Anthony Smith enters his final season at Minnesota carrying a lot of buzz, but he isn’t spending much time worrying about the weight of it.
The praise has piled up all offseason. Phil Steele slotted him as an All-American and a first-team All-Big Ten pick, and Cleveland.com named him preseason Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year last week. That attention tracks with what Smith just did on the field: his final 13 games ranked among the best stretches in modern Gopher history.
Smith finished the 2025 campaign with 12.5 sacks, becoming the first Gopher to hit double digits since Willie VanDeSteeg in 2009. He heads into this fall ranked sixth all-time at Minnesota with 19.5 sacks.
If he puts together another 10-sack season, he’ll move past Karon Riley’s 29.0 for the program record. The same kind of climb is there in the tackles-for-loss race, too.
Smith’s 17.5 TFLs last season were the sixth-most in a single year in Gopher Football history, pushing his career total to 31, which is eighth in school history. Add 14 more this fall, and he’d own the all-time mark there as well.
Still, the biggest question around Smith wasn’t about the numbers. It was why he came back to Minnesota for one more season.
He explained that decision in Chicago last week, and for the Pennsylvania native, it went well beyond football.
"I knew I was coming back before we went to Arizona for the Rate Bowl, as I had this dream to go win MVP and then say on stage afterward that I was coming back. And God willing, it happened," Smith said about the beginning of his thought process on returning to Minnesota.
"I think it was really easy for me in making my decision to come back. Coach Fleck has an amazing support staff, plus our trainers and weight room staff.
Then with the players, it was an easy decision to come back because I love being in Minnesota. I love the players.
I love the staff. I love Coach Fleck.
My family knew that I love this place, and I was going to stay."
Around December and January, the expectation was that Smith would land somewhere in the range of a day two pick in the next NFL Draft. When he was asked what agents and NFL people told him about that, Smith brushed aside the outside noise.
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P.J. Flecks Pressure On Gophers Fans Just Got Real
P.J. Fleck has been blunt about where Minnesota football stands as the NIL era keeps reshaping college sports. The Gophers coach said the program could start to look like a minor league team if fan support does not translate into financial backing for name, image and likeness efforts, pointing to the reality that some players already have left for other schools when the money was not there.
Now the athletic department is responding with a heavier emphasis on NIL fundraising as it tries to keep pace with the sports changing economics. The pressure is only growing with revenue sharing adding another layer of financial strain, and Flecks message leaves little doubt that Minnesota sees retaining talent as a battle tied directly to outside support. [Read more 🡒]