The Gophers are coping with three injured running backs and head coach P.J. Fleck used that position group to zoom out and show how challenging he feels it is to construct a roster in 2026.
“This is Major League Baseball,” Fleck said on the KFXN-FM radio show Tuesday. “This isn’t the National Football League, where everybody has exactly the same amount to spend.
“You have a salary cap (revenue sharing) and then you have NIL (name, image and likeness payments). Those are two different things. You could have a team spending $55 million on a roster and you could have a team spending $20 million on a roster.”
The Athletic on Wednesday published a story estimating the roster budgets for the Power Four conference programs and Notre Dame. Ohio State, Oregon and Texas were the top three, each around $50 to 55 million. Minnesota, meanwhile, was around $18-22 million.
Only two other Big Ten schools (Iowa and Purdue) were projected to be spending less than the Gophers.
“If you aren’t one of those teams that has an accelerated amount of money like the New York Yankees,” Fleck said on the radio. “Then you are going to have to get creative really quickly and you are going to have to develop freshman really quickly.”
Fleck said that discrepancy in spending bears out in the roster depth a team such as the Gophers has this season.
“Because you can go buy older depth if you have money,” Fleck said. “You can buy a one (starter), a two and a three (backups). You can go buy the same player at that position just in case somebody gets hurt.
“What happens when you don’t have maybe $55 million you can spend your money to retain your best player, but maybe behind that, at times, you got to get younger quickly.”
The Gophers spent to retain Darius Taylor as the starting tailback, but the senior with an injury history was hobbled against and limited to 14 snaps in the 38-13 loss to Mississippi State.
AJ Turner, a second-year transfer from Marshall, is coming back from a knee injury in 2025 and debuted with 16 snaps against the Bulldogs.
TJ Thomas, a first-year transfer from Elon, has a running-back high of 117 yards from scrimmage through two games. Taylor has 107 and three touchdowns.
Fleck alluded to spending the lion’s share of the roster spending on retaining the top players from the 2025 roster.
“You want to keep Anthony Smith,” Fleck said. “You want to keep Darius Taylor, you want to keep Drake Lindsey, you want to keep all these guys, Greg Johnson, Ashton Beers, Maverick Baranowski, Kerry Brown, John Nestor.”
The Gophers remain committed to bringing in big high school recruiting classes; this is supposed to be a wellspring for its depth in its roster construction.
But it has not yet worked out at running back in 2026.
Freshman Ryan Estrada, a ballyhooed newcomer, suffered a season-ending knee injury in the 59-7 win over Eastern Illinois on Sept. 3, and freshman Zeke Bates has not yet played as he rehabs his own injury.
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