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TJSweens -> RE: Gopher Football (10/18/2019 9:53:57 AM)
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One thing Jerry Kill did well was to emphasize the importance of walk ons to the recruiting process. Fleck has stressed it even more. Here is a good example:
Sam Renner’s never-say-die attitude good for him, even better for Gophers
By ANDY GREDER | agreder@pioneerpress.com | Pioneer Press
PUBLISHED: October 15, 2019 at 6:28 pm | UPDATED: October 16, 2019 at 10:36 am
Sam Renner has had many opportunities to quit playing football:
— When he tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his knee midway through his senior year at Maple Grove High School in 2014.
— When he tore the ACL in his other knee a year later, in 2015, as a walk-on freshman with the Gophers.
— Or when he didn’t play in a single game in the 2016 season.
But a better moment when he could have said forget it once and for all is the moment he dug in for more.
Renner had fulfilled a dream of playing college football for his home-state school in 2017, appearing on special teams in 12 games. He also had earned his degree in applied economics in three years, paving the way for a clean break.
Yet Renner called this one of his “darker times” as he felt pangs of unfinished business in not yet playing on defense for Minnesota. So, he went into coach P.J. Fleck’s corner office to ask for a shot.
“It’s hard to go kind of talk to a coach and ask him for something because they might not always view you one way,” Renner said Tuesday. “You’ve kind of got to say, ‘Hey, I think I can play. So please give me an opportunity.’
“But Coach Fleck took it really graciously, and he was like, ‘OK, if you want to play … you’ve got to prove it.’ ”
Stringing together strong practices in the spring of 2018, Renner was surprised during a timeout in the spring game at TCF Bank Stadium that April that he had earned a scholarship. That fall he had 13 tackles in 13 games, making three starts due to others’ injuries.
Now a redshirt senior, the defensive lineman has been a force in the middle of the Minnesota ‘D’, leading the team with three sacks. He had a sack along with other quarterback hits and pressures in the 34-7 victory over Nebraska.
“It was a natural, free-flowing thing,” Renner said of last Saturday’s game. “It just felt instinctive and felt fun to play in. You don’t get a ton of those sometimes.”
The Cornhuskers game was meaningful to Renner because he almost enrolled at Nebraska. While on the wait list at the U, he made Nebraska his backup plan, and it became his grad party theme.
After the red-and-white party, Renner was accepted to Minnesota a week before summer workouts, and he had to tell his family all those “good luck in Lincoln” messages were for naught.
At Maple Grove, Renner was a late bloomer as he rotated in at tight end as a junior before hitting a growth spurt to get to 6-foot-3, 235 pounds by his senior season. The two-sport athlete, along with hockey, started at fullback and was rotating in at defensive end in the first four games.
“He was really good,” Maple Grove coach Matt Lombardi said.
In the fifth game of the season, against Totino-Grace, Crimson quarterback Brad Davison ran a bootleg and found Renner open on a drag route. But the pass was behind Renner, and he injured his knee trying to stop and catch the ball. Davison, now the Wisconsin Badgers basketball team’s point guard, still regrets the throw, Lombardi said.
“(Renner) was devastated when that happened,” Lombardi said. “He was having such a good year and was becoming a two-way player for us. It was a heartbreaking moment.”
Renner’s intellect on the field allowed Lombardi to leave out to some portions of the play calls because he knew Renner would find the right way to execute, and along the way, his understanding helped shepherd along a sophomore QB.
Without the injury, Lombardi believes Renner could have been a scholarship player at the FCS level at, say, North Dakota State or South Dakota State. Instead, Lombardi pitched Renner to former U linebackers coach Mike Sherels, who at the time recruited the state of Minnesota for head coach Jerry Kill.
Along with Lombardi’s glowing reviews, Sherels’ saw Renner’s big frame and large hands, and started recruiting him as a walk-on.
Fleck, who honored a pledge to give Renner a closer look in spring ball in 2018, now calls Renner an “unsung hero” in Minnesota’s 6-0 start heading into Saturday’s game at Rutgers.
“If there is one guy I want with me, walking to a place that maybe I shouldn’t be walking at times, I want Sam Renner right next to me,” Fleck said Saturday. “He’s tough. … He’s the guy you want with you when there’s crisis and chaos.”
Renner is also the guy Lombardi wants back at the northwest Twin Cities metro school for one of their pasta feeds the day before games.
“He’s probably my No. 1 speaker I want to have come and talk to the kids,” Lombardi said. “Like I said, its the story of resilience.”
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