring plays can be more effective than spectacular ones, Nebraska will have a hard time winning consistently in the Big Ten.

Go with my feelings

Every week I pick the Big Ten games against the spread based on nothing more than my gut reaction to the number. You don’t have to dig into the numbers, just the atmosphere, honey. I even keep my records to avoid publicly embarrassing myself. Any game not included is due to no line being posted at the time of publication.

Minnesota in Iowa: Okay, here’s the deal. It’s hard for me to trust Iowa to cover such a wide spread when the Hawkeyes barely managed to beat Penn State at home last week. This was a Penn State team that was on a three-game losing streak, which resulted in the coach being fired, and had lost its starting quarterback of the year to injury. There was no excuse for Iowa to make it so close. Now Minnesota comes to town with Rosedale’s Floyd on the line. I have to take the points here. Minnesota +8.5

UCLA at No. 2 Indiana — Indiana -24.5
Northwest in Nebraska — Northwest +7.5
Rutgers at Purdue — Purdue +2.5
No. 23 Illinois at Washington — Illinois +4.5
Wisconsin at No. 6 Oregon — Oregon-34.5
No. 25 Michigan op State of Michigan — Michigan -14.5

Last week: 5-4
Season: 39-30