P.J. Fleck leans on life lessons after Gophers’ embarrassment at Iowa

Start fast. Accelerate in the middle. Finish strong.

The Gophers failed on all three fronts in their 41-3 loss to Iowa, and head coach P.J. Fleck is using the shellacking as an opportunity to reinforce the culture he's created over nine years at the University of Minnesota.

"I never question how hard we play and our toughness, but we executed very poorly," Fleck said. "Completely unacceptable. It falls on my shoulders." Then Fleck put on a show in life lessons, connecting the difficult loss to growth opportunities that Minnesota's student-athletes will face the rest of their lives.

"Most teams we coach always get better as the year goes on. That doesn't mean you're not going to have some really hard games that you really gotta swallow a tough pill, but the pill is not like it fixes tomorrow. It's something that you have to get better at, and you have to make a conscious choice to get better at," Fleck said.

Fleck is taking all the blame, even though it wasn't him who threw the pick-six, nor him who blew a coverage assignment on Iowa's punt return for a touchdown.

"It's unfortunate that it all came together in Iowa City. That's not fair to our fans, that's not fair to the alum, and that's not fair to our football team, who've worked really, really hard. But life's not fair, and you reap what you sow," Fleck said. "You don't play well, in this league, you don't play well, you don't play your best, it doesn't matter who you play or where you're at, you're going to get beat and you're going to get beat soundly."

Fleck said redshirt freshman Drake Lindsey, who was held to 109 passing yards and threw three interceptions, has swallowed the tough pill and is moving on.

"The biggest pieces of growth come from failing. One thing about him is he's got a great failing mechanism where he can flush it, learn, and move on," Fleck said.

"Nobody works harder than that young man. As you play a freshman, you're going to have to understand, there's going to be highs, there's going to be some hard dips. But that's part of the growth process. The more you can have, the more leather skin and the more scars you're gonna build as you keep going forward. Not to say we want that to happen on Saturday, at all. I'm not saying that. But I am saying that is part of a journey and a process to every single quarterback that plays their freshman season. That's why you don't see a ton of it."

As the Gophers prepare for Michigan State, Fleck isn't allowing his team to cross the boundary from emotion to emotional.

"I think there's a difference between playing with emotion, being full of emotion and being emotional. I think emotion is tied to response. It's a trained behavior. You're prepared for the environment, you're prepared for the situation. You don't let circumstance dictate your behavior. That's emotion," Fleck explained.

"Emotional is when you cross that boundary, where the circumstance will dictate your behavior. It's a reaction based on how society wants us to react. Something bad happens, everybody wants you to be mad. Something good happens, everybody wants you to celebrate. It's being able to be the standard through the really good times and the really hard times, and not take anything for granted. I think there's a big difference between crossing that line. When I say that we don't want to cross that line into emotional, that's the undisciplined piece, it's the reactionary piece. We are 0-1 in the Iowa season, and it wasn't very good, and I get that. But that was one game."

Life lessons aside, the Gophers lost to Iowa for the 20th time since 2001. We don't know what kind of life lessons Kirk Ferentz has taught his Hawkeyes during his 27 years as head coach, but he sure as heck has figured out how to beat Minnesota.

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