This Week in Badgers: OL Depth, Recruiting and Nick Davis' Spot in History
This Week in Badgers: Season 1, Episode 38
Welcome to This Week in Badgers where we celebrate Nick Davis' brief return to the record book, talk recruiting, OL depth chart and later discuss Bob Stoops' extended family.
Tinyletter was being wonky last week and I've heard a few people had this end up in their spam, if you're having those issues let me know. I don't want to have to find a different Newsletter platform after finally getting used to this, but can if its a bigger problem.
God I hope I didn't lose you with multiple sentences about the Newsletter platform I use. Jeezus.
Badgers Back?
Jaypo with the news yesterday that players are expected back on campus June 6th. Certainly a big step in the direction of having games this fall! Like last year I promise to report on how nice the practice field looks. I biked by last week and it looked magnificent.
Follow up from last week
Nick Davis’ place in the record book has been RESTORED. Thanks to Brian Mason and the UW staff for their quick action on this one. Of course Quintez Cephus has jumped into the top 25 and knocked Davis out, but for a day, we secured his spot in history. Pointing out an error on page 185 of the Media Guide is probably the most Dave Heller thing imaginable, I hope he’s proud of my work.
Activity for this week:
I was looking up something for this week’s Newsletter and realized I had already forgotten a few things that happened during the 2019 season, which is crazy as 96% of my mental activity revolves around Badger football. So here’s a little quiz I put together to test your knowledge from last year. Winner gets my eternal gratitude and a shout out in next week's Newsletter.
Recruiting
Darryl Peterson, come on down! Peterson is an OLB from the same HS in Akron as current Badger Quan Easterling, and is the second Ohio HS player they’ve picked up in the past week. He’s a high 3 star (.87) on 247 and chose Wisconsin over West Virginia and Alabama. Was the Alabama offer committable? Who cares!
Ohio is Joe Rudolph’s recruiting territory and its sort of been a mixed bag for him. During his first stint at Wisconsin he pulled Borland and Muldoon but also a lot of forgettable guys like Cody Byers, Josh Harrison, Chase Hammond, Jeff Duckworth (well not forgettable, but you know what I mean), AJ Jordan and Ray Ball (skypoint). This time around he’s landed Howe, Currens, Grady, Danny Davis, Mullens, Easterling and Johnson.
That’s not to write off the recent guys or really criticize Rudolph’s recruiting - the OL isn’t pulling in 4/5 star guys without him, more to show how difficult it can be to recruit Ohio with tons of competition and the Buckeyes looming in case a guy gets *too* good.
Back to Peterson, I’m most curious to see how close to his listed weight of 235 he actually is when he gets on campus. The OLB has been a spot where the recruits they bring in are usually on the lighter side and need a little bit of time to add weight. Baun (205), Lytle (215) Franklin (192), IGM (205) and Herbig (215) all fit that mold. If Peterson is closer to 235 it’d be a sign he might be able to get on the field a little quicker than other guys.
More to Come?
TJ Bollers (OLB from Iowa) and Ricardo Hallman (CB from Florida) are a couple other guys that people seem to expect to commit any day now.
Those two committing would put them at 14 for the class, with 6 on offense and 8 on defense.
Joe Rudoph Speaks!
Jesse Temple had a good interview with Joe Rudolph over the weekend that had some actual news about what the 2020 OL could look like. Whole thing is worth a read if you’re an Athletic subscriber, a few things that jumped out at me.
Logan Bruss moving to Guard so Beach can play RT has long been speculated and now confirmed
Kayden Lyles’ injury seems pretty significant and even if he is able to play there will be a competition at Center.
Tippman and Sampson mentioned as part of the Center competition and seem to be #6 and #7 overall, with CVL, Beach, Bruss, Lyles and Seltzner in the top 5.
A lot of talk about Tippman, which is usually a pretty telling sign that they like him a lot.
Reading between the lines it seems like 2019 was a lost year for Logan Brown due to injuries and no spring practice, with 2020 more like a traditional redshirt type year spent on technique and learning the offense.
Bradrick Shaw got his 6th year of eligibility and is off to Berkeley to join Justin Wilcox. Always appreciated Shaw for sticking with it through some tough injury luck. He looked pretty promising in 2016, going 88-457-5, but obviously struggled in 2017 pre-injury and wasn’t the same since. After 5 years at Wisconsin and falling down the depth chart, understandable for both to look at other options. Nice landing spot in California.
Christian Bell is out at Illinois before ever getting started. I actually spent a couple minutes researching the Illinois roster to see if they had another transfer push him off the roster or something but I have nothing. Was mildly interested to see what he would look like as a 4-3 DE for them.
Lambeau Game?
Even with my newfound optimism that the season will be played I’ve mostly written off the idea that the game at Lambeau against Notre Dame goes off as planned. I’d LOVE to be wrong but the idea of a neutral site game with 80,000 fans doesn’t seem realistic right now, and if its a reduced capacity and/or empty stadium, I’m not sure they’d make everyone travel to Green Bay for it.
Along those lines, some recent rumors came from a Notre Dame podcast guy reporting the 2020 game would be moved to South Bend, with Camp Randall getting the 2021 game. Jaypo has the details on the podcast and UW’s denial.
While certainly the idea of eventually moving the game seems realistic, the ND Podcast report doesn't really pass the smell test. Lots would have to be worked out to swap to a home and home. Figuring out the TV money is one thing, and you’d have to believe some sort of financial split might happen if Notre Dame has the 2020 game with no fans and Wisconsin gets the 2021 game in a full stadium.
It would make sense to wait on this until we have a better idea of what the 2020 season might look like. Not surprisingly UW is holding off any single game sales for Lambeau and the rest of the home slate for the time being.
The New Twitter Account!
The past week the Badger Football account has primarily been focused on the cooking talents of the players so it makes sense they needed to add a second platform for content. I kid, mostly. If you’ve been on Twitter you’re surely aware they’ve been relentlessly hyping a Badger Recruiting Twitter account which “launched” on Monday. .
My guess is its mostly a propaganda machine aimed at high school recruits and not really for obsessive idiots in their late 30s like me, but we’ll see. I’ve seen some complaints from the paid subscription guys that this might be UW cutting them out of the game by announcing recruiting news, maybe but I don’t see much happening there.
Sure they’ll probably take the lead on announcing commits but that was happening anyways with recruits making their own commitment videos and graphics. The paid guys obviously excel in getting quotes from recruits and making guesses on where guys end up, something an official mouthpiece can’t really do. Imagine the official feed tweeting “Bollers pretty much locked up, expecting him to be a Badger June 6th” or “Johnson had a good visit with Chryst, still leaning Penn State.” Probably not.
Other Stuff
Spencer Lytle has to have the worst Twitter profile pic imaginable. I don't blame him, I blame the Badger Digitals kid for not stepping up.
Montee Ball has a podcast and spoke about the time he got jumped coming home from the bar (50 minute mark). Nothing super newsworthy here but he did mention the Badger player who started the original fight was later suspended by Bielema. He didn’t name names but now I’m curious! I can’t think of any notable suspensions from 2012 and striking out on Google, the participation reports, etc. Send any leads my way.
I was so rusty last week that I missed him, so I will make amends by pointing out this graphic exists.
Cool to see Semar Melvin helping out his community.
Jake at All Badgers had an article about Alvis Whitted running track, something I did not know about him and thought was an interesting angle. I assume Part 2 will nail him down about how much he plans to use Jack Dunn next year.
I know nothing about this QB but he absolutely knows what to say to make Badger Twitter and Message Boards start drooling. If he had managed to work in how great the academics are and that the spread offense is a fad, he’d get a street named after him.
Jesse had a mailbag and for the 123rd straight time, somebody asked about Mertz transferring.
Did they stop making Jaypo do chats? Those were always excruciating.
JR Radcliffe at the JS had a great Jamar Fletcher article that is billed as a Rose Bowl Moment but really goes deeper than that. A QB throwing to Fletcher’s side, a ball in the air for Lee Evans and Melvin Gordon getting the ball in space are probably my 3 favorite things in sports. You can tell I’m being sincere because I didn’t even work in a Sorgi reference.
Rich from the Buckaround took a flame thrower to Walk-ons in an attempt to get RT'd by Derrick Tindal. Jack Dunn can't catch a break, man. Rich keeps trying to get me invested in this but I just can't get into it. Former players having hot takes is a tale as old as time, the entire sports radio industry is built upon it.
Lets Remember Some Guys
This week's guy is Brian Marrow, a DB from 1980-1983. Marrow was from Youngstown, OH where according to the 1983 Badgers media guide his coach was Robert Stoops. So obviously, off to Wikipedia we go where we learn that Bob Stoops graduated from a Youngstown HS in 1978 where his father Ron Stoops was a Defensive Coordinator. So I’m guessing the Robert Stoops in question was an Uncle or Grandfather? Or is it a thing where people named Robert go by Ron? That doesn't make sense but neither does the interchanging Jack/John names. I'll stop here for everyone's health.
Anyways, Brian Marrow started sparingly his first 3 years at Wisconsin and was a starter/captain his final year where he was 3rd on the team in tackles. He ended his career with 4 INTs, and also returned some punts. He wore #17 which is a good and underutilized DB number, in case you were wondering.
It appears he has settled back in Youngstown and coaches HS football. This segment doesn’t have the thrilling end of Marrow stealing a 38” TV, but positive stories are cool too!
That’ll do it for this week, thanks for reading. Hopefully have something next week with news of players returning to campus and a couple new recruits.
As always, feel free to respond to this email or hit me up on Twitter with ideas, suggestions or if you just want to talk OLB weights. Go Badgers.