This Week in Badgers: Mertz Mania
Season 2, Episode 4
Welcome BACK to This Week in Badgers. There’s been a lot to talk about since the last Newsletter which is a nice change. Football!
Quick housekeeping note, as you can see I’ve switched Newsletter platforms to Substack. Still figuring out how this works and might be a little bit wonky for the first couple but overall will make my life easier. I won’t bore you with the details but if you’re thinking of starting a newsletter and want a quick rundown of options feel free to reach out.
There’s been lots of big and small news the past couple weeks and I’m assuming you’re mostly caught up and won’t waste your time with week old info. Instead I’ve got some things I’m thinking and not thinking about, we’ll Remember Some Games and end with a Deep Depth Chart fantasy draft.
5 Things I’m Thinking About
Is the offense….going to be bad?
When you write it out:
The Badgers lost their best RB, WR and QB and are replacing them with either completely inexperienced guys or proven role players.
It doesn’t sound awesome.
The Badgers were obviously great last year on offense with the 7th best rushing attack in the country and 14th in passing according to SP. It was going to be a challenge to replicate that in 2020, and with the recent Jack Coan news, its really going to be a challenge.
Player turnover is part of life in college football, and the Badgers have a lot of players on the depth chart that were simply blocked by really, really good players. It's not a situation where they’ve had a ton of chances and now we’re stuck with them. Instead it's a lot of guys waiting for their chance.
Lots of words have been written about the uptick in Badger recruiting and this is the test of it. How well are the Badgers able to reload after losing a bunch of guys to injury and the NFL?
While Cephus, Taylor and Biadiasz were expected losses, QB wasn’t. If we look back at times when Wisconsin has struggled the most on offense it almost always comes back to bad or inexperienced QB play. 2008 and 2012 were disasters while they threw bodies at the position to see if anyone could stick. 2018 fell apart when Hornibrook regressed, couldn't stay on the field and Coan wasn’t ready. 2014 was a fine year, but could have been a heck of a lot better with a QB that didn’t have the yips and/or wasn’t a Safety/WR.
That leads us to the next question….
Is Mertz any good?
Hell, I have no idea, you?
Assuming he’s able to win the job over Wolf and DVB, he’ll be a Freshman starter for the Badgers, a pretty rare feat. He’ll also be thrown into a situation with a new RB, questionable WRs, a new Center and zero non-conference games to prepare for the B10 season. That seems like a lot to ask.
If we’re thinking positively, this team seems better prepared to suffer a blow at QB than almost any past year. Mertz has the pedigree and a year in the system. DVB and Wolf are scholarship QBs that know the system as well. They’ve successfully thrown numbers at the position for a situation just like this. If Mertz isn’t actually good, they have other people to try which isn’t something you can always say at Wisconsin.
I think with Mertz’s background and the other options it won’t be a 2012 situation but I do wonder about the ceiling of the offense when you combine his inexperience with all the skill position turnover.
Will Tight End be a strength?
If there’s one group that should have the biggest improvement from last year it seems to be the TE spot. Ferguson played almost snap last year and the other TE is now competing for the Center spot this year. Yikes.
In addition to Ferguson becoming even better in 2020 we’re hearing about Hayden Rucci being ready to contribute at the inline TE spot. They added a great athlete with Jaylan Franklin at the spot. Eschenbach and Cundiff are another year older and closer to contributing. Cam Large is an absolute bowling ball. There are a lot of names here that should be able to step in and perhaps pick up some of the void from Cephus.
Time to overreact at RB?
There hasn’t been much out of Chryst at this point, but one thing I found interesting when asked about the RB spot he said he basically had 3 guys in the rotation with Watson, Groshek and Guerrendo. This was before the first padded practice so certainly not surprising that Jalen Berger wasn’t mentioned but did find it interesting Julius Davis wasn’t. Yes, he was hurt last year but RB is usually a spot where you know it right away, so to not have him in the mix in year two made me think.
Since 2009, non-redshirted RBs
Montee Ball
James White
Melvin Gordon: was not going to RS in 2011 but ended up taking a medical
Corey Clement
Jonathan Taylor
Redshirted:
Julius Davis
Isaac Guerendo (not sure how to classify this, man without a position his first year)
Nakia Watson
Sam Brodner
Bradrick Shaw
Caleb Kinlaw
Tawain Deal
Jeff Lewis
Certainly not the end of the world to redshirt and everyone develops differently, but does seem like perhaps you can put a ceiling on a player’s contribution if they aren’t ready to contribute at least by year 2.
What the hell is going on with the Special Teams?
This is probably one area where not having media at practices hurts the most. It can be hard to take much out of watching practice outside of who is with the starters, who is with 2nd unit, etc, but telling us who is returning kicks and punts, and how the punters and kickers look is pretty easy to do and we don’t have that this year.
The bar to replace Lotti is pretty low, but we’ve heard nothing at all about what they’re going to do there. Kick Returner isn’t usually a high impact position but it was an asset last year, with no word on who is replacing Cruickshank. Zack Hintze was a great KO weapon and now he’s gone. Does Chryst even know that Twitter hates Jack Dunn at PR? Tons of questions with this group.
3 Things I’m Ignoring.
Offensive Line Depth Chart.
Since Chryst and Rudolph came back this unit has been really fluid throughout the season. No one had Moorman taking over mid-season last year, for example. I’ve learned to get a feel for the 7-8 guys they like and assume we’ll see them all at some point.
Wide Receivers
Another spot where everyone gets reps in practice and looks good and its impossible to figure out how that is going to translate to the real season. Think I’ve heard every name mentioned as looking good in camp and I think we’re all hoping someone new steps up to contribute, but guessing on who that will be based on camp video and coaches comments is a fool’s errand.
Jim Leonhard Quotes
I’ve given up trying to figure out his plan for the secondary. We’ll find out the plan when they line up against Illinois and even then we won’t know what the plan really is.
Other stuff
Save the Plaza
Some guys at Buckyville have thread that goes over a historical game every day, obviously I’m very much enjoying this.
Friend of the Newsletter Brian had a good podcast with the UW PA guy, aka Mike Mahnke
The Lucas article about the "Academic Heisman” was specifically designed to give me an aneurysm
Reader Mail:
Reverse Ray Ball Award - Did Jon Dietzen just invent and then win the reverse Ray Ball award? Were there any rumors last year that he was trying to come back? I assumed his career (understandably) was over. - Zac H
Gotta say, this is brilliant and I’m ashamed I didn’t think of it first. The Ray Ball Award is of course a player vanishing from the roster mid-season. I had never thought about a player who was gone coming back from the dead, but that’s happened with Jon Dietzen. My pick for 2021 Reverse Ray Ball Award is obviously Lubern Figaro.
Also shout out to Jon at Rivals who mentioned this was a possibility months ago on the Rivals boards.
Let’s Remember Some Games
I put out a call in the last issue for some remembrance of teams from the first decade of the 2000s and you guys really delivered. People had some really good games that I had forgotten about and we’ll get into them in the upcoming weeks.
One that was mentioned multiple times was the 2005 season opener against Bowling Green, an incredible shoot-out in which the Badgers pulled through with a 56-42 victory.
This wasn’t a plucky underdog situation, a lot of people had their eye on it. Bowling Green had gone 9-3 the year before and been competitive at Oklahoma. They also boasted one of the more talked about QBs in Omar Jacobs, who threw for 4000 yards and 41 TDs the year before. The Badgers had 5 defensive players drafted after 2004 and lost 8 defensive starters overall. This was a time when the Badgers also struggled against spread times, so a new defense, against the spread, with a QB who could sling it, uh oh. It was also the first game at the renovated Camp Randall which brought a ton of old football players back and they rocked the retros. Fun times, I miss football.
Omar Jacobs came out firing, the Badgers were down 13-0 before you could blink. Jacobs had 305 yards and 4 TDs at HALFTIME. Thankfully for Wisconsin, they made up for their lack of defensive experience with a pretty loaded offense with Stocco, Calhoun, Brandon Williams, Joe Thomas and Owen Daniels. After a rocky first quarter the offense settled down and put up 35 points in the second quarter alone to get out halftime with an incredible 35-35 score.
Easily the most entertaining half of football I can remember.
Second half, not that exciting. Badgers continued to pound the ball, Bowling Green couldn’t keep it up and the Badgers held on to win 56-42 behind nearly 400 yards rushing and just 10 pass attempts.
2005 Game against Bowling Green, remembered.
Depth Chart Fantasy
Back in August before football was shut down, I had a really dumb idea to do a Deep Depth Chart Fantasy Draft. This will play out exactly how it sounds, depth chart guys accumulate points throughout the year and a winner is chosen. I can sense your excitement.
I asked Matt Belz from Bucky’s 5th Quarter to oblige me in this exercise and he thankfully said yes. I’d also like to use this space to say that I’ve really enjoyed his stuff at B5Q. He looks at recruiting in a similar way as I do and puts a lot of research into his articles, which I appreciate. Basically if you like my dorkier tendencies (like a Deep Depth Chart Fantasy Draft) I think Matt has a similar approach to his stuff.
I’m not just saying this because he was kind enough to spend a morning doing this dumb draft, I swear.
Point system is as follows:
QB/RB/WR/TE: 1 point for every 20 yards. 6 points per TD.
OL: 5 points for a game start, 2 points for game played without starting
Max Points for one offensive player capped at 100, so we don’t have someone like Jalen Berger turning into Jonathan Taylor 2.0 and making the rest of the players pointless.
Defense: 1 point per tackle, 2 points per TFL and Sack. 6 points for an INT and 10 for a TD. No cap on max points.
This is all cumulative. It could be a situation where I’m down 30 points and Danny Vanden Boom takes over a COVID killed depth chart to throw for 300 yards and 3 TDs (36 points) to give me a victory.
We did this draft in early August so some of this is already out of date but mostly holds up. Here we go.
Round 1
Matt: I’ll go boom or bust right off the jump and go with Isaac Guerendo. The Badgers need speed and chunk plays with Cephus and JT gone, and I think he brings an element that the offense might need.
Andy: I like your thinking, he was atop my Big Board as well. Along the same lines I'm going with Jalen Berger at #2. With the weirdness and lack of actual practice they'll get to have before the season I'm pretty skeptical of True Freshman making an impact, but as you mention there's a need for it, so let's go big.
Round 2
Matt: I agree, I think the versatility and raw athleticism of Berger and Guerendo make them intriguing.
I’ll go to the defense and go with Jaylan Franklin. He has had better luck with adding weight than IGM the past two seasons, and I think his explosiveness makes me think he sees the field in the OLB rotation in some capacity.
Editor’s Note: WELP. Still can get TE points, but tough break for Team Matt
Andy I'm going defense as well and taking Semar Melvin. My Out There prediction for 2020 is Melvin ends up as a starting CB this season, and that's some good fantasy points potential. I'm all in.
Round 3
Matt: Well you hit me right back where it hurts! Melvin was a player I really considered with my second pick.I think he is one of the best corners on the roster, and will probably be a multi-year starter at some point.
I’m torn here, but I am going to hedge and take Izayah Green-May. He should factor into the outside linebacker rotation and the potential for sack numbers is too big of a draw for me.
Andy: Loading up on OLB, I like the strategy. Certainly an opening there.
I'm going to do something similar and load up on another huge question mark position and take Julius Davis at #3. I feel like I really have the RB market covered here. We can talk trades in Week 4.
Round 4
Matt: I’m going to commit to the bit and live on the edge. I’ll take Spencer Lytle. I actually think he might end up being the best of the bunch, but I think Bobby April will use a committee approach to his position group and I will do the same.
Andy: I'll pivot from taking fun position players and grab Mike Maskalunas next. He's probably only behind Chenal and Sandborn at ILB, and that position usually has some injuries and rotations with potential for tons of tackles and some INTs
Round 5
Matt I will go with Jack Dunn. Coan seems to like him from practice reps, and he could easily see PT in the slot if they keep Pryor outside.
Andy: We've definitely reached the "unsexy" part of the draft
I'll go with Joe Tippmann. Rudolph's comments from the off-season make it clear they really like him, and if Lyles isn't ready to go or there are some injuries I think he could step in for some major playing time. Rudolph has a pretty quick trigger finger on OL rotations.
Round 6:
Matt: I’ll go OL for similar reasons and pick the other possible contender with Cormac Sampson. UW has used that blocking tight end spot to groom lineman for years, and I think he has some good potential.
Andy: Like that one as well. Think OL could get a little weird this year with CVL really the only one that has a position set in stone.
I'm not loving the looks of the board right now so I'll take a shot with Chase Wolf. Ideally he doesn't play outside garbage time, but if things get weird with COVID and the Badgers are down to #3...well at least I'll win this? *shudders*
Round 7:
Andy: Let’s go rapid fire here to save everyone an in depth discussion of 8th and 9th WRs.
Matt: That works for me. AJ Abbot
Andy: Chimere Dike
Round 8:
Matt: Adam Krumolz
Andy: Stephan Bracey
Round 9
Matt: Collin “Van” Wilder
Andy: Ugh, is that name a thing? That name is a thing, I'll accept it.
The winner of the Rucci/Cundiff coin flip is....Clay Cundiff, come on down.
Round 10:
Matt: Isaiah Mullens
Andy: Donte “Pick 6 in 2020” Burton
We went back and forth through pick 20, which you can see below.
Full teams:
So with my made up point system and 2 month old draft, who’s team do you like better? I’ll throw a poll up on my Twitter so check there and vote.
I’m hoping to have fun with this and will keep points updated throughout the year if you feel like following along. Any picks you hated? Anyone we’re sleeping on? Let me know, we’ll highlight the hottest takes next week.
That’ll do it for this week, thanks for reading. If you’re reading this on the website you can comment, which is great or get at me on Twitter. Go Badgers.