Iowa football: Gophers coach PJ Fleck highly respects Kirk Ferentz and the Hawks

The Iowa football team takes on PJ Fleck’s Gophers Saturday. Fleck did not hide his respect for Kirk Ferentz and the Hawkeyes in Tuesday’s conference.

The Iowa football team has faced the Golden Gophers 111 times in the history of the Floyd of Rosedale rivalry game. While Minnesota has the upper hand in those 111 games, recent history has not been very kind to Minnesota. Second-year head coach PJ Fleck did not mince words when showering Iowa (and Wisconsin) with admiration and respect for the programs they have built and how that has been the difference in the series as of late.

For context, the Gophers have only beaten the Iowa football team six times since Kirk took over in 1999. Looking back to include the Hayden Fry era, the Hawks are 25-14 in the last 39 games. Furthermore, in those 14 wins, only five were by more than ten points. Needless to say, the Iowa football program has been dominating the series in the past four decades.

In Tuesday’s media conference, PJ Fleck had a few ideas on this.

"The reason why they’re so successful is they have had the same system, the same coaches, the same people that they can recruit to and develop in the same strength staff."

He had a few more words to say when comparing Iowa’s coaching history to Minnesota’s coaching history.

"That’s two coaches [Hayden Fry and Kirk Ferentz] in almost a half century. When you look at how many coaches we’ve had in just 12 years, how can you get to that point with new offense every year or every other year or two years, new defenses, new specialties, new coaches, new head coach, new culture, new identity, new reads, new offense, new systems, new players, new beliefs of what they should recruit, how can you expect to do that?"

He is not wrong, look at some of the most successful programs at the college level and at the NFL level, the theme is consistency. The culture is the same, and it looks like PJ Fleck understands this and is taking on the gargantuan task of attempting to change this going forward for Minnesota.

In the short-term, however, his focus is on playing a tough Iowa football team that he knows will be a difficult task for his freshman quarterback and the Golden Gophers.

"They do what they do and they do what they do very well, probably better than any other team I’ve ever watched in terms of they are who they are. They don’t stem far away from who they are, and they execute at such a high level offensively and defensively."

He continued the praise of both Iowa’s offense and defense.

"Defensively they keep everything in front of you. They’ve got big, long, tall rangy, string defense lineman, active line backers, and they tackle probably better than any team I’ve watched.And then offensively they do everything they can. It’s not a secret. They’re going to run the football. Stanley is a tremendous quarterback staying in the pocket, throw it, he can get out, he’s tough to bring down. He’s a surprisingly big kid."

PJ Fleck isn’t dumb, he has done his homework on the Iowa football team. To be honest though, will it matter? There are only a few teams in the nation that are as consistent in their game plan and mindset in games (Wisconsin and Army to name a few), but teams still struggle to take down these teams.

Fleck knows the importance of this rivalry game, and he understands what Iowa brings to the table. We will find out Saturday if he is able to devise a game plan in conjunction with his coaching staff that can bottle up the Iowa Hawkeyes.