Saturday offered some amazing plot twists in rivalry games. Alabama scored 45 points without Tua Tagovailoa against a legitimately strong Auburn defense… and lost. Arizona and Arizona State, which was supposed to be a shootout, produced just one first-half touchdown. Arizona’s defense played one of its best games of the year… and the Wildcats still lost decisively. Weird things can and do happen in rivalry games.
The Wisconsin Badgers beating the Minnesota Golden Gophers wasn’t weird. The proven, tested, familiar Big Ten West powerhouse defeated the up-and-comers who had not encountered this kind of pressure before. That wasn’t weird. Wisconsin handled bad weather better than its opponent. That wasn’t weird, either.
What was weird: Wisconsin got 280 passing yards from Jack Coan and only 76 rushing yards from Jonathan Taylor. Coan decisively outplayed his opposite number, Minnesota quarterback Tanner Morgan, in the nasty conditions. Coan owned the stage and carried the Badgers’ offense.
If you know your recent Big Ten history (“recent” defined as the 21st century), you know that one of the more respected Big Ten quarterbacks this century is Ohio State’s Craig Krenzel. He won a national championship. He had a knack for making the huge play in the big moment. Recall the ugly game against Purdue when Krenzel hit Michael Jenkins with a downfield pass late in the fourth quarter to enable the Buckeyes to survive. Krenzel was a lot like Jay Barker of the 1992 national champion Alabama team: not great in terms of aggregate stats, but golden when all the pressure was on and his team needed a score in a do-or-die situation. That was Krenzel. He gained immortality as a result.
Let’s make one thing very clear here: Jack Coan wasn’t Craig Krenzel against Minnesota on Saturday. He was A LOT BETTER. This was not the “stumble around for three quarters and then make the huge play late” template Krenzel established. This was just a steady, strong performance the whole way. Let’s get something straight about Coan, who had been more Krenzel-ish in previous weeks: This game against Minnesota was not the cautious “game manager” style of quarterbacking we had seen for much of the 2019 season.
Yes, the 15-of-22 passing line isn’t all that surprising. Efficient, percentage passing figured — before this game — to be a part of the Wisconsin attack… but that’s precisely the point: This wasn’t a safe passing game — not entirely at any rate. Coan’s 15 completions weren’t for the 159 yards Bart Houston threw for on an 11-of-12 stat line in the 2017 Cotton Bowl win Paul Chryst gained over P.J. Fleck and Western Michigan. That day revealed a “safer” Wisconsin passing game, with tight end Troy Fumagalli being Houston’s main outlet.
No, Coan’s 15 completions went for 280 yards. That’s 18.7 yards per completion. Coan was much more than the guy who needed to complete third-and-six throws earlier in the season (and didn’t do so enough against Ohio State). This was a quarterback who took command of his team and his offense, dominating the positional matchup against Morgan, who was throwing off his back foot all day. While Morgan was rattled by Wisconsin’s pass rush, Coan shook Minnesota’s defense with surgical strikes. It was role reversal for the two quarterbacks. Given the stakes, it was clearly Coan’s finest hour and his best performance at UW.
Rising to the moment like this means everything for Coan and for Badger fans. That Coan could climb past his limitations and not merely deliver a clutch play, but a whole clutch GAME, dramatically reshapes his place in Wisconsin football history. He could lose to Ohio State this coming Saturday, and barring something especially dramatic — fumbling on the goal line down four points in the final minute — that won’t matter at all. Jack Coan will be remembered as “the guy who won the Big Ten West and put it all together in miserable weather, ruining the Gophers’ season.”
“The Jack Coan Game” is now part of the Wisconsin-Minnesota series. It won Paul Bunyan’s Axe. It won a division title and a plane ticket to Indianapolis. It won a rematch with a great Ohio State team. It gave Wisconsin a shot at the Rose Bowl while firmly knocking Minnesota out of the Granddaddy. It was all of those things… but most of all, it was the game in which a team and a quarterback hugely reshaped how they will be remembered in history. That might be the greatest thing Jack Coan and his teammates won on Saturday in Minneapolis.