Gophers finally close a regular season laden with disappointment

The Gophers football regular season is mercifully over, and it can be stated unequivocally that the campaign was a pig.

That's the extent of it. They won a bronze pig for the first time in forever. After that, meh. A real dud.

Given a chance to salvage at least a modicum of positive vibes Saturday, they drop-kicked that into the frigid air by relinquishing Paul Bunyan's Axe to the Wisconsin Badgers in a 28-14 loss at Huntington Bank Stadium.

The ledger for the season is a 5-7 record, Floyd of Rosedale in the trophy case after a win over Iowa and four consecutive losses to close the season.

The Gophers have not defeated their two biggest rivals in the same season since 1990. That streak continued after a performance that exposed all the flaws and issues that doomed P.J. Fleck's seventh season at the helm.

The offense was predictable and unreliable. The defense cratered beneath missed tackles and explosive plays. And Fleck stayed in his rut of relying on ultra-conservative game management.

"I named it the readjustment year," Fleck said. "There are a lot of things to adjust moving forward. A lot of things to evaluate. But there are a lot of things outside our control."

Readjustment year? That sounds an awful lot like Year Zero.

Fleck then rattled off a list of injuries on defense.

"Nobody cares about that," he said.

He's right. Every team deals with injuries. His team isn't unique in that regard. A coach bemoaning depth in year seven of his tenure won't find many sympathetic ears.

A season this underwhelming should compel Fleck to take a long, hard look at every facet of his program, starting with his own philosophical approach. He is fooling himself if he believes injuries and youth are the primary culprits for posting a losing record in a division that was weaker than soggy toilet paper.

The Big Ten is doing away with divisions starting next year, which is not good news for middling programs such as the Gophers. The fact that Fleck's team squandered multiple chances to win the woeful Big Ten West in recent years only intensifies fan frustration.

Fleck's risk-averse nature reduces his team's margin for error to such a degree that deflating losses keep happening. One of his favorite motivational phrases is "change our best" and yet he fails to live by that standard in his game management.

Saturday's finale served as a microcosm of the entire season. Start with the sequence right before halftime.

With the score tied 14-14, the Gophers had the ball near midfield with less than three minutes to go. On second-and-5, quarterback Athan Kaliakmanis faced pressure and threw a pass up for grabs down the field. He was lucky his pass wasn't intercepted.

Fleck responded to that near mistake as he normally does: He retreated into a shell and called a run up the middle on third-and-5 that gained no yards, forcing a punt.

Fleck didn't trust his quarterback in that spot — the 12th game of the season with nothing to lose — which is a major problem. He didn't trust him because Kaliakmanis didn't earn that trust.

Most expected Kaliakmanis to experience growing pains in his first season as the full-time starter. But his accuracy issues became a season-long problem that should push Fleck to search the transfer portal for a quarterback.

The offense will never function with efficiency with so much inconsistency in the passing game. One critical drive in the second half stalled when Kaliakmanis airmailed a third-down pass to Elijah Spencer. That happened far too often this season.

Quarterback play wasn't the only problem though. Receivers dropped an inordinate number of passes, which had a demoralizing effect when paired with Kaliakmanis' inconsistency.

The coaching deserves blame too. Trailing 28-14 and facing a fourth-and-9 at the Wisconsin 27, Kaliakmanis threw a low-percentage fade to Chris Autman-Bell in the end zone that landed out of bounds. The odds of that pass being completed were slim. Was there not a better option in the playbook?

The defense likewise contributed to the mess between missed tackles and a harmless pass rush. The regression from Joe Rossi's unit was alarming.

There is no way to spin the totality of the season, as much as Fleck might try by labeling it a readjustment. The Gophers were inadequate in a number of areas, and Fleck needs to conduct an honest evaluation of his program. The Big Ten is only going to become stronger and more challenging next season. That will be a real adjustment.