Ibrahim back for massive Gophers-Illinois showdown

With the Minnesota Gophers on their bye week, P.J. Fleck used the time off to do some recruiting. As Fleck flew around the country, he heard a familiar question from his recruits.

"What happened last week?"

The Gophers had run through the first four games of the season, outscoring their opponents 183-24. They entered their Oct. 1 game against Purdue ranked 21st in the nation and had just started to gain steam as a dark horse College Football Playoff candidate.

Sixty minutes later, the Gophers became a disappointment with a 20-10 loss to the Boilermakers. With the Gophers preparing for Illinois this week, Fleck said that the biggest challenge is finding consistency as they head to Champaign to face the 5-1 Illinois Fighting Illini. 

"I think that's why everybody looked at us and said 'What happened?" Fleck told reporters Monday. "It's good when people are saying 'What happened last week?' but we have to keep things in perspective. We're not perfect. We're not going to play perfect. But we've got to play better."

Saturday's game at Illinois is massive. A win puts the Gophers at 5-1 and 2-1 in the conference, while a loss would send the Illini to 6-1 overall and 3-1 in the Big Ten. Purdue and Nebraska, both 2-1 in the conference, face each other Saturday night. 

The Gophers' loss to Purdue had a plethora of errors. Fleck cited everything from a missed fourth-down conversion in the first half to a drop in the end zone that turned into an interception before halftime. By the time Minnesota pulled itself together, the Boilermakers handed the Gophers a stunning loss at Huntington Bank Stadium.

"It was everybody, which falls on me because we didn't execute," Fleck said of the loss. "When you saw the first four games, we executed. We showed what we could do on offense, defense and special teams and it didn't matter the opponent."

Another theory as to why the Gophers were so flat was the injury to Mohamed Ibrahim. Minnesota's star running back suffered an ankle injury during the victory over Michigan State but never showed any signs he would miss the game against Purdue.

The Gophers' considered Ibrahim a game-time decision, however, and after warmups, the decision was made to hold him out for the game.

"I think that if we had another 24-48 hours, he might have made it," Fleck said. "It's something that you have and you feel good and overnight it didn't feel so good. You worked on it throughout the week, we did a good job of limiting him during practice and then we do everything we can to get him to game day. I thought he looked really good in warmups, unfortunately, we to make sure to keep him safe so he wasn't able to play."

The loss of Ibrahim, who entered the game as the second-leading rusher in the country, was a critical blow for the Gophers. Without their star, Minnesota was held to 47 yards rushing as they had issues in the backfield and along the offensive line.

"We [either] missed a hole at the running back position and made a cut too early...or we got beat up front," Fleck explained. "It was one or the other and everything that could have went wrong went wrong."

The good news for the Gophers is that they expect to have Ibrahim when they travel to Illinois. Fleck said that the bye week helped Ibrahim recover from his injury and the Gophers learned about themselves as they look to navigate the rest of their schedule.

"This football team got a chance to see we're human," Fleck said. "You're going to keep fighting human nature, but the hard part about college football is that you have to find a way to overcome that."

The Gophers will have to overcome their issues against an Illinois team that scored a similarly shocking upset in Minnesota last season. With a dominant win over Wisconsin under its belt, the Illini are another threat in a wide-open Big Ten West division that has already seen two coaches fired this season.

Still, Fleck believes the Gophers can show everyone the team they can be.

"This team’s got incredible resolve and we showed we’re not perfect," Fleck said. "I think some people think that just because you win your first four games, everything should be perfect. Nobody’s perfect. Watch any game in college football. It’s hard. But they came back to work right away. What I learned about them is that the response is exactly what you want to see with the team that we have.”