This Week in Badgers: Recruiting, Safeties and Sanborn
This Week in Badgers: Season 1, Episode 40
Welcome to This Week in Badgers, the number one Regional Newsletter Devoted to a Fall Wisconsin Sport. This week we talk Fort Lauderdale HS football, Fall uncertainty and a longer look at Jim Leonhard and the Defensive Backs.
Corrections from Last Week
Boy this is becoming a weekly thing, huh? Not great. I truly love the feedback on this stuff as it lets me know people are reading. There is no worse feeling than sending out a Newsletter then...nothing.
Let’s make this thing a weekly feature where I have to apologize for writing that the 1996 team gave up 274 yards passing to Purdue and not the 276 it actually did.
As about 5 people pointed out, it is Jack Sanborn and Jack Sandborn, you idiot. I’m sorry, this would drive me insane as a reader so thanks for pointing it out.
I mentioned Vince Biegel played well against Michigan in 2016 and Zac H pointed out that he missed that game with a foot injury. Again, I absolutely love this correction as it shows only the best and most hardcore fans read this thing.
The Players are Back Update
Still back! The latest update was that two Volleyball and/or Football players did test positive for COVID last week. As most of the country returns to offices, schools and other public spaces it's not surprising to see people testing positive for a virus that has no vaccine. I disagree with this take I saw in my timeline that Higher Ups thought students coming back to campus would be in any sort of bubble or isolating from the rest of the world, people testing positive is part of the deal.
I only think good thoughts about college football, but man I do not know how this is going to go. Not a big deal if 8 players test positive and have to sit out conditioning, but 8 players testing positive in the middle of September for a sport that already has huge injury lists? I’m not sure how that’s going to work and we get into more player safety concern if small schools like Southern Illinois have to come to Wisconsin down 15 players and a bunch of walk-ons playing.
It does me no good to worry, so will continue thinking about the depth chart for the Indiana game. By the time September rolls around we’ll have a month of MLB and NBA, plus NFL training camps in full swing, and hopefully an idea of how it will, or won’t work.
Moving on from one thing I have no idea about to another
If someone told me in January that in 6 months Chryst would be on a Zoom call wishing people a Happy Juneteeth I would have SO many questions.
I thought Chryst handled the past week about as well as could be. Obviously his actions throughout his career matter a lot more than any statement, and to that end we haven’t heard any of the rumblings from players like we saw at Iowa and Oklahoma State. So as a fan it feels good to know he’s in charge.
I was slightly worried that Chryst would take the “Protests? I don’t watch the news, football football football” approach and thankfully he has not. He isn’t making it about him and seems to have his player’s backs. It's obviously not important how I feel about this, but hope players past and present are happy with their experiences at UW and the recent responses from PC and Barry.
Recruiting
Welcome Ricardo Hallman, a 6 foot tall CB from Fort Lauderdale! Hallman comes in as an .87, Three star on the 247 Composite, with Rivals a little more bullish giving him a 4 star rating.
Fort Lauderdale is one of the top HS football spots in the country, currently with 11 active NFL players from the city alone. Accordingly the Badgers have recruited it pretty hard and pulled 18 guys from the city since 2005. They’ve had some duds, but tons of talented guys including Kevin Claxon, Dez Southward, Conor O’Neill, David Gilbert, James White, Sojourn Shelton, Derrick Tindal and Semar Melvin.
Hallman had a bunch of offers including Penn State, Michigan, Miami and Ole Miss, where he was recruited by their DB coach Terrell Buckley. Yes, that Terrell Buckley. Did you realize Buckley is 35th in career NFL interceptions and is the only player with 50+ INTs to never make a Pro Bowl? Feels like society is in need of a reevaluation of T-Buck’s career.
ANYWAYS, Hollman is the only CB recruit in this class so far though RJ Reagan, another 6 foot CB is thought to be a strong Wisconsin lean, if not already a silent commit. They’ve got a nice group of CBs right now. Caesar Williams will be the only Senior, Hicks, Wildgoose and Harrell experienced Juniors. Burton and Melvin both looked solid last year, and Smith, Blaylock (moving to Safety) and Engram additional scholarship guys to go along with the new recruits.
Safety on the other hand? Not quite as deep, we'll get into that later.
Hallman is the 4th out of state recruit in a really good run of commits in June, now just bring in the big guy and start the parade down State St to celebrate a top 20 class.
Other Stuff
Jake at All Badgers took the TWIB publicity bounce and has a good roundup of all things Ricardo Hallman
Jesse Temple had a good article on the DBs with quotes from Leonhard. He also had a bunch of advanced stat stuff I would die to have access to. We’ll get more into this article later.
Dave Heller arguing with a Dog Avi, hate to see it
I’ve enjoyed Jon McNamara at Rivals looking back at the 2007-2016 recruiting classes
The 247 Recruiting Rankings for 2021 are pretty interesting. Wisconsin checks in at #11. Ohio State is #1 by a huge margin, with Michigan (7), Iowa (12), Minnesota (14), Rutgers (!!!!) (19) and Penn State (21) making an appearance.
There is so much time left in the cycle, only 10 of the top 25 guys have committed and SEC schools traditionally fill out their classes later in the cycle so these will surely change, but hey, its something!
Freshman Jersey Numbers
Announced yesterday in full, I have thoughts. Let's go.
Jalen Berger #8. Corey Clement and Bradrick Shaw made this more acceptable but still a little weird for me to see a feature RB in the 6-10 range. Reader Ross mentioned to me that the last offensive player to wear #8 was TJ Watt his redshirt year as a TE in 2013. Been a while.
All the LBs in 40-50 range outside of Herbig getting 19. I like to see a few lower numbers here to mix it up. Feels a little boring as is. Maybe we'll get some changes as they get older and more spots open up. I don't know why but #59 as an OLB might be my least favorite number situation, sorry Aaron Witt.
Isaac Smith #25, is this an homage to Freshman Brandon Williams? Probably not, but it'd be awesome if it was. Feels like a classic number to give a WR they're expecting to Redshirt, whereas Chimere Dike getting #13 makes me absolutely certain he'll be on the field next year.
Daniel Wright a big, tall, immobile QB rocking #12. Sensing a pattern. I am happy we don't have to suffer the tragedy of a player with his profile wearing #2 as we did during the Joel Stave era. I think we'd view his career differently if he had a two digit number starting with 1.
I lamented a couple weeks ago that #17 was an underutilized DB number which Max Lofy read and stepped up to correct.
This concludes your Freshman Number Analysis.
Let’s Remember Some Guys
The Fort Lauderdale list led me to today’s guy, David Gilbert, a DE from 2009 to 2012. My first memory of him was going to the 2010 game in Vegas and seeing this 6’4” 250 guy I wasn't familiar with just destroy people on Special Teams. Gilbert’s best year with the the Badgers was 2012 when he started 13 games had 9.5 TFL, 4 Sacks and 3 forced fumbles.
He’s also part of two big Badger what-ifs:
What if he doesn’t get hurt in 2011 ?
I don’t need to go over the details, but the Badgers were a few plays away from having a totally different season than the 3 loss one they had. Gilbert was a Day 1 starter and co-defensive player of the week against Oregon St. He of course got hurt and the DL, which had already lost JJ Watt early to the NFL had another significant blow. A single DE usually doesn’t swing a game that much and Gilbert was good but certainly not elite...but you never know.
What if he doesn’t transfer to Miami in 2013?
Gilbert initially quit football during Andersen’s first spring practice due to lingering foot issues only to transfer to Miami the summer before the 2013 season. The 2013 Badgers defense had some odd fits at certain spots as they transitioned from 4-3 to 3-4, OLB was one of them. No traditional 3-4 OLBs on the roster so relied on guys like Brendan Kelly and Ethan Armstrong, who had 6 sacks combined.
On paper it would seem like the 6’4” 250 lb Gilbert would be perfect for that role, and the 2013 Badgers lost games by 2, 7, 7 and 10 points. Would he have helped? Perhaps, but likely due to health issues he really didn’t do much with Miami that year, playing mostly as a reserve. I’m less excited about this what-if.
David Gilbert, remembered.
Leonhard and the Secondary
One strange recruiting trend (to me, at least) over the past few years has been the Badgers loading up on CB recruits and skipping the safety position almost entirely. Since Jim Leonhard took over as DC in 2017 they’ve signed 4 scholarship safeties and 12 CBs.
Weird right? Especially for a former safety, you’d figure he’d want to load up at the position.
I’ve been trying to make sense of this for a while. Leonhard is obviously a very smart football mind and I’m assuming this is part of a larger plan and not because Lenohard can’t count.
Reasons for all the CBs and few Safeties? First let’s take a look at the responsibilities of the defense. Jesse Temple had a fantastic article last year where he had access to Kent State as they prepared for the Badgers. The Kent State DC described the Badgers’ pass defense as follows:
Sowder said Kent State would try to take some shots on Wisconsin’s secondary, which he believed had not been tested vertically. On tape, he noticed that Wisconsin played a lot of man defense, with one high safety and everyone else in Cover 1.
“They play abnormally outside leverage,” Sowder said. “So if the DB or the defender is guarding a receiver, they play like two yards outside of him. And they’re trying to force everything into the middle high safety. So they play wider than anyone I’ve seen, really, at least this year for sure.
“Because they play so wide in their man-to-man, any in-breaking routes are really good. So post routes, dig routes, which are like a 10 and in, slant routes, we like in-breaking routes without running into that middle safety. That’s part of the plan, to run those in-breaking routes against man-to-man defense.”
You can see Iowa attacking the Badgers that way here. Burton forces the WR towards the high safety but Burrell bites on a shallow route leaving that area wide open for the Iowa score.
Forcing everything to the middle puts the Badger ILB in pass coverage quite a bit as well. TJ Edwards made a killing picking off short middle passes and Sanborn had a bunch last year.
With Cover 1 they basically need one classic “center fielder” type safety and everyone else matches up in man. My theory is outside of that one FS, Leonhard is looking for a bunch of physical, big DBs who aren’t afraid to play at the line and doesn’t get hung up on CB/S designation all that much.
In Temple’s latest article Leonhard talks about this a little:
With the safeties, I like versatility. That is the defensive back in current football. You have to be versatile. You either have to be a safety that can move in the box and play like a linebacker or you have to be a corner that can slide inside. You have to be a safety that can cover receivers and play out in space.
“You can’t just be kind of that on paper, what a traditional safety or corner or nickel is anymore. You can’t do it. So that’s what we’ve been able to recruit. And we just talked about the depth that we have to do it. We have a number of guys that have that versatility. That is definitely what this safety group is all about.”
Last year the Badgers DBs had 19 TFLs, for comparison in Aranda’s last year they had 5.5. In the same article Temple notes they were among the best in FBS at defending slot receivers. They ask their CBs to play at the line a lot and in the slot, often traditional Strong Safety type roles.
I get the sense on early downs and short yardage Leonhard is basically using the second safety as an extra linebacker, which is why we saw a lot of Colin Wilder last year despite his lack of coverage skills and Pearson constantly filling run gaps. They're just being asked to match up with the occasional TE or RB and stick their head into the line to make tackles. Torcio and Mais are likely on the depth chart for this reason as well. In passing downs or situations, we obviously see more CBs on the field to take advantage of their coverage skills.
Recruiting wise, obviously if they have a Safety they like they will go after them, but they won’t “settle” for a Safety to fill out the position if they have a CB prospect they like instead. Plus it seems easier to move a CB to Safety than vice versa.
I’ll be interested to see where they go from here. Burrell and Pearson were good last year, but depth behind them is more of an unknown. Leonhard has about 8 experienced and physical CBs at his disposal to get creative. Is this moving the way of basketball where we focus less on positions and more on personal? With all the experienced CBs they have I can't wait to find out how Leonhard uses them.
I've done a ctrl+F for "Sandborn" and think I'm good, so that will end this week's Newsletter. As always, shoot me your DMs on Twitter or respond to this with any comments, suggestions and uniform number takes. Go Badgers.