Minnesota Golden Gophers, 2025 Recap: Row, PJ, Row

Like a winter sunset over Lake Superior in Duluth, there's something strangely beautiful to PJ Fleck's recent tenure. Almost always 9-4 or 8-5, with a guaranteed mid-range bowl win tossed in for good measure (and a loss to Iowa, natch). He's ironically iconic. He's metronomic. And his Golden Gophers just keep rowing. 2025 was no different. Let's revisit the season, yeah?

What were the expectations?

Transient Buckeye: Minnesotans are too fake-nice to let on that they have expectations. And if they did have expectations, they're far too realistic to have let them get too high. By this point, P.J. Fleck has been around Minneapolis long enough that we pretty much know what we're going to get. There will be an inexplicable non-conference loss to an inferior opponent. In Big Ten play, Minnesota will generally beat the teams they should beat, and get rototilled by the teams they should lose to. Sunrise, sunset.

Kind of...: Like tater tot hotdish on Wednesday and some sort of fish on Friday, Gopher fans can expect 7-5 or 8-4 regular seasons and a minor bowl win. That's been the case for four out of five post-Covid seasons. Only a foolish risk-taker would bet on things changing this year. And Minnesotans are NOT foolish risk-takers. (Of course, Wisconsin cashed out their IRA, headed to Vegas because they heard about a sure thing, and now we're into year 4 of Luke Fickell...)

HoustonBoiler: I would say that Minnesota is basically store-brand Iowa. You know you're going to win most of the games you should, so 7 or 8 games a season. In 2025, the Gophers won 7 in the regular season and beat who-cares in their whatever bowl. As Transient Buckeye said "sunrise, sunset."

So, how'd it go?

Transient Buckeye: Did you read the last section? (Of course you didn't. Not reading the articles is one of our proudest traditions). There was an inexplicable loss to a greatly inferior nonconference foe (Cal). There was a mostly-predictable slate of Big Ten outcomes. Minnesota generally beat the teams it should've beaten, and got rototilled by superior opponents. The only blip in the pattern was the 38-35 loss to Northwestern, but at this point, Minnesota losing close games to Northwestern is sort of a meme, so should we really be surprised by that outcome? I don't think so.

Kind of...: In moderate defense of Minnesota, I don't think Cal was greatly inferior to them, especially with that game played out in Strawberry Canyon. But, yeah, pretty Minnesota through and through. "Row the boat" definitely is closer in meaning to "let's leisurely cross that smallish lake" than "white water rapids, hell yeah!"

HoustonBoiler: Sunrise, sunset.

What were the highlights?

Transient Buckeye: Minnesota won 8 games in 2025. That's...pretty okay. They ROFL-stomped a ranked Nebraska team on a Friday night in Minneapolis (Should Nebraska have been ranked? No. But they were.). They won 8 games. They had a first-quarter lead against Ohio State in Columbus. They won 8 games. They prevailed in the season-ending contest for Paul Bunyan's Axe against Wisconsin. They won 8 games. They capped their season with a victory in the Rate Bowl against New Mexico. And did I mention that they won 8 games?

Kind of...: Yep. Beat Nebraska. Beat Wisconsin. Win a meaningless bowl game. That's a pretty good season, dontcha know?

HoustonBoiler: Minnesota won most of the games they should have won, i.e., games against lesser competition. Store-brand Iowa performance.

And the lowlights?

Transient Buckeye: Yes, Minnesota won 8 games in 2025. However, on closer inspection, those 8 wins came against Buffalo, Northwestern State, Rutgers, Purdue, Nebraska, Michigan State, Wisconsin, and New Mexico. That's a lot of empty calories. And these were not dominating wins. Minnesota squeaked out one-score victories over Rutgers, Purdue, and Michigan State, three teams that were solidly situated among the dregs of the Big Ten in 2025. I also noted last week that Minnesota was very lucky to get that home win over a terribad Michigan State team; that was a game the Gophers by all rights should have lost. If Minnesota had gone 6-6 with what was a pretty favorable schedule, I think the taste in Gopher fans' mouths would've been a lot worse.

Then there's the other persistent problem that's afflicted Minnesota throughout most of the P.J. Fleck era (2019 excepted)--the Gophers' abject helplessness when playing the conference's big boys. Minnesota played just three teams that finished among the Big Ten's upper tiers in 2025--Ohio State, Iowa, and Oregon. The results? 42-3, 41-3, 42-13. If you wanted to defend Minnesota (why would you do that?), you could note that all three of those games were played on the road. But for a while now, it's felt to me that when Fleck's Gophers go into games where they're clearly overmatched, their response is to curl up in the fetal position and hope to get the beating over with as quickly as possible.

Kind of...: So...1-5 against bowl competition in the regular-season, huh? What IS the second-best win of the P.J. Fleck era?

HoustonBoiler: Struggling mightily to beat a bad Purdue team, who went 0'fer the B1G. The Boilermakers led 7-0 after the 1st quarter, 17-13 at halftime, and 20-13 after the 3rd quarter. On the first play after Minnesota tied the game in the 4th quarter, Ryan Browne very generously threw a pick-6 to hand the Gophers the game on a silver platter. Do you think Iowa would need for Purdue to hand them the win? No. No, they would not.

Any memorable and or absurd moments?

Transient Buckeye: It feels like Minnesotans frown on things that are either memorable or absurd, so...

MaximumSam: I did go to the Minnesota-OSU game, and that's where I discovered Maverick Baranowski. He has Harry Cane vibes in how fun is name is to say after every play.

Kind of...: It really is indicative of the P.J. Fleck era that even beating Wisconsin and holding onto the Axe was boring. (17-7, less than 500 yards of offense, combined.) On the one hand, thanks for not stepping on the gas, Peej. On the other hand: wait, could you even have done that if you wanted to?

HoustonBoiler: What Transient Buckeye said.