Gophers football players aren’t sugarcoating what needs to happen this season

The Gophers football team won five regular-season games last year, the first time since coach P.J. Fleck’s Minnesota 5-7 debut season of 2017 it had triumphed that infrequently. A Quick Lane Bowl victory in 2023 came after the Gophers’ academic ranking provided a postseason lifeline, but the disappointment lingered.

“It didn’t sit well, obviously,” defensive back Jack Henderson said. “It didn’t sit well with anybody.”

So, what do the Gophers plan to do about it?

Get violent — at least in the legal sense of a football game. It was a mantra mentioned frequently Wednesday as Gophers players gathered for an internal media day that featured photo shoots and interviews.

“Violence,” defensive end Danny Striggow said. “We really talked about three things all offseason: excitement, swarm and violence.”

Added defensive end Jah Joyner, speaking about defensive coordinator Corey Hetherman: “He just wants us to get vertical defensively and wants us to be violent and just attack.”

A look at the stats over the past two seasons show why the Gophers need an ears-pinned-back approach. In 2022, Minnesota had the fourth-best scoring defense in FBS, allowing 13.8 points per game. Last year, the Gophers ranked 69th in that category, allowing 26.7 points per game and giving away games against Northwestern and Illinois with fourth-quarter collapses.

Linebacker Cody Lindenberg, whose absence for most of the 2023 season because of a hamstring injury contributed heavily to the defensive issues, is back healthy ahead of the opening of training camp July 29. He, too, knows the word of the day.

“Guys are running to the ball and just being violent when they get there,” Lindenberg said.

An increased emphasis on physical play isn’t lost on Minnesota’s offense. The Gophers fell from 16th with 207.5 rushing yards per game in 2022 to 66th with 157.5 last year. They passed for nearly 40 fewer yards per game last year and scored 7.3 fewer points than they did in 2022.

A dose of physical play would help on offense, too, and guard Quinn Carroll sees it happening.

“We’re starting to build a more dominating identity,” he said. “We’ve got a heck of a backfield and a quarterback that can do it all. So, we just need to give those guys time, give them space to be special.”

Front and center for those guys are quarterback Max Brosmer, the graduate transfer from New Hampshire, and sophomore running back Darius Taylor, who had rushing games of 208 yards, 198 and 193 among his four starts in 2023.

“We have to make sure that this year is the year we’re attacking every single rep with the mindset of, ‘We don’t want to be where we were last year,’” Brosmer said.