The Gophers finished their regular season with a 5-7 record after a 28-14 loss to Wisconsin on Sunday, and a passing attack that struggled all season is one of the reasons Minnesota will have a losing record in 2023.
Coach P.J. Fleck is trying to change that, and he’s looking at transfers to do so.
Max Brosmer, who was a junior at New Hampshire this season and will be a graduate transfer, announced Monday on the X platform that he has received a scholarship offer from the Gophers.
Brosmer, 6-2 and 221 pounds, passed for an FCS-best 3,464 yards this season and 29 touchdowns, which rank second nationally. He completed 64.2% of his passes (294-for-459) with five interceptions. He also rushed 57 times for 126 yards and five TDs.
At the very least, Brosmer — if he commits to the Gophers — would provide competition for Athan Kaliakmanis, the redshirt sophomore who struggled in his first full season as the starter this year. Graduate transfers can enter the portal at any time. The first transfer window for all players opens Dec. 4 and runs to Jan. 2.
Minnesota’s passing offense ranks 126th among the 133 FBS teams this season at 153.2 yards per game. Kaliakmanis has completed 53.1% of his passes (156-for-294) for 1,838 yards and 14 TDs with nine interceptions. His passer rating of 115.17 ranks 100th among FBS quarterbacks.
“Inconsistent,” Fleck said of Kaliakmanis’ 2023 play. “I love him. I love him as a person. I thought he did a lot of great things this year. I thought a lot of things that as a Big Ten quarterback, he knows you’ve got to get better at. I would just say [he was] inconsistent because there was some consistency and then there was some inconsistency. But that was to be expected.”
In the loss to Wisconsin, Fleck saw the Badgers prosper with a transfer quarterback who was a dual threat. Tanner Mordecai, who transferred from SMU to Wisconsin, completed 14 of 22 passes for 145 yards and two TDs while rushing nine times for 69 yards.
“That quarterback is a big-time Big Ten quarterback,” Fleck told KFXN-FM in a postgame interview. “We’ve played a few in a row, and that’s what they look like. The make all the throws, they run when they need to run, and they don’t make mistakes. … He’s got a lot of moxie to him, and we’ve got to continue to develop that within our program.”
Cole Kramer, the Gophers backup quarterback this season who has a year of eligibility remaining, participated in Saturday’s Senior Day festivities, a sign that he might not return in 2024.
Brosmer, a Roswell, Ga., native is a three-year starter for New Hampshire who has passed for 8,713 career yards and 70 touchdowns with 25 interceptions. He led the Wildcats to a 6-5 record this season, a 9-4 mark and second-round FCS playoff appearance in 2022 and a 6-5 mark in 2019.
Brosmer missed the 2021 fall season because of injury, and the Wildcats played only one game in the 2021 spring season — a carry-over from 2020 because of COVID-19 issues.