The Gopher football team heads into its week-two game at Maryland on Friday still with question marks following their season-opening loss to Michigan.
"It just wasn’t good enough. At all. In any phase. Offense, defense or special teams," said head coach PJ Fleck. "Remember, completely different football team from last year."
The Gophers played without two starting offensive linemen, right tackle Daniel Faalele and right guard Curtis Dunlap. Dunlap had a cast on his left foot.
With seven regulars — including four NFL draft picks — departed from the defense that ranked third in the Big Ten and 10th in the FBS last season with an average of 306.6 yards allowed per game, this new group for the Gophers has a long way to go.
"It was one game. The sky hasn’t fallen on the season and we don’t look at it like that," said quarterback Tanner Morgan. "We have to be better and we will be better. We will digest this film to get a lot better from it, learn from it, and grow from it. Then we will move on to next week.”
Maryland comes into their home opener following a 43-3 pasting at the hands of Northwestern on Saturday night.
The Terrapins' starting quarterback, Alabama transfer Taulia Tagovailoa, threw three interceptions, but isn't expected to be demoted.
“He’s our quarterback,” Maryland coach Mike Locksley said. “He earned the right to be the starting quarterback, did the things that we thought would give us the best chance to win.”
Positive COVID-19 tests depleted Minnesota's specialists, with punter Mark Crawford, kicker Michael Lantz and kickoff specialist Grant Ryerse all held out.
Brock Walker handled field goals and extra points, but his recent recovery from hernia surgery forced him to pooch kick all of the kickoffs.
“We have to get our leadership up," said running back Mohamed Ibrahim, who rushed for 140 yards and two touchdowns against the Wolveriones. "The sideline was very dry. Besides that, we will watch film to see exactly what happened, why it happened and what we can do to fix it. We have to grow from that and learn from our mistakes. We have to change our best next week.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
