This Week in Badgers: Mertz, Illinois, Nebraska, Mertz again
Season 2, Episode 7
Welcome to This Week in Badgers, the #4 ranked Badger Newsletter in the 18-49 demo. Today we talk all things Illinois and MERTZ, preview Nebraska, celebrate a forgotten Bowl game and remember some guys.
Prop Bets!
That was fun. Congrats to Jacob Sekelsky for pulling out the win! He tied with @dani3hoeft but won with the tiebreaker.
Some fun props. Ferguson and Davis tied in receiving yards, the under hit by half a point, they waited until way too late in the game to mention Groshek played QB in HS and Chryst’s mask definitely fell in the “other” category. Full results here if you want to see where you scored, column Y has the totals.
Feel like it gets a little boring if we do this every week so we’ll take a couple off and be back later in the season.
Come on! Feel the Illinoise!
Obviously we have to talk about Graham Mertz. You won’t make me care about the consecutive completion thing (shouts to Tanner McEvoy) and a few of the TD passes were basic throws, but 11.8 yards per attempt? That works.
As you’ve likely gleaned from this space, I’m usually the “just relax it was one game, don’t get too excited” type but damn, he made some really great throws! The 34 yard dime he threw to Ferguson was the first time you realized this was going to be a little bit different.
Its one game so I don’t want to overreact but Mertz seems to have the ability to make every type of throw and has a little bit of mobility to go with it. The drill with most Badger QBs is they usually can do a couple of things really well and Chryst adapts the offense around those skills, dropping the parts of the offense that won’t work. With Mertz, the entire playbook should be open for the first time in long time.
Mertz wasn’t perfect. He was a little jumpy in the pocket at times and gave up on a couple of plays pretty quickly. He doesn’t seem to have the ability to audible or change out of plays which resulted in a couple that never had a chance. This obviously should improve with more reps and stuff you expect a Freshman QB to struggle with.
Which is great, because the running game performance, yikes. Not a great way to say this that doesn’t crap on Groshek, but you really hoped he wasn’t going to be the best RB they have and after one game that really seems to be the case. Watson and Guerendo just left so many yards on the field.
If we’re thinking positively, they had a big lead for most of the game so didn’t do anything all that exotic in the rushing game, mostly straightforward stuff without much motion and only 3 jet sweeps with WRs.
I rewatched most of the runs just focusing on the OL and there were some bad plays but overall I thought that unit was pretty good. To pile on the RBs, not only were they poor rushing, some pretty bad blitz pickup to go with it and they were responsible for some of the pressure Mertz saw. Hayden Rucci had a couple of tough moments but overall played really well. He’ll be a good one.
Its obviously nice and needed that Mertz appears to be good and hopefully the passing game can buy the OL and RBs some time to get things figured out. The running game doesn’t need to be at the 2010 level, but it needs to be better than it was on Friday.
Other random thoughts:
Did anyone else think of Dave Matthews singing “Little bayyy beee” every time the announcers said Josh Imatorbhebeh? Just me? Ok.
Green-May played a decent amount and was a non-factor, was hoping for more of a jump there. On the flip side, CJ Goetz looked like he belongs and made some plays.
Defensive Line lived up to expectations. Such a strength. Didn’t see a lot of Bryson Williams, seemed to be a Rand-Loudermilk-Benton-Henningsen rotation with Williams and Mullens in the next tier.
I liked how they used Wildgoose out in coverage more vs his previous role as a nickel guy that played near the line a lot. This seems to suit his game more.
Almost no running out of the shotgun, something they used a ton last year with Coan and Taylor.
Mertz threw his 5th TD with 4 minutes left in the game, the last QB to throw 5 was of course Jim Sorgi, who did it in 3 quarters.
Jalen Berger not seeing the field in a 45-7 game means he is either hurt and unavailable or won’t factor in the offense this year. He was dressed so I’m fearing the latter.
Maskalunas and Chenal rotated a bunch at ILB
Scott Nelson wasn’t on the injury report but was on the sidelines out of uniform. Not sure about Deron Harrell, who also did not play.
Other notable DNPs: AJ Abbott, Maema Njonmenta, Rodas Johnson, Boyd Dietzen, Gio Paez and Julius Davis who was suspended, allegedly
Walk-ons that played: Michael Balisteris, Jack Eschenbach, Tatum Grass, Gabe Lloyd, Tyler Mais, Riley Nowakowski
Freshman Walk-ons playing on special team units is a pretty good predictor of a future contributor. Tatum Grass (RS Frosh, ILB from Holmen) fits that profile this year
Going down to a knee at the 4 aside, thought Stephan Bracey looked pretty good at KR. Jack Dunn will compensate for the bad fair catch by trying to return everything and getting smoked a few times against Nebraska.
On the other side, doesn’t look like Van Dyke has a Hintzian leg, so we will be sweating out kickoff coverage for the first time in a while. Will say he got some elevation on them at least, causing Illinois to fair catch one.
John Settle followed me on Twitter and I’m super scared to Tweet and have him unfollow me. Help.
Where are we at with the Punting?
It was a roller coaster on Friday. Vuj starts out absolutely booming a 60 yarder followed by a couple mediocre efforts - 36 and 39 yards, then ends with a 49 yarder. Truly a man of mystery.
I consulted the Vujnovich Meter and he’s currently sitting a notch below DeBauche but well ahead of RJ Morse and Anthony Lotti against Ohio State. Will update as needed.
Links
Evan Flood had a really good review of the game with relevant video.
Usually don’t see a lot of long-form stuff on 247, so neat to see the new 247 guy Josh Schafer head to Platteville for a really good story about HS Paul Chryst and actually get some new material on him.
Josh also had a good read on Mertz against Illinois
Bill Connelly with a great article about programs taking the leap from Very Good to Elite. Penn State is the example used but hard not to think of Wisconsin when reading this.
Next Week: Nebraska
Nebraska looked a little feisty early but obviously not enough to hang with Ohio State. Ryan Day lamenting “I didn't feel like we had the personnel to take the knee” afterwards is just a great college football line, up there with the chart says go for 2.
What should we look for next week? It seems nobody has figured out the Badger defense quite like Adrian Martinez and Scott Frost. In his first two career starts against the Badgers Martinez has torched them for 604 passing and 146 rushing yards. Granted some of those numbers featured a good amount of prevent defense from the Badgers in 2018, but outside of Ohio State, I think you can argue that Nebraska has been the biggest challenge for Jim Leonhard.
We’ll see what sort of adjustments Leonhard makes this week. The big thing Martinez does is well…
Martinez is faster than everyone in the Badger front 7. This speed forced the Badgers to do a couple things: play a lot of 2-4-5 defense and lots of zone coverage.
With man coverage Nebraska could just run off receivers and leave Martinez with tons of open field to run. Zone coverage (often with a QB spy) helped alleviate some of that scrambling ability. The downside was it left lots of short stuff open when Martinez took it. The QB Spy meant Orr or Baun had to play more of a preventative role instead of being able to attack on the pass rush.
I can’t zoom out enough to see the man vs zone situation but just really dumb things like sending all the WRs 40 yards deep, Martinez evading the initial rush and having one on one matchups against an ILB has worked for Nebraska. Seems ridiculously high-schoolish, but they seem to find a way to exploit the Badger ILBs better than any other team. (full play here).
They also ran stuff like this all day, getting the numbers advantage for easy 10-15 yard gains. I don’t know enough to say if its Frost outsmarting Leonhard or simply a missed assignment by a Badger defender, but it seemed to happen a lot.
The Badgers also had to respect Martinez’s speed on option plays and left numerous plays like this where it was a Nebraska RB matched up one on one with a Badger defender way out in space.
This is just Nightmare Fuel for Wisconsin, who thrives off forcing everything towards traffic in the middle of the field. Martinez’s speed had Wisconsin playing on their heels all game.
The speed at QB is really a problem because Martinez also has a capable arm and Nebraska has some speed at WR. He is hard to blitz because he can run out of pressure, which leaves Nebraska WRs either one on one with a Badger DB, or with lots of time to find a hole in the zone. Advantage always to the offense there. I think we’re all glad that JD Spielman is playing for TCU this year, he killed the Badgers on this.
That all makes it sounds like the Badgers are doomed but obviously they have dominated Nebraska because the last time Nebraska was able to stop anyone on defense Scott Frost was the QB and Zubaz pants were worn un-ironically. The 2020 Badgers also boast a really strong DL unit. Being able to generate pressure with 3 or 4 guys and not overly rely on the blitz could be the big equalizer this year.
Hard to draw any conclusions from Nebraska’s game against Ohio State, but they did do a good job against the Ohio State rushing attack (48-215) but got torched in the passing game (13.1 yards per attempt). Based on what we saw from the Badgers against Illinois it could be more of the same with the Badgers having to rely on Mertz slinging it.
I’ve got Bucky taking a 38-17 lead and Nebraska scoring late to make it a little uncomfortable but the Badgers hold on to win 38-31.
Let’s Remember Some Games from the Aughts
If they were creating college football in 2020 they probably wouldn’t come with Bowl games. Having a team finish their regular season at 6-6, then wait 6 weeks to play one more game against another 6-6 team in Detroit or on a baseball field in NYC? It makes no logical sense.
Things that don’t make logical sense are also my favorite things about College Football. In what other sport can you finish at .500, beat another .500 team and get a huge celebration and a trophy? It rules.
Today we’re remembering the 2002 Alamo Bowl
Even though nothing went right for the 2001 Badgers, the 2002 team had some modest expectations and entered the season 25th in the AP poll. Despite losing Lee Evans to an ACL injury and effectively ending the Spring Game as we know it, they returned the entire OL, Anthony Davis, both Bollinger and Sorgi and brought in ready to contribute Freshman WRs in Jonathan Orr and Brandon Williams. The defense had new guys and younger players with expanded roles including Hawthorne, James, Jefferson, Lewis and Leonhard.
Maybe not a top of the line Big 10 team but they were expected to be a lot better than the previous year. 2002 was a very weird scheduling year, I don’t remember exactly how this happened but they started the season on August 23rd and played 5 non-conference games (going 5-0) before their first Big Ten game on October 5th.
Once they got to the Big Ten slate they really had a tough run, losing by 3 points to #20 Penn State, 7 points at #12 Michigan and a 5 point loss to eventual National Champion Ohio State. Of course we had a drubbing at Iowa and a 3 point loss to a terrible Indiana team, both standard for this era. By no means a great team (great teams don’t lose to 1-7 Indiana) but probably better than their 7-6 record.
They matched up in the Alamo Bowl against a good Colorado team that started the year in the Top 10 and won the Big 12 West, finishing at 9-4. The four losses included two to a good Oklahoma team and a Carson Palmer-led USC drubbing, so Colorado was also probably a little better than their record. They boasted a really good rushing attack that averaged 232 yards/game, led by Chris Brown, Bobby Purify and Brian Calhoun.
The Alamo Bowl was absolutely wild. Bollinger threw his second pass of the game to a Colorado DB who returned it 91 yards for a TD. Colorado would take a 14-7 lead after the first quarter but threw 3 first half INTs (Starks, Leonhard and…Darius Jones!) and couldn’t add to it. Badgers would battle back to take a 21-14 lead at half behind TDs passes to Brandon Williams and Darrin Charles.
Fast forward to the 4th Quarter. The Badgers have had just awful luck in close games all year, haven’t scored since the 2nd quarter and with 3 minutes left, down 28-21 facing a 4th and 5 at the COL 45, Bollinger throws an incomplete pass and the Badgers turnover on downs. It doesn’t look great.
Colorado proceeds to run Calhoun up the middle 3 times and punts (thanks!), leaving Bollinger and company 80 yards, 2:25 and no timeouts to score a TD. And somehow after not being able to do anything in the 2nd half and struggling in close games all year, they get it done! The most thrilling play was a 30 yard pass to Darrin Charles on 4th and 10 (video).
In OT, Colorado missed a FG on the first possession and Mike Allen, who was not a very accurate kicker, nails a 37 yard FG to win. Considering the circumstances one of the more improbable wins the Badgers have had.
When we look back at the most “fun” Badger victories they often entail flawed teams winning some of these lower tier Bowl games. The 2002 Alamo, the 2009 Champs Sports Bowl over Miami and 2015 against USC in the Holiday Bowl are a few examples. Yes, I’d rather be in the Rose Bowl and lose even if it eventually haunts my dreams for months after, but these are fun too.
2002 Alamo Bowl, remembered.
Let’s Remember some Gary Andersen era Decommits
Today we’re remembering TJ Griffin, committed from November 18th, 2014 - January 14th, 2015
First let’s just marvel at this sentence from B5Q.
Griffin chose Wisconsin over offers from Duke, East Carolina, Marshall, Oregon, Virginia and West Virginia. He joins Titus Booker, Takadrae Williams and X'Zaviae Ausbourne as the Badgers' current cornerback commitments for 2015.
Griffin was brought on by what I consider to be one of the worst position coaches the Badgers have ever had in Chris Beatty (topic for another day…). He was one of the players not contacted by Chryst’s staff when they took over and left soon after Beatty was officially not retained.
Griffin would follow Beatty to Virginia but wasn’t able to qualify for school. His original plan was to go to Prep School for a year to get grades up, but changed his mind there and instead was released from his Virginia commitment right before the 2015 season and spent a year at Marshall before leaving there before the 2016 season. I don’t believe he ever saw the field.
I’ll admit that at the time I bought into the Andersen complaints about Wisconsin’s academic restrictions. I didn’t, and still don’t think Wisconsin needs to be Stanford or Northwestern and the University isn’t going to fall apart if they let in some players who might not have the greatest academic record. There are plenty of guys who might come from non-ideal backgrounds that you’re excluding if the academic restrictions are too rigorous.
That said its interesting looking back at some of the guys who ultimately decommited because of academics and see they really didn’t have that side of things taken care of. We found out after the fact that a lot of the guys Andersen was advocating for were going to struggle to get into any college, not just Wisconsin. Changes the Gary Andersen crafted 2014 narrative of why he left quite a bit.
TJ Griffin, remembered.
Other Important Stuff
Watching the game this morning and, while I’m only through the first quarter, it seems clear that Mertz is miscast wearing #5 and would be better served with a number between 10-19. Obviously some QBs can pull off a single digit number (Favre, Aikman; Warren Moon’s #1 was classic) but most are in Mertz’s boat. To put it another way, imagine Sorgi wearing #3 or something. Single digit numbers should for the most part be reserved for receivers, corners, and some running backs. - Mark S
Yup, full agreement here. The one issue is we run into a number shortage. 11 (Bevell), 12 (Hornibrook, too soon), 15 (Danny Vanden Boom) 16 (Russ/Tolzien), 17 (Coan), 19 (Sorgi) are probably off the table. That leaves 10, 13, 14, and 18.
Wearing 15 in tribute to Mahomes seems too easy (did you know they text each other?), but if that’s off the table I’m not sure I love any of the other ones. Maybe 18? I think Old Payton Manning made that one uncool for a bit. I fear we’ll have to accept #5.
Ok we’ve sorted out the Mertz number situation, let’s call it a week. On to Nebraska, go Badgers.