TWIB: The Rose Bowl Debriefing
Welcome to This Week in Badgers where we have a quick Rose Bowl debriefing and then never think about this game again.
I was torn on how to handle this Newsletter. I could wait until next week but imagined after taking the rest of this week and the weekend to forget about the events of 1/1/2020, seeing a Rose Bowl Newsletter email would drive people crazy. I also don’t have it in me to do a quick recap and then jump into links and doing a deep dive on Beat Reporter Travel Twitter (which was awesome and we will definitely get to eventually) and all that fun stuff.
Decisions had to be made.
So let’s do some quick Rose Bowl takes and we’ll regroup next week in a more positive space. I don't have a grand thesis or anything, so will just do some random shots and things that stuck out to me. I'll do this without reading your Badger Thoughts but please shoot them over here, and we’ll go over it when we’re all feeling better about ourselves.
Rose Bowl Takeaways
We've Seen This Game Before
They had 4 turnovers against Purdue, lost the Illinois game in a fashion much like this one, and had lost 14 fumbles overall going into the Rose Bowl. For comparison, the 2010 team lost 3 all year. This team did a lot of things well but ball security wasn’t one of them. It was part of who they were and you hoped it wouldn’t show up in a big game. So much for that.
We’ll talk about the penalties in a bit, but this team wasn’t great at that either as it was their 6th game with more than 6 penalties. A fumble and penalty filled game sucked beyond belief, but it didn’t come out of nowhere.
Worst Loss Ever?
I think we have to create a new category for it. Obviously 59-0 was objectively worse and I’m sure a 1980s team lost by 3 touchdowns to a 2-9 team, but this feels like a loss we’re going to remember for a long, long time. There were probably 10 plays that if the outcomes were reversed, Wisconsin wins the Rose Bowl.
We spend SO much time talking about depth charts, recruiting, coaching decisions and every Big Thing that teams need to win games and it seemed like the two biggest plays were the punter dropping a snap and a ref making a bad call.
Infuriating.
The Officiating Didn’t Help
I try to avoid talking about officiating because I recognize that I’m viewing it through an ENORMOUS pro-Wisconsin lens. There are a ton of calls throughout any game and over a large sample it is going to even out. I’ve seen some tweets like this that site raw numbers which I think gets people fired up but misses the point. Most of the penalties were false starts or off-sides, stuff that should be called. It was really just a couple key judgment calls that hurt them.
I’d think a neutral viewer would agree the Badgers got the short end of the judgment calls. I thought the Erdmann drive killing hold was awful and the Davis OPI was one of the biggest swings in the game. We can point out a hundred different reasons why they shouldn’t have even been in position for Davis’ OPI to matter, but they were and it was a huge, huge swing.
Calls that mattered less but still infuriated me included the hold on Faion Hicks that the TV guys justified by saying he intended to hold (even though he didn’t) and the baffling decision to not even review the awful spot on Stokke’s 3rd quarter run that cost Wisconsin a timeout with the potential for a whole lot more. The late hit on Herbert in the end zone was obviously because an Oregon guy shoved Hicks into him, whatever.
I’ve talked about this in other newsletters, but one of the things I like about NCAA vs NFL is that the college refs generally let stuff go. There are usually only a couple “judgment” calls every game - the holds, PI, etc and they are almost only called if they affect the play.
This game seemed more of an NFL style where the refs were looking to call stuff even if it had nothing to do with the result of the play. We were just missing some weird roughing the passer call for the full NFL experience. Not fun.
First Half Miss Opportunities
Felt like Chryst waited too long to open up the run game. They got through November going heavy with the motion, jet sweeps and misdirection and it was largely absent in the first half before they went to it in the 2nd half. It was clear right away Coan wasn’t going to have much outside the quick/short throws, so it seems like they could have done more to get the run game going. This isn’t a team or OL that is able to run up the middle and impose their will, they need help. They really missed a chance to put more points on the board and get some distance between themselves and Oregon early on.
The 4th Quarter FG
Badgers up 24-21, have 4th and 4 at the Oregon 9 with 12:09 left and kick a FG.
I totally get why Chryst did this, it got them up 6 and this isn’t really a criticism of him because I think almost every college coach would do the same thing, but they should have gone for it. The Oregon kicker isn’t very good so there’s a REALLY good chance Oregon was TD or bust regardless of what Wisconsin did. They had a chance to go up 10 with a worse case being up 3 with Oregon taking over at their own 9 yard line. That's worth going for.
Credit to the Oregon Defense
I talked in the preview about how Oregon does a good job preventing big plays and it certainly showed up in this game. Everything was tough for the offense. Time of possession was huge in Wisconsin’s favor, but I don’t know that it was really a great thing. Forcing the Badger offense to go 10+ plays for a score and convert multiple 3rd down conversions is a good job by the Oregon defense.
Let’s Remember Some Guys
We forget everything positive that happened in a loss, but there were some great performances. Cephus was absolutely balling and on another level. Chris Orr played his heart out and was all over the field. I thought this was Noah Burks’ best game as a Badger, he set the edge and caused all sorts of problems for Oregon. Loudermilk had push all day and was great. The secondary was great most of the game, Burrell in particular stood out.
Of course let’s not forget Aron Cruickshank. His two huge returns would have made him a Rose Bowl legend in a better world.
Guys that were good in the 2020 Rose Bowl, remembered.
Avoiding the “Woe is Me”
Maybe this is me just bargaining, but I’d rather lose a heart breaker in the Rose Bowl than beat some mid-tier SEC team in Tampa or Jacksonville. Every good team has bad losses in Big Bowl Games, few bad teams do. Ohio State is going through some soul searching after losing a close one last week, Minnesota is flying high after beating Auburn. I’d rather be Ohio State.
I'm also not as devastated as I thought I would be because I think this team will be back. Maybe not next year, or the year after, but at some point in the near future. This isn't a team that came out of nowhere to make a run, felt lucky to be there and now its back to irrelevance, its a team that's spent the past decade setting a new standard for what Wisconsin football should be and this game was a byproduct of that.
They've got the staff in place to be successful, they've been recruiting as well as they ever have and have shown they can win games, get to the top of the conference and be among the best teams in college football.
They'll also have a new punter next year.
They'll be back. Go Badgers.
That’s it for this week, I’ll plan to be back next week with Prop Bet results, some recruiting stuff and an interview with a former Badger media member. As always, thanks for reading.