Welcome to the Skull Session.
Cleveland Rocks.
You can run and you can hide, but Postseason Rocchio is inevitable.#GuardsBall pic.twitter.com/fSfEf6iQTt
— Cleveland Guardians (@CleGuardians) October 1, 2025
Let's play another.
Have a good Thursday.
“HE’S AN INCREDIBLE MAN.” In a press conference earlier this week, Minnesota head coach P.J. Fleck shared effusive praise for Ryan Day and the Ohio State, calling Day “an incredible man” and pondering whether the 2025 Buckeyes are “the best team he’s ever coached.”
“I have a ton of respect for Coach Day. I mean, a ton. He’s an incredible man, first of all, and then just a fabulous coach,” Fleck said. “But I know he has a lot of confidence in this football team he’s coaching. And I think statistically, when you look at them under Ryan Day, I mean, statistically in the first four games, (this) could be the best team he’s ever coached. This is a really good football team. We’re gonna have to play our best football game of the year. We know that. But that’s what’s so fun about it, and what a great opportunity it is for us, and a great challenge at the same time for our football team.”
Fleck sees a particular challenge for Minnesota’s offense, as he joked that Washington had an “above-average performance” in scoring six points against Ohio State’s defense.
“Well, they’re holding opponents to five points, so Washington did a good job scoring one more point than what they’re averaging. That’s an above-average performance,” Fleck said.
He continued with admiration for Matt Patricia’s defense.
“They’re really, really good at understanding how it all works. You can see how the front seven understand how the back end works. The back end understands how the front seven works. They work cohesively together. They’re relentless,” Fleck said. “Those four guys up front, they get into Double Eagle packages, and they’re straight up the field. Coach (Larry) Johnson coaching that D-line, they’re coming after the quarterback. And if the run happens to get in the way, they’ll tackle the run, but they’re coming after (the quarterback), and they’re relentless in their pursuit. They’re really good tacklers. They’re smart.
“Coach Patricia does a really good job of always keeping you guessing something different almost every single time. And it has a lot of that NFL feel to it. Every time you’re at the line of scrimmage, it’s a different front, it’s a different coverage. It’s very challenging. They don’t allow you to ever get into a rhythm because you’re getting something different constantly. And they’re really good at it. A lot of people are afraid to do that because that’s hard to be good at a lot of different things. But they have such good players, really good coaches, and they can do that.
“But we have to be us. We have to build the game plan according to who we are and put ourselves in a position to execute at a very, very high level. And if we don’t do that, it’s gonna be a long day.”
I hate to break into Fleck, but Minnesota will not Row the Boat on Saturday. If this truly is the best team Day has ever coached, it will be a loooooong, loooooong day for the Gophers in Columbus.
HOW TO BUILD A WINNING CULTURE. What makes Day, in Fleck’s words, a “fabulous coach”? It’s the winning atmosphere he’s maintained at Ohio State. The head coach shared during his Tuesday press conference what it takes to build that kind of culture in college football.
“To me, it’s about mindset. It starts when (the players) first get here. Everything starts with a thought, and then thoughts lead to feelings, feelings lead to what you say and then what you say becomes your actions and your behavior,” Day said. “But it all starts with your mentality and what you’re thinking about. And again, whether it’s on the field, in our meetings, what goes on in the training room, what goes on in the weight room, I think there’s alignment — that we all understand what the expectation is here.
“It’s a place where guys can come in the building and get maximized and pushed and feel uncomfortable. I talked to the staff (on Tuesday). There shouldn’t be one person in this building who feels comfortable when they walk around. But at the same time, people love being in the building, and I think that, to me, is winning culture.”
Day said the 2025 Buckeyes have embraced the program’s winning culture “day-to-day.”
“We are in a race to be the best in the country, so we’ve got to wake up early and make sure that we’re out in front of this because where we’re going is not easy,” he explained. “We’ve got to keep pushing because the issues are there. But if we keep showing up to work with that type of mentality on a daily basis, then we can get to where we need to be. But it’s great to have guys in a program who have seen that work and believe in it.”
That’s not just winning culture; that’s championship DNA — and I’m glad Day is one to instill it into the program.
NOW THAT’S INTERESTING. This week, Pro Football Focus’ Dalton Wasserman and Max Chadwick previewed Ohio State vs. Minnesota.
Both analysts chose matchups to watch for the Big Ten battle, with Wasserman picking Drake Lindsey against the Buckeyes’ secondary and Chadwick picking Julian Sayin against the Gophers’ secondary. Chadwick’s selection interested me:
“Julian Sayin has been the most accurate quarterback in college football this year. He leads the nation with a 79 percent completion rate and also leads the nation with an 87 percent adjusted completion rate — your completion percentage plus the drops your receivers have, too,” Chadwick said. “It also helps, though, that he has an elite group of weapons to throw to: Jeremiah Smith, who is a legit Heisman candidate right now, and a potential first-round pick in this year’s draft, Carnell Tate. The Buckeyes are currently ninth in America with an 80.5 receiving grade this year. They always have an elite receiving corps. It’s no different this year.”
“But Minnesota is 20th in coverage grade, an 89.9. They excel in coverage while running man coverage at one of the highest rates in the country. They run man coverage over 43 percent of the time this year. That’s 13th in America. A vast majority of that — 35 percent — comes in Cover 1, which is man coverage across the board and one deep safety back there, usually Koi Perich.
“Julian Sayin has been far better against zone coverage than he has been against man coverage right now. A 58.2 passing grade against man coverage, 91.6 passing grade against zone coverage,” Chadwick said. “But I will say, it’s a very limited sample size for Julian Sayin against man coverage, and for Minnesota, playing man coverage across the board against those freaks at wide receiver in Jeremiah Smith and Carnell Tate will present a much, much harder challenge than anything they’ve faced all year. And, also, the most accurate quarterback in the country in Julian Sayin, too. So, yes, Minnesota has been great in coverage and man coverage this year, but now you’re going against Ohio State with the most accurate quarterback in the country and just freaks across the board at wide receiver.”
I triple-dog dare Fleck and defensive coordinator Danny Collins to run Cover 1 against Ohio State. If they do, then Sayin, Smith and Tate will explode. If they don’t — and instead run some two-high variations — then Bo Jackson, CJ Donaldson and James Peoples will explode.
Pick your poison, Gophers.
THE NO. 11 QB IN CFB? Sayin is the most accurate quarterback in college football, but he’s not a top 10 quarterback in college football, according to ESPN’s Bill Connelly. Instead, that honor belongs to these 10 signal-callers:
- Jayden Maiava, USC
- Diego Pavia, Vanderbilt
- Trinidad Chambliss, Ole Miss
- Fernando Mendoza, Indiana
- Dante Moore, Oregon
- Brendan Sorsby, Cincinnati
- CJ Carr, Notre Dame
- Ty Simpson, Alabama
- Demond Williams Jr., Washington
- Jalon Daniels, Kansas
Here’s what Connelly wrote about Sayin:
It's almost impossible to grade Sayin on the same scale as everyone else. He leads the nation with a 79% completion rate, he has taken only two sacks and he is third in success rate. He is keeping the offense humming along beautifully. But he is also throwing mostly short passes to extremely talented receivers, and his defense has yet to allow double-digit points in a game.
Eleven Warriors contributor Johnny Ginter summed up this description perfectly on Wednesday, joking in our Slack channel that national analysts think Sayin’s “teammates are too good, so he’s probably not that great, actually.”
That’s been the outside view of each Ohio State quarterback since Ryan Day became head coach. Whether it’s been Dwayne Haskins, Justin Fields, C.J. Stroud, Kyle McCord (wait, it may have been true of Kyle McCord) and Will Howard, the receivers are just too dang good, so how the heck do we grade them! It’s impossible!
DAILY DUBCAST. Today's Eleven Dubcast sees George Eisner return from a city-wide internet outage in Charleston earlier this week to bring on Andy Anders for a discussion around Ohio State's running back rotation and the potential for Bo Jackson to handle even more work on behalf of the Buckeyes.
SONG OF THE DAY. "Purple Rain" - Prince.
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