Michigan Football: Getting to know Minnesota Golden Gophers

The extended offseason has finally exhausted nearly all of its time and that brings us to the most welcomed game week ever experienced in Michigan football history.

The top 25 primetime showdown at TCF Bank stadium is rapidly approaching. This Saturday evening in Minneapolis would be a raucous atmosphere assuming that a crowd of thousands were in attendance, but that will not be the case. The Michigan football team will head into a mostly empty stadium without a significant disadvantage of having to deal with the fan noise as well.

The Gophers are led by 2019 coach of the year P.J. Fleck. He’s already brought the program to new heights that it hasn’t seen before. Fleck is a hot coaching name that should be well-known across the country already. Under his leadership, the Gophers are coming off a banner year and will attempt to continue their good vibes by knocking off Michigan for the world to see.

On offense, Mike Sanford takes over the unit from Mike Ciarrocca. Sanford comes over from Utah State who averaged a hair under 30 points per game, while totaling a balanced 431 yards an outing. GopherIllustrated.com expects him to run a lot of an RPO type of attack, which is what they relied upon 45% of the time in 2019.

Tanner Morgan is their returning signal caller and he is quite the gamer. The junior threw for over 3,200 yards and had 30 touchdowns with only seven interceptions to his stat sheet as a sophomore.

His number one threat is Rashod Bateman who won the Big Ten receiver of the year with over 1,200 yards on 60 grabs and 11 scores.

The rest of the offense is just as formidable with a seasoned offensive line that creates holes for a stable rushing presence headed by Mohamed Ibrahim.

Defensively, Joseph Rossi took over in 2018 and forged the group to be ranked tenth nationally a year later. The Gophers gave up about 300 per contest, which was the school’s best since 1977. Rossi’s bunch loses notable standouts Antoine Winfield Jr. and Carter Coughlin, but return former Michigan commit Benjamin St. Juste at corner and ex Notre Dame defensive tackle Micah Dew-Treadway.

The Gophers are expected to compete for the West title again in 2020. They started the year 9-0 and climbed into the top ten of the rankings.

They finished 2-2 with a surprise bowl victory over Auburn in the Outback bowl. Now they will try and win back the coveted Little Brown Jug for the first time since 2014.

Having an opener on the road like this one can do wonders for Harbaugh’s guys as long as they don’t end up on the short end of the stick.

Regardless, it’s going to be a glorious sight to see when the two teams can officially start hitting each other after popping pads with their own teammates for the last several months.