This Week in Badgers: Season 1 Finale
This Week in Badgers: Season 1: Episode 42
Welcome to This Week in Badgers, Season 1 Finale! The first email came out on July 19th of last year so this seems like good place to end this season and move on to the next. Slightly mortified that I've knocked out 42 of these in the past year and may take a break before we start Season 2, we'll see what the football world looks like. Fitting that I started the Newsletter asking if Paul Chryst threw the 2011 Rose Bowl and while the 2020 season is on life support, end with a deep dive into the 247 Composite Ratings. Always relevant.
I guess no better time than now to take any feedback. Any section you usually skip over every week and think I'm wasting my time on? Anything you liked and want to see more of? Give me the good and bad, I'm ready for it. The only feedback I'm not open to is anti-Sorgi propaganda from Bollinger enthusiasts. Easiest way would be to reply to this email or pop over to Twitter.
This week we will talk schedules, position changes and I explore my very weird recruiting rankings obsession.
State of the Union
Unless you’ve been blissfully away from all media the past week you’re surely aware that the Big Ten is going conference only games in 2020. RIP to the Notre Dame game.
Reasoning for this?
We will see if this works or just a step towards the eventual cancellation of the season. Lots of annoying articles out that I’ve mostly passed over. I get the impression a lot of sports media people are trying to one-up themselves with big picture proclamations on where this is all going. Better to swing for the fences with a “College Football is Dead” article than a tepid “Doesn’t Look Good but We’ll See, I’m Hopeful” take.
Reading the replies to some of these Tweets, I know there's a segment of Twitter that thinks all the College sports writers are actively rooting for the season to be shut down. I won't go that far, but if you're Pat Forde and have been taking shit from Ohio State and LSU message board weirdos for literally decades, there has to have some enjoyment in telling them you think their sport is over. Its only natural.
I’m obviously on the optimistic side, feels more right to me than googling Premier League teams to cheer for. Again, a sport that takes place in the AM isn’t real.
Zac H with an email:
So hear me out... I think I might prefer the conference only schedule as a permanent thing moving forward...
~Preface by saying I fully expect no CFB this year~
Wouldn't this be more fun moving forward (in a normal year)
11 conference games
1 non-conference game in the middle of the season (every team would have an opening and this would be set the summer prior across the top 65-70 programs - or whomever still has an athletic program after covid)
Conference championship
Legit 8 team playoff where conference superiority and pride runs high
Bottom line is that I'd much rather play Indiana or Michigan St (or even Rutgers and Maryland) than the non-conference opponents we usually have - and that's from someone who had no affiliation with Wisconsin or the Big Ten until 2012.
I will say a 10 game Big Ten schedule starting in early September will be completely awesome if they're able to pull it off.
The obvious counter to this is that it would kill lower level D1 football as those schools rely on buy games to fund their programs, but another one I’d throw in there is I think a game or two against those teams is actually good for fans.
We don’t need 3-4 of them, but a game or two a year against a MAC level team usually lets you see some of the younger guys in the 2nd half. Admit it, seeing Mertz get some action against Central Michigan, Bradrick Shaw score against South Florida and Jaylan Franklin rush against an exhausted MAC LT were great moments last year. No one remembers these but me? Alright then, fine.
I also think the buy games are the best chance to get kids and other people who can’t afford to drop big money on tickets in at pretty cheap prices while the weather is nice. As a kid, the cheap,early season games were the ones that I went to the most. Ohio State in 1993? Off to Grandma’s so my parents could go with their friends. I’m over it, I swear.
Being in attendance when Reggie Torian fumbled an attempted celebration of a 60 yard TD run in a 56-0 win over Eastern Michigan was the moment I knew that someday I’d write a 2,000 word per week Newsletter about the team.
I’m sort of kidding but also not. I present to you my report from the 1993 Iowa State game.
OK maybe having kids at games can have negative results too, but you get the point. Those early season “preseason” games have a lot of value for some people.
Links
Nothing caught my eye here with Recruiting slowed down and everyone on pins and needles about the season. Not cool, not cool.
Let’s Remember Some Guys
We’re remembering a recent guy today with Kyle Costigan, who played from 2010-2014. Costigan was a late addition to the recruiting class (more on this later) and bounced around between OL and DL his Redshirt year, landing on the DL in 2011 before injuries cut his year short.
By spring of 2012 he was back on the OL full time and made 9 starts as a Sophomore and started every game as a Junior and Senior in 2013 and 2014, helping pave the way for Melvin Gordon and some legendary rushing attacks.
I’m always daydreaming about position changes. It's fun to imagine that if they just moved Player X to a new spot, he’d be amazing.
There’s a few categories of position switches
Moving a guy right away. Announced at signing day as a S but is 225 when he arrives on campus. Give him a number in the 50s and move on.
Moving a guy early in their career when the coach clearly sees something that might work better. Natrell Jamerson, TJ Watt, David Edwards, Matt Henningsen come to mind.
Moving a guy who is struggling to get on the field as a last resort. The Arrington Farrar, Seth Currens, Keelon Brookins type moves. Generally if a guy is in his 3rd year or later and they make a switch, not great. Leon Jacobs is the only successful example of this that jumps to mind though very good chance I’m forgetting someone.
Moving a guy because they are out of players at a spot. Any time they need a FB or Kayden Lyles to DT work as an example.
Costigan would obviously be in the 2nd category, clearly had a high level skill set, just a matter of getting him on the field.
He played through just a TON of injuries, look at this, my God.
Over his last three seasons, while playing in 39 of the Badgers’ 41 games, Costigan suffered two labrum tears in his right shoulder, a torn biceps tendon, a Grade 3 tear in his medial tricep, a ruptured calf, more injuries to his foot and rotator cuff, and degenerating knee issues that resemble those of a 70-year-old man.
All this led to Costigan calling it quits after his Senior year, when the All Big Ten player certainly would have a shot at the NFL. He is now on the Strength and Conditioning staff and his bio notes he has a son named Cash. Cash Costigan, hell yeah.
Kyle Costigan, remembered.
Recruiting Rankings!
My mind wanders to weird places. One of those places has been recruiting rankings.
Wisconsin is currently sitting #14 overall in the 247 composite which would be their highest rankings since they started these things. There’s been lots of talk on Badger Twitter and Media about why this is happening and I find myself unsatisfied with their conclusions.
I link to Jesse Temple’s stuff more than any other writer but I struggled with his explanation on the recent uptick in recruiting ranking success. Yes the Badgers are great targeting guys who value academics and are great young men and whatever else, but that’s stuff every school will say. No school will admit that "yeah, we're winging it here, hope it turns out."
If we’re discussing ratings, a made up construct by recruiting services, I feel like there should at least be a discussion about how guys end up getting rated where they are and how it came to be that 247 has Wisconsin’s class is at #14 instead of say, #28.
A couple thoughts below:
The Badgers have seen a slight uptick in 4 and 5 star talent under Chryst:
That definitely helps the rankings, but it's only a couple guys and not a huge, wholesale change from previous years.
The non-elite recruits have also have higher ratings
Looking at average 2 and 3 star ratings under past staffs.
Bielema: .84
Andersen: .85
Chryst .86
An obvious conclusion is that slightly improving the 3 star ranking combined with adding a couple 4 and 5 star guys is ratings gold.
Of course going after 4 and 5 stars is a no-brainer and they certainly seem to be improving there, especially at positions like OL and OLB, but what about the 3 star ratings improvement? Surely this is nothing Wisconsin coaches give a damn about. They don’t decide between two potential recruits by picking the guy with an .87 rating over an .84.
I have a theory on how Chryst’s recruiting style contributes to the higher rating.
Let’s look at a couple different prospects.
In 2014 Beau Benzschawel was a legacy recruit, a 6’6” 240 lb TE coming out of HS but projected as a future OL. Gary Andersen took over in January of 2013 and did not offer that spring or summer. Benzschawel had a bunch of MAC-level offers and finally accepted his only Power 5 offer, to Syracuse in October of 2013. This basically called Andersen's bluff, and he offered and flipped him two weeks later.
Since Benzschawel spent almost all of his recruitment as a low level recruit without much P5 interest, he understandably had a .81 rating.
Fast forward 6 years. Not many people knew the name Jackson Acker until Wisconsin offered him the summer before his Junior year. His High School production at RB is modest and its assumed he’ll play elsewhere on the field, but we don’t really know for sure. OLB seems to be the ticket but there’s not a whole lot of video of him playing the spot in HS. He has no other offers right now.
The Badgers offered him very early and their track record on early instate commits is superb, so Acker currently boasts a .87 rating on 247, almost entirely due to Wisconsin’s reputation on early offers. The ratings bump isn’t solely because the Recruiting Services think Chryst has a great eye for talent, its because of a 30 year history of early instate commits usually being really good players.
I can easily imagine a scenario where both of these situations are flipped. Chryst certainly would have known the Benzschawel name and likely offered Beau early in the process. An early Wisconsin offer to a legacy OL recruit seems like a slam dunk and a path to a borderline 4 star. We wouldn’t have known that Beau had little else in terms of offers because no MAC school is going to offer a UW recruit and we can explain away the lack of other P5 interest the same way.
I can also imagine a scenario where Andersen is impressed with Acker at summer camp but spends the next 2 years chasing the next Joe Mixon before finally flipping Acker from Western Michigan a couple weeks before signing day. No MAC level guy that Wisconsin initially passed on has a high rating, his ranking probably sits around .80.
Same players, completely different ratings due to their recruiting process.
Let’s expand and look at just the instate recruiting in the 247 era (2002-present)
I mostly ignore the Alvarez data. He has some .70 guys which is virtually impossible to have these days. The early 2000s 247 composite rankings are helpful for top-end recruits but extremely hit or miss once we get to 3 star guys.
We’re talking very slight differences here and limited data, but so far Chryst has the edge in ratings and has taken slightly fewer instate players overall. When he was announced as coach, who would have had Chryst taking fewer instate guys than Andersen?
We talked about the differences in Chryst and Andersen, but what about Chryst and Bielema?
While Chryst seems to offer early, then shut it down, Bielema did often rely on instate guys towards the end of the cycle.
As I tried to lay out above with the Benzschawel example, offering an unheralded Wisconsin kid late always brings down the rankings. Here are some examples going back to 2007 of Wisconsin kids offered late (October or later) in the cycle and their final ranking. I’m only including guys who didn’t have a lot of offers, or were committed to a lower level school, not more sought after guys like Melvin Gordon or Derek Watt.
End of cycle Wisconsin recruits - 2007 to Present
2007: Patrick Butrym (.81)
2008: Christopher Garner (.70)
2009: Jacob Pedersen (UP Michigan is basically WI) (.76)
2010: Kyle Costigan (.78)
2011: Nate Hammon (.73)
2012: Leo Musso (.78)
2013: Matt Hubley (.81)
2014: Beau Benzschawel (.81), Jacob Maxwell (.79)
2015: Zack Baun (.84), Alec Ingold (.81), Jake Whalen (.82)
2016: none
2017: Danny Vanden Boom (.81)
2018: None
2019: None
2020: None
One thing to note is a lot of these guys were really good! It shows the difficulty the services have in rating Wisconsin guys that don’t have early Wisconsin offers.
Chryst obviously needed to fill out the 2015 class after dropping a lot of Andersen recruits so of course Ingold and Whalen make sense there, but outside of DVB he really hasn’t gone that route.
Gary Andersen’s approach was to slow play in-state recruits as long as possible. He knew he could go for his 4/5 star targets and when that failed, tell Evan Flood they were *this* close to landing them and pick up the Benzshawel and Maxwell types from wherever they committed to. Wisconsin High School coaches hated this.
Bielema also did this to a degree, but much less often and was more subtle about it.
Chryst has been doing the opposite. His staff identifies the instate guys they want to target very early, aggressively go after them and that’s it. So far its resulted in slightly fewer instate guys and fewer late offers, but I also imagine its a lot less stressful for those guys. If they haven’t been offered by Senior year, take that MAC offer or commit to Iowa and make the best of it. No need to constantly stress about whether or not Wisconsin will offer.
I actually wonder if Chryst's approach has helped more Wisconsin kids land at high level programs.
2017: Max Cooper (Iowa), Daviyon Nixon (Iowa), Noah Harvey (Mich St)
2018: Will McDonald (Iowa St), Jack Plumb (Iowa), Cody Ince (Iowa), Henry Geil (Iowa), Chandler Pulvermacher (Iowa State, man that name screams "Badger" ugh)
2019: Jake Krachinski (Iowa), Tyler Cooper (Minnesota)
2020: Ben Kreul (Purdue), Lucas Finnessy (Minnesota), Michael Lois (Iowa)
I'm not going to research every guy to learn their situation (paging Curt Hogg) or compare that to other years (Season 2 maybe?), but does seem like an early "no" from Wisconsin has given a lot of guys time to land at other P5 schools.
This also works for Chryst because they’ve been great at the end of cycles getting out of state guys.
End of cycle recruits for Chryst:
2016: Brodner, Harrell, DCW, Cephus
2017: Danny Davis, Jonathan Taylor, Hicks, Perry, Vanden Boom
2018: Wildgoose. This class was set really early.
2019: Easterling, Toler, Meyers, Bracey, Rodas Johnson
2020: Berger, Kaden Johnson, Chandler
The above recruits are a good mix of big recruiting wins and some late cycle Plan B or C guys. Not all have (or will) be good but many are. Ultimately the different approaches from Bielema, Andersen and Chryst all worked, just in different ways.
Bielema disappointed the people that cheer for recruiting rankings but pulled in some quality Wisconsin guys late. Andersen pissed off every HS coach in the state by slow playing instate guys but ultimately got who he wanted anyways.
Chryst is in early or not at all. So far he hasn't gotten burned by missing Wisconsin kids and has pulled in some good players out of state late. Recruiting sites love this and while its not the only reason they have a higher team ranking, it helps!
Thank you for indulging me in this exercise in recruiting minutiae. I’m excited for my whole thesis to go boom when in February, Chryst offers a Whitewater commit because he’s buddies with the kid’s HS coach in Wausau.
That’s it for this week. Thinking only positive thoughts about the 2020 season. Go Badgers.