Badgers Ball Ruminations: Iowa Recap
Is something supposed to go here? Who even cares?
I hate Iowa. I hate the Iowa Hawkeyes. I hate their football team. I hate their basketball teams. I hate Caitlin Clark. I hate Adam Woodbury. I hate Kirk Ferentz. I hate that they have such a cool logo. I hate the Iowa fan that sucker punched my buddy in Iowa City and sent him to the hospital. I hate the McCaffrey family and Jordan Bohannon. I really hate Iowa.
And yet…as I watch (the game isn’t over yet by the game clock, but it has been “over” for a long time) the Hawkeyes completely embarrass the Wisconsin Badgers on national TV I find myself feeling nothing. I’m not sad or angry…I’m indifferent. I had no doubt the Badgers would lose this game and, lo and behold, that’s exactly what they’re doing.
I have negative faith in Phil Longo ever figuring out how to run a competent offense in Madison. Mike Tressel is giving up 42 points to an Iowa offense that measures their success in how close they can get to midfield before allowing their punter to pin an opponent inside the 10-yard line. Luke Fickell is a gutless loser who coaches like he’s afraid of his own shadow. Why would anyone outside of their locker room expect them to win?
The Badgers are playing loser football because they are being coached by a loser. Fickell deciding to punt on 4th and 2 from the Wisconsin 46-yard line on UW’s first drive of the second half with his team down 11 is coaching malpractice. He clearly doesn’t want to win so why should I care about how many he ends up losing by?
In every single game that Wisconsin has played against a team that isn’t clearly inferior to them they have been out-coached and out-played under Fickell. They have a bye next week, thank God, and then welcome undefeated, and No. 1 in the nation, Oregon. That’s a turbo-loss. Then they travel to Nebraska, a team they have historically owned, for a game between two teams desperate to reach bowl eligibility. An 11 a.m. Thanksgiving Friday tilt with Minnesota at Camp Randall Stadium has the potential to be one of the least attended games of the last decade and, quite frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if UW lost all three of these games.
Wisconsin missing a bowl game? A few years ago, the mere thought of that would’ve sent me into a fit of rage but now I’m thinking it might be a nice holiday respite if the Badgers weren’t playing in the Shithead Toilet Bowl against 1-11 Florida State.
Whatever, man. Who cares? Let’s, against my better judgement, get down to business with Week 9 of Badgers Ball Ruminations!
Good Things
Nothing.
Ok, I slept on it and I’ve found a few “good” things from this game. QB Braedyn Locke pulled the ball on a couple of RPOs and gained solid yardage! He is not a “fast” or “agile” or “graceful” man, but he picked up two first downs running the ball and now it’s on tape so opposing defensive coordinators might have to respect it now!
WR C.J. Williams’ touchdown catch was impressive.
RB Darrion Dupree ran the ball seven times for 52 yards. Admittedly, 30 of those yards came on Wisconsin’s final drive of the game when Iowa had subbed in their 11th stringers to give the Badgers a chance at moving the ball.
K Nathaniel Vakos made his one field goal attempt.
LB Christian Alliegro had 16 tackles, 1.5 TFL, and a sack.
WR Vinny Anthony II continued his nice season with four catches for 61 yards.
The refs, I’m assuming, filled their November monthly quota for screen time due to all of the penalties they called in the first half. The sequence on Wisconsin’s first drive where there was a UW false start followed by consecutive Iowa defensive delay of game penalties was one of the most surreal things I’ve seen on a football field. Locke was sacked once the play was finally run and then on the next play Iowa received an unsportsmanlike conduct flag.
Bad Things
As currently constructed, Wisconsin is a bad football team. They don’t do anything (except maybe punting) better than an average Big Ten team and this has been true for Luke Fickell’s entire tenure in Madison. The most important thing that a team like Wisconsin, which you’ll remember is a bad one, can do is ::gestures to crowd to shout along with me:: NOT TURN THE BALL OVER!
QB Braedyn Locke is a guaranteed turnover machine. He will, at absolute minimum, throw one interception every game and against Iowa on Saturday he doubled that total. Locke, who has been touted as some sort of Air Raid Genius, by offensive coordinator and war criminal Phil Longo doesn’t appear to have the ability to recognize when the opposing team is in a zone.
He rarely seems to make more than one read on a play and, despite this, processes things like his brain is trapped in quicksand. I’m willing to be that in QB meetings on Wednesdays Locke knows exactly where each player should line up and how each play should look and what reads the QB should make. When it’s Saturday, however, he just can’t get the job done.
Locke has an obscene amount of passes batted down or tipped at the line of scrimmage. He throws interceptions that are so ghastly that the defensive players are surprised that the ball is coming right for their chest. He isn’t a running threat. He doesn’t have plus arm talent. He’ll probably make a great coach some day because, as they say, “those who can’t do, teach.”John Pius was put in a blender by Iowa QB Brendan Sullivan’s second run of the second half. Sullivan, in his first start for the Hawkeyes, rushed nine times for 58 yards and a touchdown. Five of his rushing attempts went for eight yards or more and two of them went for 19 yards. Mike Tressel had zero answers for any aspect of Iowa’s rushing attack on Saturday night.
Speaking of which…the Hawkeyes ran the ball 54 times on Saturday night for a whopping 329 yards and five touchdowns. They had four ball carriers gain over 55 yards, led by RB Kaleb Johnson’s 135 yards (three TDs) on 24 totes. In the first half, they gashed Wisconsin on the left side of the defense and, to keep things fair, switched it up in the second half by gashing Wisconsin on the right side.
As far as I can tell, Iowa only had three rushes that went for negative yards. One was the sack of Sullivan, one was a 1-yard loss by Johnson in the first quarter, and I think the last one was the fumbled exchange on the goal line (which Iowa recovered and scored a TD on the next play). Putrid.TE Tucker Ashcraft committed three (!!!) false start penalties in the first half. Holy shit, dude, get it together! His second false start pushed the Badgers back to 1st and 15 on Iowa’s 30, the Badgers then had to call a timeout on 2nd and 15 to avoid a delay of game penalty, and finally a 9-yard completion to get to 3rd and 6, which would’ve made it 3rd and 1 without Ashcraft’s penalty, led to a Locke incompletion and a field goal. Would the Badgers have gone for it on 4th and 1? Probably not because Luke Fickell is a cowardly loser…but maybe?
His third false start, which gets funnier every time I think about it, moved the Badgers back to ::checks notes:: 2nd and 30 hahahahahah I can’t talk about this shit anymore. Embarrassing.
Wisconsin went in to halftime down 14-3 and were lucky it wasn’t worse. An 11-point deficit is magnified when playing a team like Iowa, who won’t beat themselves on offense and have a stout defense, so the Badgers needed to start taking some chances in the second half, right? WRONG, YOU IDIOT! YOU BRAINLESS BUFFOON!
”Las Vegas” Luke Fickell stepped up to the table on UW’s first drive of the second half and…punted on 4th and 2 from Wisconsin’s 46-yard line. The game was over right then and there. Fickell made the gutless decision which gave his team permission to play gutless football. Iowa got the ball on their own 14-yard line after the UW punt and proceeded to methodically walk Wisconsin down to the tune of a 10-play, 86 yard drive that took up 5:34 of the third quarter and WAS ALL RUSHING PLAYS.
The Hawkeyes, who to be clear had already won the game thanks to Fickell’s craven abdication of head coaching duties on the previous drive, fully imposed their will on Wisconsin and manhandled them down the field.
Worth noting that Iowa had four drives in the second half and scored touchdowns on all four of them. Wisconsin’s defense only forced two three-and-outs all game so at a certain point you have to adjust your calculus on what is and isn’t a good fourth down decision. You can’t sit there and watch Iowa (FUCKING IOWA!) have multiple 75-yard scoring drives on you and think “field position” matters even a little bit. TRY TO WIN THE GAME, NOT MANAGE HOW MUCH YOU LOSE IT BY! Fucking hell.
After Wisconsin football games the SID sends out game notes that include little fun facts and records and stuff…except when the Badgers lose. That’s so funny to me because, like, why? And this isn’t a “Fickell thing” either. It has been happening for as long as I can remember. Were there NO notes from every Wisconsin loss for the past however many years I’ve been writing about the program??? Just loser shit all the way down from UW.
Amazing Things
No Badger football next weekend!