Minnesota Golden Gophers 2025 Football Season is here! Opening the season vs Buffalo Bulls. #RowTheBoat

Minneapolis has been buzzing in anticipation for the Minnesota Golden Gophers 2025 football season to get underway. With potentially one of the most stacked rosters that PJ Fleck has ever put together in his 9th season, fans are eagerly waiting to see what the squad has in store for 2025.

The season will kick off against the Buffalo Bulls. They are not a powderpuff team, and they were voted in as “others receiving votes” for the preseason Top 25 rankings, with the 3rd best odds to win the MAC title this season. They are led by a new head coach as of this season, a quarterback that is 25 years old, a very solid running back, and a strong defense with 9 returning starters. The Gophers need to get out to a lead and not give this Bulls team any ideas of pulling out an upset.

The Minnesota Golden Gophers are going into the 9th season under PJ Fleck and looking like one of his strongest rosters...

Gophers Offense:

• Redshirt Freshman Drake Lindsey will take over quarterback duties. This is likely the biggest question mark on the team. Because he will be a first-time starter at this level, no one really knows what to expect. The good news is that he has a very good team around him to be as successful as possible. I personally think he is going to be very good, and a lot of the media are going to be like “Oh my gosh, where did this guy come from?” like a bunch of idiots.

• The Offensive Line will have a lot of new faces at each position, but Fleck has been recruiting at a high level here, so I am not worried.

• RB Darius Taylor is a Top 5-10 RB in the nation and will have the very solid Transfer RB AJ Turner backing him up.

• WR room has a lot of talent including Javon Tracy, Logan Loya, Le’Meke Brockington, Jalen Smith, and Malachi Coleman.

• This Offense may go through some early season struggles as many Fleck teams start every year, but we start against 3 beatable teams. Fleck teams have also always gelled as seasons have progressed.

Gophers Defense:

• This will once again be one of the best defenses in College Football.

• The Defensive Line is led by Deven Eastern, Jalen Logan-Redding, and Anthony Smith. They will be causing chaos.

• The Linebackers are solid and led by Maverick Baranowski and Devon Williams.

• The CB room is the consensus area for most improvement needed but led by Za’Quan Bryan and Jaylen Bowden. Really not worried about them especially considering our pass rush strength and help at the Safety positions.

• Finally, the Gophers have been and absolute NFL factory for Safeties in recent years producing the likes of Winfield Jr, Nubin, and Howden, to name a few. This team is no different and may be a top 5 safety room in the country with Koi Perich and Kerry Brown, along with 2 other starting caliber safeties as depth behind them. I will touch more on Perich, but I expect Kerry Brown to have a break-out season and already being considered one of the best safeties in the Big Ten.

Gopher X-Factor:

• Let’s talk about Koi Perich. The national media seems to recognize what the local media and local fans have quite recognized yet… Koi Perich is not only from Minnesota, he’s not only the best player on the Gophers, not only one of the best safeties in the nation, but he is legitimately a Top 10 player in the entire College Football landscape. We will see him play Defense and Special Teams, like he did last season, but now he will be added as an offensive weapon. The Gophers haven’t given any further details, but there will be games that his impact alone reaches Sportscenter on a national level. I expect Koi Perich to end up going down as one of the best Gopher Football players of all time, so if you don’t usually watch the Gophers…you might want to tune in for this guy before he gets to the NFL as a 1st Round pick in a couple of years.

Gophers Regular Season Record Prediction and our Rival’s predictions:

• Minnesota Golden Gophers: 9-3, I have us losing to Ohio State, Oregon, and someone else. If we are going to beat either of those teams, Perich is going to have to have like 3 touchdowns.

• Iowa Hawkeyes: 8-4, they have a great defense and punter. They win games off field position.

• Nebraska Corn-whatevers: 7-5, the preseason hype with Nebraska is like clockwork. National media has them winning 10-11 games. Pure comedy.

• Wisconsin Badgers: 3-9, this team is pure dogshit. I don’t know what HC Luke Fickell is doing over there. Do Wisconsin fans agree with this? Maybe they go 4-8? I am not even trying to be mean, this team is just going to suck, and they have a very tough schedule on top of it.

Back to the Gophers season opener against the Buffalo Bulls. The Gophers need to lean on their STAR power of Darius Taylor and Koi Perich, get out to an early lead, cause chaos and turnovers, and start this season with a WIN! I predict a 27-10 win for the Gophers to start out 1-0 on the season! Let's GOOOOOO!

#RowTheBoat #SkiUMah #GoGophers