Gophers hope second bye week propels them even better than the first one did

Three-and-a-half weeks ago, the Gophers football team returned from a bye week, played host to a team from the east side of the Big Ten and put together what might be the best performance of its season in a 48-23 thrashing of Maryland.

Three-and-a-half weeks later, the Gophers are returning from their second bye week, are playing host to a team from the east side of the Big Ten and might need to put together their best performance of the season just to hang with Penn State.

Sure, some circumstances are similar, but it’ll be an entirely different opponent for the Gophers on Saturday at Huntington Bank Stadium. Fourth-ranked Penn State is in the thick of the Big Ten title race and is in line to make the field for the College Football Playoff.

The lone blemish for the Nittany Lions (9-1, 6-1 Big Ten) is a 20-13 loss against No. 2 Ohio State on Nov. 2, and if they handle business against the Gophers and 17th-place Maryland, they’ll be part of the first 12-team playoff.

“Two bye weeks are really beneficial for a football team, mentally, physically and emotionally, for their health,” Gophers coach P.J. Fleck said Monday. “… Not only that, we had to get better at the things we need to get better at with some self-scouting. It gave us a lot more time to work on Penn State as well and get a jump start on that.”

In Penn State, the Gophers (6-4, 4-3) are facing a team that provides a variety of looks on both offense and defense. The Nittany Lions rank 14th nationally in total offense with 454.1 yards per game, with 200 yards coming from the run game and 254.1 via the pass.

No one is more versatile than tight end Tyler Warren, a 6-6, 261-pound senior who has 67 receptions for 808 yards and five touchdowns this season. Warren, who also plays both wildcat formation quarterback and H-back, having rushed or 157 yards and five scores. In Penn State’s 49-10 win over Purdue on Saturday, Warren amassed 190 yards and two TDs on 11 touches.

“Consistency is the truest measure of performance, and I think that’s what you see every single week,” Fleck said of Warren, who had a 17-catch, 224-yard performance in a 33-30 win at USC on Oct. 12. “Really, really good player. We’ve got our hands full, put it that way.”

That also applies to Penn State’s defense, a deep and talented group that’s allowing 13.6 points per game, the sixth fewest in FBS. Defensive end Abdul Carter ranks second nationally with 17.5 tackles for a loss, including eight sacks.

“They’re playing nine or 10 guys on their defensive line,” Fleck said. “I don’t mean this in a bad way … but you can’t tell what platoon group is in because they all are good, and they all have special traits.”

The Gophers’ signature win in Fleck’s eight seasons in Minnesota was the 31-26 home triumph over No. 5 Penn State in 2019, part of an 11-2 season that garnered a No. 10 final ranking in both the Associated Press and coaches polls. While acknowledging that he has a totally different team this season from that 2019 group, he’ll still point back a half-decade to show his players what’s possible.

“Well, it happened,’’ he said. “You can take that it happened. … You can pull from really, really big games what playmakers have done. We need our best playmakers to play their best. Penn State’s going to need their playmakers to be their best. That’s what happens in November football.”

Gophers offensive tackle Aireontae Ersery has accepted an invitation to the Senior Bowl, a college all-star game that will be played Feb. 1 in Mobile, Ala. The 6-6, 330-pound Ersery, a first-team All-Big Ten selection by the Associated Press last season, has been projected as a possible first-round pick in the 2025 NFL draft.

“He’s a really talented athlete,” Fleck said of Ersery, who has started 36 consecutive games over the past three seasons. “He’s going to blow up the numbers at the combine, at his pro day.”