This Week in Badgers: 2020 Season, Badger Recruiting, Ohio State Recruiting
This Week in Badgers: Season 2, Episode 1
Welcome to This Week in Badgers, Season 2! Today we've about had it with 2020 season speculation, look at a bunch of recruiting news and ponder if Ohio State being a juggernaut is actually good for Wisconsin.
State of the 2020 season
With no central leadership from the NCAA we are completely winging it here:
I'm about done the the "One Power 5 coach says..." quotes that pop up on Twitter. Put a name to it or get out of here. No I'm not mad, you're mad.
The below Tweet sums up the current situation the best
Colleges will continue to proceed on their own (again, with no guidance from a central governing body) until #1 forces, or doesn’t force action from #2, and in turn #3.
Obviously the NBA moved the whole league to a central location and MLB can just move a team like the Blue Jays to a completely different city if local ordinances shut it down and CFB doesn’t have that ability. With no central leadership, we're left with each school working around local government policies. Fun.
Honestly every day that passes without the season being cancelled is a day I cherish. Let’s keep the momentum going!
In the News:
South End Zone Project: On Hold. Not a shock there
Badger Football brings in a crap ton of money, who knew?
B1G Championship game at Lambeau? I have to think this is a long shot for a variety of reasons but worth trying.
JD Spielman: Off to TCU. There was a thought Minnesota was in play but he opts not to row the boat
Recruiting
It seems like this happened 3 years ago, but since the last Newsletter came out Braelon Allen became the first member of the 2022 class to commit. Allen is listed as a safety but at 6’2”, 215 going into his Junior year it would make sense if he grew into a LB spot.
Allen is part of the “Super 6” of highly rated instate guys, a name I hate but seems to have stuck so no use fighting it. He’s a 4 star recruit with a .94 rating on the 247 composite. This would make him the 12th instate player with a .94 rating or higher to commit to Wisconsin in the 247 era, the highest rated Safety ever, or the 2nd highest LB (Beckum .98, tied with Biegel at .94).
Pretty good company.
Badgers haven’t pulled a ton of guys from Fond Du Lac, Zach Hintze being a recent one. Prior to that we would have to go back to 2011 with Eric Steffes, and in the 90s they got Cory Raymer and reserve DE Sam Mueller.
Pretty excited about this one! The Badgers of course routinely pull in high rated OL from the state but any time you can get a top player at a different position it feels like house money. Even if he grows into a LB spot, the way football is moving, having a LB who can cover is very desirable and you already see it almost becoming a necessity at the NFL level.
The Jerry Cross Drama
Another member of the Super 6 is Jerry Cross, a 6’6” WR/TE from Milwaukee. For weird people like me who spend a lot of time on Twitter this one was a roller coaster.
A Quick Timeline
July 17th AM: Announces he is committing that night
July 17th PM: Announces his is not committing that night
July 22nd: Announces he will be announcing on July 28th
Whew, still with me?
Reading Message Boards/Twitter the story seems to be that he was ready to commit to Penn State on the 17th and got the “when I said we should hang out sometime I wasn’t expecting you to actually pick a date” reaction from them, leading to the postponement.
This set the Wisconsin staff into subtweet mode
This shockingly, did not work, and Cross used the week to talk more with Penn State coaches and is expected to commit to Penn State next week.
So that’s a bummer, but life when recruiting guys that have a ton of options. Totally different scenarios I'm sure but sort of reminds me of Ben Brederson in 2016. Like Cross, he was identified and offered early by the staff but committed pretty early to another Big Ten school he had his heart set on. That was 5 years ago, so pretty a good gap where Wisconsin got everyone they wanted in between, not bad.
Its also extremely early in the process, so who knows what the next 12-18 months look like in his recruitment, certainly a chance he ends up somewhere other than Penn State.
I have to say the subtweeting from the staff made me slightly uncomfortable. It's one thing if the staff wants to reach out to pressure him privately but airing that stuff out on Twitter just invites the worst Badger fans to pile on and go after him when he doesn’t pick Wisconsin.
Where does that leave Wisconsin for 2022?
4 of the Super 6 (ugh, still hate the name) remain uncommitted. Recruiting people seem to think the Badgers have a great shot at all 4, so hopefully some movement there. I like to think of myself as someone who doesn’t take recruiting too seriously but multiple times have had the WHAT’S TAKING SO LONG thought, before taking a deep breath and realizing these guys haven’t even played their Junior year yet.
The current staff does such a good job locking up commitments early you have to take a breath and realize we’re a year and half away from these guys being able to sign. Especially with all visits shut down, it would make a ton of sense for these guys to wait and see what else is out there. I’m sure half the fun of being a 4 star recruit is getting the royal treatment at any school you want to visit.
Additional instate guys?
This is more speculation on message boards than concrete info but Myles Burkett a QB from Franklin and Jayden Montgomery, LB from Bay Port are a couple names being thrown out as potential offers.
Knowing nothing about either of them, I love the possibility of adding an instate QB, even if he’s low ranked, because it usually allows them to have two in one class. With the extremely high transfer rate of QBs you really can’t have enough depth there.
It doesn't look like Danny Vanden Boom will ever play a big role but still feel like it was still a good use of a scholarship when they paired him with Coan in 2017. We know how it felt to be scrambling for a QB every year at the end of the Bielema era.
2021 Update
A white receiver named Manjack decommited from SMU last week after getting a Badger offer last month. That sentence just screams Wisconsin. In all seriousness he’s 6’3” 200 lbs which is bigger than a lot of recent WR recruits, so would make some sense as an outside type guy.
I know the question you're asking yourself - why would you tweet a screenshot of a sub 280 character blurb instead of just Tweeting it? I wish I had an answer for you.
Doesn’t seem to be a huge game changer, but who knows. His Twitter is sort of exhausting to me, which of course is a ME problem and not a Deacon Pe'a Hill problem.
Let’s quickly run through things I really struggle to care about:
Its Watchlist Time!
Every projected Badger starter was named to a watch list. Boom, saved you 15 clicks.
In a new twist, incoming recruit Bryan Sanborn, who I think most people suspect will redshirt or at best have a role as a backup, was named to one of the watch lists. Sure, why not.
Weight lifting videos: I feel like people want me to care about Braelon Allen or Leo Chenal weightlifting but I just can’t get into it.
Coach Duggs: My last segment about Duggs was so popular I didn’t want to leave you hanging.
Stuff I found interesting
Matt Belz at B5Q has been looking at the best position group recruiting classes since 1990. This is right up my alley so if you enjoy the historical recruiting stuff I’d check it out
Along the same lines, Jon McNamara at Rivals has been doing some historical recruiting stuff as well, looking at states Wisconsin has targeted.
Not to spoil too much but Jesse putting “A Punter” in the Top 10 most important Badger players made me smile
Graham Mertz Instagram Mood, Back?
Let's Remember Some Guys
Today's guy is Dontez Sanders, a LB from 2001-2005. Bit of an Ohio theme in today's Newsletter so we'll go with an Ohio guy. Sanders was the 3rd WR to come to UW from Bedford Ohio following Chambers and Evans, but moved to DB his RS Freshman year and later to LB. He primarily played as a special teams guy early in his career and then started as a Junior and Senior where he had 19 TFLs over those two years.
After beating Ohio State in the 2004 "If you don't vote, you can't bitch" game Sanders did the only logical thing and danced on the Ohio State O which pissed them off for years, it was a huge thing later in the decade when they retaliated by dancing on the W. College sports are awesome.
Bielema did use the incident as his entry into the apologizing but not really apologizing HOF.
We had a little postgame situation because Dontez (Sanders) felt the need to dance around on the O," said current Wisconsin head coach Bret Bielema, then the Badgers defensive coordinator. "We obviously discourage that behavior.
Dontez Sanders, remembered
Is Ohio State Being Good is Actually Good for Wisconsin
Great question from Matthew S:
A theory/extension of your recruiting exercise: The rise of Ohio State has been good for UW recruiting. Bielema got all the Ohio guys Tressel didn’t want. You aren’t hearing “Andrew Sweat, Wisconsin also recruited him” like you did in 2010. Meyer/Day have obviously lived in a different stratosphere. Has left the low 4, high 3 guys in the Midwest largely to UW, Mich, and Penn State. That’s UW’s peer group right now IMO. Has hurt their chances of winning the B1G but has elevated them from Outback/Cap One tier to NY6 tier.
I love this one.
Hard to argue Ohio State becoming a recruiting juggernaut has been anything but very bad for the Badgers. It has been a decade since Bucky beat them and they’re the road block preventing Wisconsin from taking whatever the “next step” as a program might be. BUT has their march to National Power actually helped Wisconsin overall? It does seem that while not invincible against the Big Ten West, the Badgers have become the dominant team there in the Paul Chryst era.
First let’s go back 10-15 years ago and look at 3 traditional Midwestern recruiting powers - Ohio State, Michigan and Notre Dame.
Ohio State has been the top of the Big Ten for most of my lifetime, but as college football shifted more towards SEC domination in the early to mid 2000s, Ohio State couldn’t keep up. They made the title game in 2007 and got smoked by Florida, then made it again again in 2008 losing by two TDs to LSU and settled comfortably into the “great Big Ten team that can’t hang with the SEC’s best.”
This was a common thing to see during bowl season.
Notre Dame of course had a couple good years with Charlie Weis in 2005 and 2006, gave him a billion dollar contract and then completely shit the bed from 2007-2010.
Michigan moved on from Lloyd Carr following the 2007 and really never recovered.
So in 2010 we had 2 traditional Midwest powers struggling and 1 that was doing fine, but not at the level it wanted to be.
As a result, Michigan fired Rich Rod post-2010, and Hoke post-2014 before landing on Harbaugh in 2015. Kelly joined Notre Dame in 2010 and Ohio State got Meyer in 2012.
History lesson no one needed out of the way, let’s take a look at where these teams recruited during those “lean” years and how they have adjusted since.
Ohio State
2008-2010: 70% of recruits were from Ohio, or a surrounding state
2018-2020: 37% of recruits were from Ohio or a surrounding state
Ohio State has clearly “gone National” in recruiting, beginning with Meyer and continuing with Day. In the 2021 class alone they have Four Star guys form VA, TX, MO, GA, NC, TN and AZ.
Michigan
2008-2010: 48% of recruits were from Michigan or a surrounding state
2018-2020: 29% of recruits were from Michigan or a surrounding state
Notre Dame:
2008-2010: 38% of recruits were from a “B10 State” (basically all the original B10 member states)
2018-2020: 21%
Obviously Michigan and Notre Dame are not close to Ohio State levels but I do feel like they’ve tried to expand their footprint a little bit and copy what Ohio State is doing. You heard Harbaugh mention this a lot when he took over and started the game changing Florida camps that did nothing to change the game. Seriously, people freaked out about these at the time.
I realize these aren’t huge changes either, going from 38% to 21% is only a few players, but I do wonder, like Matthew did, if it has opened up the Midwest a little bit for the Badgers.
Let’s look at Wisconsin recruits from that area, which I’ll loosely define as Chicago, Michigan, Indiana and Ohio from 2008-2010.
Of course some good players there but ratings wise it was all 3 star, lower rated guys that Midwest heavy teams like Notre Dame, Michigan and Ohio State were not after
2018-2021
The list is bigger and we start to see some higher rated guys, with five at .89 or higher. Not listed, but I think TJ Bollers, Mertz and Riley Malhman are a few of guys outside this area that in previous years might have gotten more of a fight from OSU/MI/ND in the past.
Of course some of these guys DID have Michigan/Ohio State/ND interest and Wisconsin just won the recruiting battle, but part of that is Wisconsin being in on these guys early and those schools trying to slow play them while they went after bigger fish. Wisconsin was the first to offer Logan Brown and first big offer for Mertz, enough to hold off Michigan/Ohio State when they came around later.
So has it made a huge change for Wisconsin? I’ll stop short of saying the change in recruiting from Ohio State/Michigan/Notre Dame has been a total game changer, but I definitely think its helped get a handful of top end guys from this area, and every guy matters (especially 4 stars) as Wisconsin looks to separate themselves from the rest of the Big Ten West.
Now about beating Ohio State….
That'll be it for this week, thanks again for reading. Feel free to reply or @ me on Twitter. Go Badgers.