They've lost three consecutive games, dropped from first to fifth in the Big Ten's West Division standings and are returning home to play — no offense to the State University of New Jersey — a nondescript Rutgers team that doesn't exactly move the excitement meter to 11 when it comes to intraconference opponents.
So just what do the Gophers have to look forward to for the rest of the football season?
Competing, players say. Taking their 4-3 record and turning it into 9-3, which would include snatching the pig from Iowa and keeping Wisconsin's hands off the axe.
"Coach [P.J.] Fleck had a talk with the team,'' defensive end Thomas Rush said Tuesday, three days after the Gophers lost 45-17 at No. 16 Penn State. "We have five games left in the season. We kind of coined it GFP — Gopher Football Playoff.
"We're going to play these five games — starting with Rutgers and [it] being the most important one because it's next — just go one game at a time, continue our process. In the end, we'll look up and see where we're at.''
Where they're at now isn't where they wanted to be after a 4-0 start that was capped by a dominant, 34-7 win at Michigan State in the Big Ten opener. Instead of driving toward their goal of winning the West and advancing to the conference championship game for the first time, the Gophers lost to Purdue, Illinois and Penn State in succession and are playing to reach six wins to gain bowl eligibility and then to improve their destination.
Center John Michael Schmitz, a sixth-year senior, sees another goal, too.
"Just playing for our brothers, playing for each other, leaving it all out there,'' he said. "… We've got five games left, and I'm looking to enjoy every single one of them.''