This Week in Badgers: Michigan, Northwestern and Mask Discipline
Season 2, Episode 8
Welcome to the return of This Week in Badgers, where we celebrate a beat down in Ann Arbor, look at Northwestern and talk dental care.
Two things I’m cranky about and then we’ll get to the good stuff.
Don’t wait until your late 30s to go to the dentist.
This newsletter is a little shorter today because on Friday I had two wisdom teeth removed, which as you can imagine is not fun for someone 38 years of age. I had a lot of dental issues as a kid which ultimately resulted in a desire to avoid the dentist from age 18-37. My thinking was that if I wasn’t in pain, just brush/floss and go on with life.
After seeing my dentist more than my extended family in 2020, I’m here to tell you that probably was not the best decision. I promise not to let the crankiness of this weekend invade the Newsletter, right after….
The Badgers want your involvement with the team to start and end with watching the game on TV.
Obviously some of this is unavoidable - they aren’t letting fans into the game, doing any sort of in person gatherings and things change very quickly with COVID testing.
That said, the lack of fan service is annoying. No depth chart, no injury report, nothing, nothing, nothing in the 3 weeks since the Illinois game. Its a weird season for everyone, but how invested do they expect people to get when they won’t even confirm an hour before the game who the starting QB is? Forcing people to read second-hand rumors on message boards and Twitter just to have an idea who is playing shouldn’t be necessary. Giving people a 2-deep depth chart the morning of the game so they know what to look for would be nice. Anything that would be construed even remotely fan-friendly during a 3 week break would have been cool.
The Badgers want you to watch on TV, donate your season ticket money and be happy they give you something to watch on Saturday. Which I’m fine with, but I’m going to use this space to complain about anyways.
Michigan
Thanks to Rich for alerting me to this. When people ask what the Michigan Man is, point them to this Tweet.
Also reminded of this while watching the Badgers put up 28 unanswered.
5 Things We Now Know
By this point I’m sure you’ve consumed your share of Badger takes and I won’t go too in-depth but 5 things I’m thinking now that I wasn’t before the Michigan game.
1. I don’t really care about the RB situation
By this I mean I don’t especially care about the names involved. Going into the Illinois game there was some mystery involved in how the rotation would work out - would Watson take the next step? Is Isaac Guerendo the next Michael Bennett? Is Jalen Berger going to be the savior? I don’t think any of that is necessarily true and also think that’s fine.
Obviously it’d be great if they had an All-Conference guy but all 4 options are at minimum “capable Big Ten RBs” and when paired with a very good OL, a good QB and a creative play caller, it can produce an acceptable rushing attack.
Berger had a good first game, but I can see why he was down the depth chart out of camp as he has the frame of a slot receiver and needs some time in the weight room. I think he will eventually be very good, but it seems like they view him as a pass catching, outside the tackles type at this point. Which is fine, maybe he’ll have a moment in one of the games that are left.
With just 4 possible games left in this season I don’t think we’ll see a main guy emerge and its a real possibility we don’t have a RB put up a 100 yard game, but they do have depth and guys to try out and see if they can find a hot hand. They also have good running FBs for short yardage and creative play calling with WRs in the run game. Michigan was without some guys and the Badgers put up some garbage time numbers, but going into the game the Michigan rush defense held opponents to 373 yards on 117 carries in 3 games. The Badgers ripped off a 51-341 performance.
2015 was the last time the Badgers didn’t have a real strength at RB but this feels a lot different. That team had a very poor OL and no real RBs. Clement was hurt most of the year and they were left with Deal (also oft-hurt), Dare (still learning the position) and a True Freshman FB in Ingold getting carries at RB.
The 2020 team at least has four real RB options and experience everywhere else. The RB position won’t be a strength which is weird for Wisconsin, but it should be enough.
My Theory
Is correct
2. Chimere Dike is a player
Is he the best WR option they have? Am I crazy? Obviously I’m overreacting a bit to a terrible game from Davis and Pryor didn’t get many chances but…am I overreacting?
3. OL and OLB are going to be fine
These were two units that looked a little rough against Illinois and I thought they rebounded in a big way on Saturday.
OLB just had 1 sack but there’s more to that story than the stats. Herbig was all over the place and pressured Milton a few times, including influencing an early pass to Leo Chenal. Burks/Goetz both did a really great job at holding the edge against the run game. It was clear Michigan thought they could use some of the option game and speed at RB to attack the edges and that just didn’t happen. Credit to those guys.
Another possible overreaction, but I really liked this OL lineup. To my novice eyes getting Bruss at Guard really solidified the middle of the line and Beach held his own at RT.
4. Scott Nelson’s return
He’s an interesting player. You hear a ton of talk from people who see practice about how great he is and it hasn’t really translated into games in his short career. You saw both sides of it on Saturday. He just isn’t a great tackler at this point but he is a very instinctive player and has really good burst when hitting gaps in the running game. Talked earlier about Michigan being unable to get outside in the running game, a lot of that was due to the OLBs but credit Nelson as well.
He seems like a guy with a pretty high ceiling at Safety, and if he can stay healthy and improve on the tackling and occasional mental mistakes they might have something.
5. The Badgers can win with Mertz being average
Mertz got burned on some drops, but really wasn’t anything special with 5.8 yards/attempt. Not reading anything into this at all - he was sick and missed time, they barely practiced and tens of other reasons why he wouldn’t have been sharp. The big takeaway was the Badgers absolutely did not need him to win at Michigan. You love to see it.
Let’s Talk about the Garbage Time OL
For those of us who follow this stuff year round we were treated to a nice surprise with the second team OL late in the game. That’s true Freshman Jack Nelson making the road roster, Joe Tippman, Cormac Sampson, Michael Furtney and Logan Brown. So many 4 and 5 star recruits waiting in the wings and hopefully a preview of good things to come.
Other quick hitters
Stephan Bracey doesn’t seem like much of a drop-off from Cruickshank
Did Jack Dunn get Wally Pipp’d at WR and PR? Probably not. But maybe.
True Freshman who traveled is always pretty telling, though maybe less so with COVID but that group included the already mentioned Jack Nelson plus Preston Zachman, Aaron Witt, Riley Nowakowski, James Thompson (who promptly got hurt, ugh), Dike and Berger.
Officially Dike got the start over Kendric Pryor. Its probably nothing, just whatever play they wanted to run first. Probably….
Nelson didn’t play Week 1, but obviously played and started over Wilder on Saturday. That was a depth chart “OR” back when they still did depth charts.
I know there was some message board and Twitter complaints about the 4th and short punt from the Michigan 38. The Badgers were up 25, it was late in the game and I just can’t find the energy to care about it.
Its Mid-November, they’ve played 2 games and have 4 left
During the downtime I was struggling with the question of how much I actually cared about this season. The team was radio silent, we’re one more cancellation away from not being able to make the B1G Champ game and you just have to wonder what the goal of this is whole thing is.
I think I got my answer after this one. Sure, I’d love to watch the Badgers win every game, finally beat Ohio State and claim the title and who knows what else, but I’m also now content with going game-to-game. This season might end with Iowa having to cancel due to COVID tests, but for the rest of our lives, every time the Badgers play at Michigan, in the lead up to the game someone will mention the time they put up 49 points, essentially ended Harbaugh’s run and were credited with great mask discipline. We’ll always have that.
Obviously follow the team as you wish, but I’m going to do my best to go game to game and enjoy whatever action we get and not get caught up too much in the 2020 big picture stuff. This is basically how people followed college sports from 1870 to 1970 and why they have trophies for regular season games. In a normal year I might be able to live with a loss to Minnesota if it meant the Badgers still won the West, but in 2020 you better fucking believe I want the Axe to stay on campus. I just googled what the Iowa trophy is (Heartland) and I am now invested in retaining that as well.
Next Week: Northwestern
The Badgers get to face the most annoying team in the Big Ten at the house of horrors that is Ryan Field next Saturday in a prime 2:30 viewing window.
I’m sure the grass will be 5 inches tall, the refs will call an ungodly amount of penalties against Wisconsin and there will be at least 2 awful turnovers, but it should be a game Wisconsin wins if they’re as good as we hope they are.
Vegas has the Badgers by 7 and that sounds about right. Northwestern is 4-0, winning 3 of those games by 8 points or less. They’re led by their defense which has allowed just 3.5 yards per attempt rushing and 4.7 per pass. Their overall yards/play allowed of 4.22 is second in the conference behind Iowa.
Payton Ramsey has gotten some publicity recently but I don’t think he’s all that great. His 6.5 yards/attempt is 11th in the conference and he’s thrown 4 INTs in 111 attempts. Their rushing game isn’t much better, just 3.79 yards/attempt good for 11th in the conference as well.
Their goal on Saturday is going to be to “Northwestern up” the game. Limit big plays from the Badgers on offense, shut down the running game and make it as ugly as possible. They basically tried this last year against the Badgers and held them to 243 yards but the Badgers in turn shut down Northwestern even more and it didn’t matter.
Ramsey might not be great but he’s better than the dumpster fire they had back there last year so they should have some fight on offense. The Badgers ability to make big plays in the passing game might take a hit if Pryor and Davis can’t go (both looked to be injured last week), and as we’ve learned so far the rosters could look completely different come Saturday, but on paper Wisconsin should be able to win comfortably on the road here.
Famous last words, I know.
Recruiting
The Badgers actually did pick up a recruit during the hiatus in Markus Allen, a 6’2” WR from Ohio. He has a very active social media presence and his journey to Wisconsin included multiple top 10 lists and a commitment to Michigan at one point, but he’s with the Badgers now.
Allen currently attends Northmont High school in Clayton, OH which is right outside of Dayton and different than Northridge High School outside of Dayton where Guided By Voices frontman/creator Robert Pollard attended High School.
My friend’s father Ron also lives in Dayton and once in the middle of a long night of drinking looked me straight in the eyes and said:
As time goes on you’ll forget most of the details of this night but I want you to remember one thing from our first meeting, never purchase a house with a flat roof
That was 12 years ago and safe to say I have not forgotten his advice.
Anyways Allen is another play at the 3 Star WR lottery for the Badgers, albeit a high 3 star (.88 on 247) here. The Badgers have quite the history of pulling WRs from Ohio. Chris Chambers and Lee Evans of course started the Bedford pipeline in the late 90s, but its been hit of miss since. Danny Davis is probably the best since that duo and we have some other guys like Wheelwright, Chase Hammond, Jeff Duckworth, Kyle Jefferson and AJ Jordan that had varying degrees of success with the Badgers.
Let’s cut it there
As mentioned, I’m cranky about the pain from the wisdom teeth removal and don’t want to delay this Newsletter longer and have it be immediately out of date. We’ll do some remembering next week and…wait, hold on, I’m receiving a message.
I have convinced myself that Jon Budmayr is calling plays. It started when I noticed on the depth chart that he is in the booth, but I think it makes sense given how infrequently Paul has a play sheet, and why they will not give a straight answer on who is calling plays. - Mitch (@lawclerkthree).
Son. of. a. bitch.
Just when you thought you got through the “Is Rudolph calling plays?” discourse of 2019 you get thrown for a loop with a new theory.
My initial reaction to this is that play calling has always been Chryst and will always be Chryst. He doesn’t need a play sheet because the man is a football savant and has forgotten more plays than the average person could ever hope to learn.
Budmayr having a bigger role in the passing game certainly seems reasonable, however. Working daily with the QBs and Chryst he surely knows what works and doesn’t work and he can see things up in the booth that Chryst might not be able to see on the sideline. It would certainly be a positive development to have him grow into even more of an asset as a coach and not just a recruiter.
Ahhhh I thought we had this settled last year why is there a new theory that I can’t 100% dismiss. Its good to be back.
Ok we’re really done now. Thanks again for reading, feel free to reply to this email, @ me on Twitter, comment below, etc etc. Go Badgers, beat Northwestern.