This Week in Badgers: Football Back? Football Back!
This Week in Badgers: Season 2, Episode 3
Welcome to This Week in Badgers, the Reboot! We'll catch up on all the stuff we've missed (spoiler, its not much), talk recruiting and complain about really dumb stuff. Keep reading, its not as bad as it sounds I swear.
Football: Back?
Is this thing on? We’re back I guess? I don’t know about you but outside of Tweeting passive aggressive threats at Adam Rittenberg I haven’t really lived and died with the agonizing slow trickle of news about the 2020 season. I haven't made many great mental health decisions since COVID started but this appears to be one. Small victories. However! It appears they’re going to give the 2020 season a shot with games starting October 24th. We give Jaypo a hard time around these parts, but kudos to him on this, he’s been one of the better sourced guys in all of CFB. The worst sourced person is of course Dan Patrick.
How are we all feeling about this? Weird football in front of zero fans has a very Spring Football-ish feel to me, but also its 8 or 9 more games of Badger football than I ever thought I’d see this year, so just take it?
Friend of the Newsletter JR Radcliffe wrote a really good article last week about how sports feel hollow and weird this year and I was totally with him, then I had some friends over on Sunday for an outdoor, socially distanced viewing of the Packer game and I have to say it was the most normal I’ve felt in a long time!
Early-Winter Badger viewing in Wisconsin will stress the ability to watch with friends and maybe a late November game against Rutgers in an empty Camp Randall will make this current enthusiasm seem ridiculous, but at least it's something we can focus on that gives us an escape from the upcoming dread of other big events in November.
I obviously understand the safety concerns and I can’t say I feel great about the priority football seems to have taken over other things in life, but if they can find a way to make the sport work I’m not going to feel guilty about enjoying it.
There will be more players missing time - whether its COVID related, NFL draft related, or whatever else and the shortened season certainly won’t carry the same weight or feel as if the stakes are as high as in other years, but its something.
While we were out
It’s been a while, let’s go over some stuff we’ve missed.
RECRUITING
The Badgers have added 3 recruits since the season was first cancelled. The most notable of course is Nolan Rucci, a 5 Star OL out of PA. No shortage of news coverage on this one so I won’t repeat much of it, but my thought throughout this was this is how Alabama fans must feel about recruiting.
By that I mean I of course wanted him on the Badgers but if they didn’t get him it wouldn’t have been the end of the world. They are stacked on the OL and lately have had zero issues bringing guys in there. It's rare to feel that way about Wisconsin recruiting, we’re used to living and dying (to varying degrees) with highly ranked recruits. If Jalen Berger picked Rutgers they might not have had a RB in the class and there’s a constant rumbling fear among the fanbase that Mertz will transfer someday, but if Rucci picked Penn State, they’d still have Wedig, Malhman, Brown, Benzschawel, Nelson and whoever else in the pipeline. So basically it’d be fine.
Nice to live like Kings every once in a while.
Badger Projection: I found an old email to a friend where I compared a High School Caleb Kinlaw to James White, so in honor of that amazing call I’m going to start a new segment where I come up with a Badger comp to the recruit.
It's all subjective, mostly based on feel, so just go with me here. My comp for Rucci is Dan Voltz, another high rated out of state OL that chose Wisconsin over a ton of other options. Voltz was a starter as a Freshman and had a couple good years before injuries got to be too much. Center vs Tackle difference aside, seems like a reasonable comp for Rucci, obviously hoping without the injuries.
Up next we have Skyler Bell, a 6’1” WR out of Richard Branch land, aka Connecticut. Bell was a long time Iowa lean so nice to swoop in and show who’s boss. Rated .85 on 247, a classic play of the 3 Star lottery that Wisconsin does at the WR position.
Badger Projection: Feels a little bit like Kendric Pryor to me, both are 6’1” and similarly recruited. Athletic guy that can make plays in the slot, on the jet sweep and occasionally outside the hashes seems about right.
Lastly the Badgers pulled a guy nobody had on the Badger radar which is damn near impossible these days in Al Ashford III, a 6’ CB from Colorado. Badgers seem to be hitting Colorado hard lately, Jon at Rivals had a good look at this recent trend.
Colorado seems to only go about 10-15 guys deep in FBS offers most years, so doesn't seem like a place the Badgers consistently get guys from, but seems to be a somewhere they feel like they can go to for the occasional DB.
Badger Comp: I’ll put out Marcus Cromartie as a comp. Cromartie, another tall CB, was a developmental guy who redshirted, got starts as a Junior after the Devin Smith injury and had a solid Senior year in 2012. Side note, he’s a really good podcast/interview guy and seems to be involved more with that recently. Could see him carving out a role there in the future.
Other stuff
Are we still doing the Dream Season? I appreciate the effort but requiring my phone number unreasonably irked me. I’m getting so many spam calls a day and its only increasing as we get closer to the election its all driving me insane, insane I tell you!
Al Ashford made an off-hand comment to Rivals about a CB spot “opening up” at Wisconsin. Something to monitor?
This JuMosq Tweet about FBs >>> TEs and there only being 5 good inline TEs in the world, while obviously tongue in cheek, got me thinking about Wisconsin. They really seem to be struggling with that position the past few years, totally punting it last year to go with Sampson as a 6th OL instead. Curious to see if Chryst used the long offseason to make any changes with the offense to account for the difficulty in finding the inline TE. It certainly seems easier to find a FB than an inline TE and they accomplish a lot of the same things.
I’m sick of checking the online roster, scrolling down until I get to AJ Taylor and cursing the sky. Update the damn thing!
I haven’t been on the lookout for any other Badger stuff, and there hasn’t been much to choose from. That all changes once the 8 game season starts!
Let’s Remember Some Guys
Today’s guy is Nick Hayden, a DL from 2004-2007. Hayden was a well regarded Top 100 recruit that Wisconsin had to battle Michigan for. He saw some time as a True Freshman on a stacked DL (James, Hawthorne, Welsch, Jefferson...damn) and then started basically every game his Soph-Senior year, bridging the gap from Alvarez to Bielema.
He finished his career with 132 tackles, 21 TFLs, 10 sacks and 6 fumble recoveries, really great numbers for a DT.
Hayden ended up getting drafted in the 6th round and had a really productive 8 year NFL run. For some reason I always seem to forget about him when thinking of Badgers from this era. It was a really great time for Badger DL - right before Hayden and the group above there was Bryant, Burke and Favret, right after there was O’Brien Schofield and JJ Watt.
Hayden was never a highlight real guy but such a steady force for some really good defensive teams.
Nick Hayden, remembered.
Old Games that Need Remembering
I usually write something a bit longer here, with lack of news its been tricky. If you follow me on Twitter you know that I’ve been whining about the near weekly remembrance of the 2010 Ohio State game by BTN. I obviously love that game and all remembering of Badger stuff, but my annoyance with it is twofold:
Re-airing it every week is a constant reminder that it's the last time the Badgers beat Ohio State. Granted this is better than remembering the 1982 Bounce Pass game that they actually LOST, but the Badgers are too good and have played too many big games to be stuck on an October game against Ohio State 10 years ago.
There are so many other games they could show! We’ve all seen this game so many times, there’s so much to choose from! Give me some Stocco, some Sorgi, some Donovan!
If you didn’t know any better, you’d think the BTN only had 5 Badger games in their vault: 2010 Ohio State, 2011 Nebraska, 2011 B1G Champ Game, the Gordon 408 game and the 2016 LSU game.
We occasionally get an old Rose Bowl thrown in there, but that’s pretty much it. I’m sure there’s some legal reason for this where they may not have access to ABC or ESPN content but I don’t care I’m going to complain anyways. If you just followed the Badgers through BTN replays, you would think their program timeline is as follows:
1993 Season: Football introduced at Wisconsin. They win the Rose Bowl
1994-1997: Nothing, but outside of early Ron Dayne there isn't much here so its fine.
1998 and 1999 seasons: Win Rose Bowl again
2000-2009: Don’t play football
2010-2011: Beat Ohio State and RUSSEL WILSON RUSSEL WILSON RUSSEL WILSON RUSSEL WILSON RUSSEL WILSON RUSSEL WILSON RUSSEL WILSON
2012-2015: The Gary Andersen era, where they played one game and Gordon rushed for a bunch of yards
2016-Present: Beat LSU and Miami
There’s a big gap there with games that could be televised and remembered but are not, specifically the 2000-2009 era where they won a bunch of games and that were all televised, which isn't something you can necessarily say for the pre-2000 era. I thought I had an easy Top 5 from this time period, but then ran it by some friends and ended up with over 10. So I’m going to sit on this a bit and come out with the definitive top 5-ish games they should be showing instead of 2010 Ohio State, but I’m curious what yours are.
It doesn't have to be the "best" game, just an enjoyable one you want to relive. We have some easy ones like the Stocco run against Michigan, the Minnesota blocked punt game and the Orton fumble, but there are so many more when you start digging deeper. Shoot a quick reply to this email or @/DM me on Twitter if you have a “forgotten” game from the 2000-2009 era that we should be remembering, we've got some time to kill before the games start again and some BTN employees to annoy.
We’ll be back soon, hopefully with rosters, practice notes and all that fun football-happening stuff! Go Badgers.