This Week in Badgers: Paul Chryst's 4th Down Aggressiveness
This Week in Badgers: Season 1, Episode 28
Welcome to This Week in Badgers, where we get over the Packer game by thinking about the Badgers early enrollees and walk-on punters! Of course we’ll remember some guys and finish with a deep dive on Paul Chryst’s new found aggressiveness on 4th down.
Housekeeping
Thanks again to Wiscy Wear for sponsoring the Prop Bet Competition and congrats to Tyler for picking up the W.
News
The official account put up a photo of incoming Freshman at the hoops game, and it appears they are also the early enrollees. Names include: Jordan Turner, Cade McDonald, Preston Zachman, Jack Nelson, Dylan Barrett, Chimere Dike, Nick Herbig and Andrew Vujnovich.
I think the importance of an “early enrollee” is negligible. Maybe it mattered more back in the day when guys partied all summer graduating High School, but now incoming Freshman players are in Madison by June anyways. Keeanu Benton wrestled all winter in Janesville and started against Michigan in September. Good players at a position of need will see time, early enrollee or not. I get it more for the player's perspective of course, if they ever do end up wanting to grad transfer it helps to have a head start on school credits.
Wait, Andrew Vujnovich? A new player! And a Punter! He’s a walk-on originally from Columbus, WI that spent a couple years at Dubuque in D3. He’ll have to sit in 2020 due to NCAA transfer rules. Having to sit when going from D3 to D1 (but not JUCO to D1) makes zero sense to me and is one of the dumber rules they have in place, which is saying something.
Anyways, he had just a 36.7 yard average at Dubuque so not sure he’s the answer to our post-Lotti prayers, but maybe Mehlhaff sees something he can tweak to get more yardage there. They obviously see some potential to bring him in, even as a walk-on.
While we’re on the subject of walk-on kickers, I’m curious what the deal is with Joe Stoll, who committed last Spring to be part of the 2020 class (gray shirt?) but has never been officially announced from what I can tell. I asked Jake from Allbadgers about him and he noted that he’s been on the sidelines for games.
So that’s potentially another name to watch in what should be an interesting punting competition. The fact that they didn’t add a scholarship punter makes me think they like one of the walk-ons, whether it is Wilcox, Van Dyke or Stoll. Or maybe I’m just being optimistic.
Do we need to discuss Vitaly Pisetsky? I feel like we do, its come up enough. He’s a long time Jaypo muse and recently transitioned into role as Chief Online Commenter for most of Jesse Temple’s articles.
This week’s highlights include some info on the Aron Cruickshank transfer. Vitaly apparently has sources close to Brooklyn HS football teams and found out Cruickshank was homesick, his Mother couldn’t afford to go to games and wasn’t happy about playing time. All very reasonable reasons to transfer!
Good stuff, but Vitaly of course does not believe the logical reasons and instead is proposing a scheme in which Greg Schiano’s plan to rebuild Rutgers involves “stealing” special teams players from other schools. I can’t wait for the 6 part Netflix Doc on this.
Speaking of Netflix Docs, Chris Borland was in the news again. Haven’t gotten a chance to watch but apparently he talks about his experience at Wisconsin in the documentary on Aaron Hernandez. Colton at WSJ has the details, mostly covers Borland talking about Toradol use during his time at Wisconsin.
He has spoken about this in the past, most notably in an ESPN article in 2015. Judging by Colton’s article it doesn’t seem like much new info here, but certainly a bigger platform with Netflix.
Of course you get the reply guys mad at this, but there’s no reason not to get this out in the open and if Borland has regrets about his playing career its worth listening to. Talking about the realities of college football openly so everyone involved is better informed of the risks seems like a good thing to me.
Quick Hitters
Aron Cruickshank off to Rutgers. My sources say China Bob’s attempts to sway him with unconditional love were just not enough.
The Recruiting Guys dropped the #BadgerBoiz20 hashtag on Friday (meaning a 2020 recruit for those of you lucky enough not to be on Twitter). No word on who the commit is and yes, this is driving the message board people absolutely insane.
Cole Van Lannen coming back for his Senior year. Before the year I thought he might be one and done as a full time starter but seemed like while very good, not quite to the level of early NFL Draft pick. Think he could have a big year next year and with all they're losing in the interior line, its great to have an experienced LT back.
Mike Lucas got hit in the iHeartRadio layoffs and was pretty salty about it. His radio show was truly a tough listen, but also one of the few Madison based shows left and he obviously covered a lot of Badger stuff, so in that regard it's a tough loss.
Lucas’ month long Twitter rants about Sidelines being cancelled were epic, so far the anger over the radio show hasn’t reached those proportions but there is still time.
Jaypo wrote an in depth article examining how this recruiting class fits in with the current depth chart and had a lot of good quotes from coaches about what to expect next season, with some nuggets about how the safety depth chart might play out with Nelson back. Just kidding, he posted a picture of his drink from the airport though. Good stuff.
Jesse Temple had a good profile of Chimere Dike. Curt Hogg, the coolest person I know at the JS, had a good profile of Dike back in April. There is obviously a need for some WRs to step up next year, no reason it can’t be him.
Jonathan Taylor had a Player’s Tribune article. Standard Players Tribune stuff. My biggest takeaway was his love for Doolittles. I live on the East Side and it never occurred to me to eat there as I associate any restaurant next to the mall as bad chain food. Will give is a shot and report back with a 1,000 word summary about the wings for a Summer Newsletter that will force 50% of people to unsubscribe on principle.
Dave Aranda to Baylor. Like this fit for him and forever thankful for his contribution to Wisconsin. It seems like every career move he’s made has been pretty well thought out and this seems like no exception.
Maybe the Badgers would have gotten there with another Defensive Coordinator and we can’t ignore what Leonhard/Wilcox did after he left, but he completely changed the trajectory of a Wisconsin defense that carried the program for the second half of the past decade. I really don’t care about schools that aren’t Wisconsin, but I’ll pull for Baylor.
Let’s Remember Some Guys
Today’s guy is Steve Vinci, a Running Back who played from 1985-1988. Vinci saw a little bit of action as a True Freshman and was primarily used as a back up to Marvin Artley from 86-88. He ended up with 796 career rushing yards and 2 TDs. His listed hobbies were Fishing and Archery. Seems like outdoor activities like hunting and fishing are pretty popular with many players past and present.
Vinci was part of the group of guys that were recruited by Dave McClain and held on through the Jim Hiles and Don Morton years, playing for some pretty bad teams, going 12-33 in his career.
Only semi-related to Vinci, but I found this old article from the 1987 spring game and I love this bit.
Quarterbacks Bud Keyes and Paul Chryst moved the offense impressively for the first intense scrimmage of the spring at Camp Randall, maybe too impressively. Now the defense is suspect.
"We didn't expect the offense to be quite as productive today," coach Don Morton said afterward.
The offense had a good spring game so it has to mean the defense sucks. The Don Morton era everybody.
Steve Vinci, remembered.
Going For It
Paul Chryst was known nationally for two main things going into this year: Turnover Chain my F'ing Ass, and punting from the opponent's 35. Things were so bad on the second front that FiveThirtyEight wrote an article about uber-conservative college teams and focused on, you guessed it, Paul Chryst's Badgers. The article was written after Chryst went conservative against Northwestern and notes the Badgers had the 2nd most punts in opponents territory and 2nd fewest attempts at going for in all of college football.
That mostly changed as the year progressed. Most notably they showed their aggressiveness in the Michigan game, but outside of the Northwestern game, it was pretty constant throughout the year. The Badgers went for it 23 times, nearly doubling their season-high under Chryst.
I wanted to take a deeper look at this and compare it to past years to see how much it had actually changed, and it turns out is had quite a bit!
Let’s start with 2019. They they had 11 punts from opponents territory, which seems like a lot but really isn't. I wanted to break them down individually, because I think looking at a "times punted in opponents territory" stat doesn't really tell you much. Time, score and place on the field all matter.
Punts late with big leads
4th and 5, opponent 38. 4th Quarter, up 38-0 on Michigan St
4th and 15, opponent 37. 4th Quarter, up 42-0 on South Florida
4th and 3, opponent 39. 4th Quarter up 38-17 on Minnesota (1:51 left in game)
4th and 6, opponent 38. 4th Quarter up 24-9 on Northwestern
4th and 3, opponent 48. 4th Quarter up 34-21 on Nebraska
These all happened in the 4th Quarter with big leads. We can quibble on whether they should have gone for it on some, especially the Northwestern and Nebraska game, but the Win Probability for Wisconsin was around 99% on all of these. Its fine.
Another punt that was fine
4th and 7, opponent 49. 1st Quarter up 7-0 on Ohio State in B1G Champ Game
I asked my “Never Punt” enthusiast and friend @Badgernoonan about this one:
This one is close. If it was 4th and 3 or shorter obviously yes, and I like going for it more against super awesome team because you have to take some chances to win. But I have little faith in them picking up 7 yards against OSU, so I think it's a close call and probably not an awful punt
Getting Paul to admit a punt might be ok, means it is definitely an OK punt.
Questionable Punts
4th and 3, opponent 49. 1st Quarter up 7-0 on Michigan
4th and 5, opponent 48, 3rd Quarter up 7-3 on Northwestern
4th and 3, opponent 48, 1st Quarter up 7-0 on Northwestern
4th and 3, opponents 48. 3rd Quarter up 13-7 on Illinois
I could go either way on these. There’s an obvious benefit to going for it since its 4th and short, but its also near midfield and the Badgers have a lead. A Never Punt person would say go for it and I wouldn’t disagree (especially the Illinois one, in retrospect) but overall I don’t think you can be too upset punting at midfield with the lead.
Bad Punts
4th and 4, opponent 36, 3rd Quarter up 7-3 on Northwestern
No explaining this one away, yikes.
Northwestern is obviously on this list a lot. The Badger offense really struggled in this one and Northwetsern had a historically bad offense. I realize the its a horrifying number of punts but in the context of that game it made some sense.
This is missing something to compare it to, so for that I wanted to look at 2017. I’m skipping 2018 because the whole offense was a mess and they were playing from behind in many games. 2017 had a good offense and game flows that were comparable to 2019.
First let's look at the punts from opponent territory.
2017 Punts with Big Leads
4th and 1. opponent 43. 4th Quarter up 38-14 on Iowa.
2017 Questionable Punts
4th and 11, opponent 40. 4th Quarter up 24-17 against Indiana
4th and 4, opponent 47. 1st Quarter tied 0-0 against Florida Atlantic
4th and 8, opponent 45. 1st Quarter tied 0-0 against Minnesota
4th and 16, opponent 40. 4th Quarter up 21-10 against Michigan
4th and 11, opponent 45. 2nd Quarter down 10-7 against Northwestern
They probably should have gone for it against Florida Atlantic, but other than that its hard to complain that much. 4th and Long and/or near midfield make sense to punt when its early in the game or when up late.
Now to the bad ones and where it gets especially dark. Warning, if there are any small children near your computer screen ask them nicely to move away so they don’t suffer any eye damage.
2017 Bad Punts
4th and 9, opponent 36. 4th Quarter up 31-14 against Fla Atlantic
4th and 5, opponent 36. 1st Quarter down 0-7 against Ohio St
4th and 3, opponent 38. 2nd Quarter down 7-21 against Ohio St
4th and 2, opponent 35. 4th Quarter up 31-24 against Northwestern
4th and 6, opponent 42. 3rd Quarter up 28-10 against Maryland
4th and 4, opponent 34. 1st Quarter tied 0-0 against Illinois
4th and 3, opponent 38. 2nd Quarter up 10-0 against Nebraska
That is a LOT of punts inside the opponents 40, my goodness. Punting from the 34 against Illinois is why the Big Ten gets made fun of on Twitter. Even better, that punt was shanked out of bounds at the Illinois 19, so the Badgers gained 15 yards on it.
The Ohio State ones look especially bad on paper, but went back and looked and the Badgers had a fumble recovery and the Van Ginkel INT/TD right after them, so didn’t end up hurting. Still bad punts!
So what changed?
I was trying to find a pattern to this and I think I’ve found it.
Let’s look at what the Badgers did between the 30 and 45 yard line in 2017 vs 2019. I’m looking at this because it is the gray area for strategy. Punting, FG and going for it are all in play.
We know from above that if we filter out the blowouts, they punted once in this area in 2019, here are all the times they went for it, bolded plays were successful.
4th and 1, opponent 31. 2nd Quarter up 10-7 against Oregon. Coan sneak for 1st down
4th and 21, opponent 31. 3rd Quarter up 21-17 against Ohio St. Hintze missed FG
4th and 20, opponent 31. 2nd Quarter up 35-8 against Michigan. Larsh missed FG
4th and 7, opponent 31. 2nd Quarter up 10-0 against Illinois. Coan sacked
4th and 2, opponent 32. 4th Quarter down 21-34 against Ohio State. Taylor loses 6 yards (uggggh)
4th and 5, opponent 34. 2nd Quarter up 14-0 against Sparty. Coan to AJ Taylor, 10 yards.
4th and 4, opponent 35. 2nd Quarter up 7-0 against Ohio State. Davis 5 yd run
4th and 8, opponent 37, 3rd Quarter down 7-24 against Ohio State. Chase Young vs Jake Ferguson
4th and 3, opponent 37. 2nd Quarter, down 0-7 to Minnesota. Pryor 6 yard run
4th and 3, opponent 42. 2nd Quarter, up 14-0 against Michigan. Coan to Cephus 26 yards
4th and 2, opponent 43, 2nd Quarter up 21-17 against Purdue. Coan 3 yard run
4th and 1, opponent 45. 3rd Quarter down 17-21 against Oregon. Coan to Taylor 34 yards.
That’s a lot! That’s twelve 4th down conversion attempts, 2 FGs and one punt when they were between the 30-45 yard line. The FGs make sense with how many yards needed for the 1st down. It wasn’t just 4th and short either, Chryst went for it a few times on 4th and medium/long.
Now to 2017:
Um…
Yes that’s right, they didn’t go for it once on 4th down between the 30 and 45 yard line, punting every, single, time they faced 4th down in this part of the field.
I went back to 2018 and its harder to draw parallels. They went for it more often because they were down in the second half of the game. Filtering out 4th Quarters, they had 12 punts and 5 attempts to go for it. It's a little better, but not all the way there yet.
This seems very much intentional to me and something that was pre-planned going into the games. I don't think it is a Jonathan Taylor thing either. He was obviously on the team in 2017 when they never went for it and when you look at the 4th down plays in 2019, almost none of them were Taylor runs.
Seems that Chryst decided that punting between the 30 and 45 is a bad idea. Has he embraced analytics and joining the #NeverPunt movement? Let’s wait for more data in 2020, but if nothing else 2019 was a huge step forward.
Thanks for reading. Programming note: I'm taking a short vacation next week so that means TWIB will be taking the week off as well. Hopefully by the next Newsletter the mystery of the new 2020 recruit will be solved. Go Badgers.