Fleck on Drake Lindsey: 'You can see the team trusts him and gravitates towards him'

Originally posted on Minnesota Golden Gophers on SI
By Tony Liebert | Last updated May 28, 2025 1:17 PM ET

Picture via: @Drakelindsey5 (X)

We're less than 100 days away from the Gophers opening the season on Aug. 28 against Buffalo, and they'll have a different starting quarterback for the fourth straight season.

Redshirt freshman Drake Lindsey projects as the team's top option. Head coach P.J. Fleck talked with the voice of the Gophers, Mike Grimm, on the Go Gopher Podcast on Tuesday, and he spoke glowingly of what he saw from Lindsey this spring.

"I think Drake has gone into that role as a leader, and really embraced that with Max's absence, has really filled that void very quickly for a redshirt freshman," Fleck said. "He's working on it and learning every day, but you can see that he wants to. He has the right mindset to go do it, and now he just has to continue to learn how to do it at an elite level. Every day it has gotten better, and better and better, and you can see the team really trusts him and gravitates towards him."

GO GOPHER PODCAST: @GopherFootball @Coach_Fleck joins this week with updates on off-season workouts, DC, OC, QB, DB, NIL, and his amazing vacation to Italy. Great stuff here. @sunbeltmidwest @Affinity_Plus @onXmaps @TalkNorthPod

Hear it here: https://t.co/XbLbngq8nL
— Mike Grimm (@MikeGrimm3) May 27, 2025

Minnesota's quarterback room has gone through a transition since last season. Max Brosmer is now with the Minnesota Vikings, Georgia Tech transfer Zach Pyron was with the team for only a few months, and they added Old Dominion transfer Emmett Morehead this spring. Lindsey has never started a game at the college level, but Fleck likes what he's seen from the entire QB room.

"I do feel really good about him. I feel good about everybody in the room, in terms of their development and what they said they wanted to accomplish and how much better they wanted to get," Fleck said. "Bringing in Emmett (Morehead) is going to help that as well, as we keep developing our depth at quarterback. He's played a lot of football, and I think that room just keeps getting better."

Morehead is only only quarterback on the roster with starting experience at the college level. Lindsey seemingly beat out Pyron for the starting role in the spring, but Fleck was a fan of what he saw from Dylan Wittke, Max Shikenjanski and Jackson Kollock.

"The spring Drake had, it was better than everybody else in the room, but if you look at everybody else, their floor came up too," he said. "They accomplished some things that we wanted them to accomplish. We're still not ready to sit there and say this is our starting quarterback, but I think everybody on the football team sees the leadership from the quarterback room of what they need to see to eventually crown that person the starter."

In an era where many top teams across the country, and Minnesota last season, opt to find a quarterback in the transfer portal to play and start one season with a program, the Gophers will lean on Lindsey, who has developed in their system.