Oregon Ducks football – Page 97

Wisconsin – Oregon and the Rose Bowl quarterbacks

Jack Coan and Justin Herbert

The 2020 Rose Bowl is almost upon us. BadgersWire continues its exploration of the Granddaddy of Them All between Oregon and Wisconsin. It’s a rematch of the 2012 Rose Bowl in which Wisconsin had the ball and a chance to win the game, but quarterback Russell Wilson couldn’t spike the ball fast enough and time ran out before the Badgers could execute one final play deep in Oregon territory. The loss was one of three close losses the Badgers had in the Rose Bowl from 2011 through 2013, their three-year streak of playing their postseason game in Pasadena. With the Ducks on the horizon, this iteration of the Rose Bowl represents Bucky’s last chance to win a Rose Bowl this decade and make a final statement about its stature and staying power over the past 10 years of college football.

As both teams prepare for what’s to come, one thing that stands out when you look at what each team brings to the table is quarterback play. Wisconsin quarterback Jack Coan enters the game having thrown the eighth-fewest interceptions in FBS football. Meanwhile, he has completed nearly 63% of his passes and has a passer rating of 144.1 against AP Top 25 teams. Coan has truly developed and come into his own as the 2019 season progressed, particularly in late November and early December. He has truly become a team leader and a playmaker.

On the other side, Oregon had the presumptive No. 1 overall pick, quarterback Justin Herbert… until Joe Burrow absolutely lit the college football world on fire in his Heisman-winning season at LSU. Anytime you throw for 32 touchdowns and only five interceptions for the Oregon Ducks, it’s going to take a pretty special season from someone else to pip the Heisman Trophy. Burrow certainly had that season, but what Herbert did against AP Top 25 teams wasn’t too dissimilar from Coan’s own accomplishments. Herbert completed 65% of his passes for 715 yards, six touchdowns and zero interceptions against top-25 teams. He also posted a 144.4 passer rating against AP Top 25 teams.

It’ll be interesting to see how Wisconsin plays Herbert. Will the Badgers approach the game similar to how they approached Justin Fields? Herbert isn’t as much of a running threat as Fields, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t know how to tuck the ball and run if the Badger defense vacates the hole for him. Herbert knows how to adjust to games and win games late. Herbert has a passer rating of 171.8 in the fourth quarter. He completes about 73% of his passes for eight touchdowns and only two interceptions in fourth quarters. The kid is a winner and has the ability to punish a defense for its mistakes. Herbert also owns the ability to put his team on his back and guide it to victory.

Whereas Herbert thrives in the fourth quarter, Coan struggles the most in the fourth. Of the four quarters, Coan posts his lowest passer rating in the fourth quarter at 128.6. He completes only about 64% of his passes for a great average of 9.2 yards per completion, but has thrown zero touchdowns and three interceptions. That has to improve if the Badgers are going to compete with the Oregon Ducks. In fairness to Coan, he didn’t need a huge fourth quarter at Minnesota because UW led 31-10 with 11 minutes left. Coan then had to face a nasty Ohio State defense in the Big Ten Championship Game. Trailing 34-21, Coan had to throw on nearly every play, which was not a situation in which he is likely to succeed.

There is potential for the Badgers against Oregon, but they have to take advantage of their opportunities and can’t leave points on the board when the Ducks gift them with an opening.

This game promises to entertain. Both of these teams are equipped with quarterbacks who play smart, take care of the football, and put their teams in the best possible spots to win. These QBs have thrown for a total of 49 touchdowns and only nine interceptions between the two of them all year long. That’s a lot of points and not very many mistakes. Where Oregon head coach Mario Cristobal and Wisconsin head coach Paul Chryst agree is that developing offensive line play as a central backbone of a team carries at least as much value as — if not more than — trying to create a football team which primarily depends on its defense.

Cristobal played offensive line, Chryst played quarterback. Same side of the ball, two different ways of running an offense. But both offenses require someone to protect the football as much as they sling it around the field. Both teams have wise, prudent quarterbacks leading their team into the Granddaddy of Them All in 2020. What happens in Pasadena on January 1, 2020 will happen because of these two motherboards behind their respective offensive intelligence systems.

The rushing attacks of Wisconsin and Oregon in the Rose Bowl

Wisconsin-Oregon: the ground games

The Oregon Ducks and Wisconsin Badgers aren’t in the 2020 Rose Bowl Game by accident. These are potent teams with a powerful running game anchoring their potent offenses. When these two teams collide, they’ll bring with them a vaunted running attack and a memory of their last meeting in 2012, which was a Rose Bowl win by the Ducks in a dramatic fourth quarter. The Ducks scored 10 unanswered points in the fourth to complete the victory.

The history between the two teams in the Rose Bowl will surely provide them ample motivation to be prepared for this game, even if they both felt there were higher ambitions to pursue and fulfill prior to the 2019 season. Let’s look at the rushing attacks for both the Ducks and the Badgers.

On the Oregon side, the Ducks are loaded with talent carrying the football. Lead by C.J. Verdell, Oregon has 2,382 rushing yards on the season. Travis Dye, Darrian Felix and Cyrus Habibi-Likio round out the cast of talent the Ducks have at their disposal. It’s an embarrassment of riches for the Ducks, and it doesn’t even include the very mobile quarterback the Ducks have at their disposal: Justin Herbert. The Badgers certainly face a daunting task of preventing the Ducks from running the ball all over the Wisconsin defense.

One the Wisconsin side, the Badgers have almost 2,000 rushing yards from one man alone, Jonathan Taylor. The 5-foot-11 junior tailback is second in the nation with 1,909 yards. The one man in front of him, Chubba Hubbard, has 1,936 yards. The Badgers have hogs up front paving the way for Taylor, who has only three games on the season in which he did not rush for at least 100 yards — Minnesota, Michigan State and Ohio State. Taylor is a workhorse the Badgers can ride while their increasingly efficient quarterback, Jack Coan, provides a steady hand for the rest of the offense. Nakia Watson and Garrett Groshek give the Badgers’ running back room a number of valuable outlets as receivers.

Groshek has 187 rushing yards on the season but he also has 270 receiving yards on just 26 receptions. This gives him an average close to 10.4 yards per reception. He also has a long of 70 yards receiving and 23 yards rushing. After the scripted plays go out the window, guys such as Groshek give head coach Paul Chryst a unique and dynamic playmaker he can use to keep the Badger offense going in the right direction either through play design or improvisation. Finding a way to incorporate him into the offense without forcing the ball to him is a way the Badgers can keep Oregon’s defense off balance and gain leverage in Pasadena.

The Ducks will by relying heavily on touchdown machine Cyrus Habibi-Likio and C.J. Verdell, who have a combined 18 touchdowns on the season so far (10 for Habibi-Likio, eight for Verdell). Verdell is the team leader in rushing yards with 1,171. That’s enough for 6.5 yards per carry, with a long of 89. He also has another 125 yards as a receiver and an 8.9 yards-per-reception average. Habibi-Likio may have only 337 rushing yards and 32 receiving yards, but his 10 touchdowns on the year make him the team’s leader. It’s the equivalent of a Jerome Bettis special in the city of Pittsburgh. The Ducks have plenty of diversity on the offensive side of the ball, so they may not feel as pressured as the Badgers to rely on one player the way Wisconsin does with Taylor.

All in all, the Ducks and Badgers present a very interesting case for a compelling bowl watch. The Rose Bowl has been hit or miss with its level of competition over the best few years, but it has mostly consisted of hits. Since 2000, the game has been lopsided in only seven matches. Every Wisconsin Rose Bowl played this century has been close. The players on both sides of this game on the first day of 2020 indicate that the latest Granddaddy has the potential to live up to the hype.

Old Wisconsin and New Oregon are connected at the Rose Bowl

Reflections on the 2020 Rose Bowl between the Wisconsin Badgers and the Oregon Ducks.

Our team at Badgers Wire highlighted the fact that Tyler Biadasz was a finalist for the Rimington Trophy. No one needs any explanation in the state of Wisconsin — or in any Badger football-loving forum — about the centrality of offensive line play in growing the UW program and establishing it as a formidable national force.

It is worth noting, in the wake of the announcement that Wisconsin will play Oregon in the 2020 Rose Bowl, that the Ducks value offensive line play as well. This is the big point of commonality between the two programs as they prepare for this prized pigskin pageant on New Year’s Day of 2020.

No, Chip Kelly didn’t devalue offensive line play when he coached the Ducks against the Badgers in the 2012 Rose Bowl. Kelly’s offenses were finely-tuned machines. Chip’s track record in Eugene (in marked contrast to the final season of his tenure with the Philadelphia Eagles and each of his seasons as head coach of UCLA, in the Rose Bowl stadium itself) shows that he developed his offensive lines in concert with the offensive system he ran.

Nevertheless, if Chip Kelly had a top priority as Oregon’s head coach, it was speed. That’s what he valued more than anything else at Oregon. Speed was the cornerstone of UO football. The zone-blocking concepts were designed to make defenses hesitate and unleash his speed. The emphasis on tempo at Oregon at the start of this decade was designed to make superior speed triumph over the course of 60 full minutes. A physical defense might stop Kelly’s speed in its tracks in the first quarter or a quarter and a half, but in the third and fourth quarters, conditioning and speed would have the final say.

When I refer in the title of this piece to “Old Wisconsin” and “New Oregon,” I am not referring to age versus youth, but to the fact that Wisconsin has maintained a very consistent identity under Barry Alvarez’s watch, with Paul Chryst keeping the tradition going, 30 years after Alvarez first arrived in Madison at the end of 1989. The current Wisconsin way is the old Wisconsin way. It’s not in any way a criticism. Old, in this case, means traditional, time-tested, and proven.

“New Oregon” doesn’t imply the Ducks are better or fresher or more hip than Wisconsin, only that the Chip Kelly emphasis on speed has given way to a greater emphasis on power. Mario Cristobal doesn’t devalue speed, much as Kelly didn’t devalue line play. He simply puts his foremost point of emphasis on being very physical.

There is less emphasis on tempo in this Oregon offense, less emphasis on getting as many snaps per game as possible; that was a Chip Kelly goal. Whereas Wisconsin has Tyler Biadasz, Oregon has Penei Sewell, an elite lineman who — like Biadasz — should cash a very hefty check on Sundays in the future. Oregon’s commitment to a physical offensive line is a core reason the Ducks supplanted Washington — which similarly rose to Pac-12 prominence on brawn more than swiftness — as the Pac-12 champion this year.

Yes, the Ducks certainly like to get backs and receivers in open space; again, they don’t dismiss the value of speed. Yet, if Chip Kelly preferred track meets at UO, Mario Cristobal prefers trench warfare. In this sense, Wisconsin is meeting a like-minded opponent on New Year’s Day.

Oregon and Wisconsin have a shared goal in 2020 Rose Bowl

Reflections on the 2020 Rose Bowl between the Wisconsin Badgers and the Oregon Ducks.

The Wisconsin Badgers and the Oregon Ducks are not playing a consolation game. The Rose Bowl is not — and never should be viewed as — a consolation prize. The Rose Bowl is always a top prize. The playoff semifinals are the ultimate goal, but the Rose Bowl can never disappoint — at least, it can never disappoint if one adopts a mindset which always treats the Rose Bowl as a special game.

That having been said, why are Oregon and Wisconsin in Pasadena, and not in the Fiesta or Peach Bowls? Simple: They didn’t beat the very best teams on their schedules. That’s not a “burn,” or an “insult,” or a withering criticism. It’s just reality.

It is hard to call Utah an elite team after the Utes played horribly in their big primetime moment on Friday in Santa Clara, California, in the Pac-12 Championship Game. Utah did not beat any team this year which had at least eight wins. I didn’t create that fact. I am merely passing it along. The Ducks lost to Auburn and have to live with the reality that national observers won’t give them an extra measure of credit unless or until they beat Wisconsin in Southern California.

Wisconsin exists in a similar situation. The Badgers crushed Michigan, but is Michigan an elite team? A 9-3 team which nearly lost to Army at home (non-bowl Army, to be more precise; the Black Knights are 5-7) isn’t elite. The 10-2 Minnesota Golden Gophers are certainly a good team, but elite? Much as Oregon smashed the idea that Utah was an elite team this past Friday, Wisconsin did the same to Minnesota over a week ago.

Ducks-Badgers on the first day of the 2020s is significant primarily because it’s the darn ROSE BOWL GAME, the Granddaddy Of Them All. Winning the Rose Bowl is always a goal unto itself, without need for extra qualifiers and caveats and specifications. That said, one very prominent goal attached to winning the 2020 Rose Bowl for Oregon and Wisconsin is the need to beat an elite team, and more precisely, an elite team outside of one’s own conference.

No, this isn’t a playoff semifinal, but the winner of this game will know it has passed a defining test and deserves to stand tall on the national scene. Don’t call the Rose Bowl a consolation prize or an exhibition game — not when so much national respect is squarely on the line.

Jack Coan is why Wisconsin has a great chance vs. Oregon

A few words on Wisconsin Badgers quarterback Jack Coan entering the Rose Bowl against the Oregon Ducks.

The identity of a football team — any team — changes over the course of its season. The identity of the Wisconsin Badgers, and more precisely, their offense, changed over the course of the 2019 season. It has changed in ways which give the Badgers a very good chance to beat the Oregon Ducks in the 2020 Rose Bowl in just over three weeks.

The version of Jack Coan which played in late October would naturally not be enough to beat Oregon in Pasadena. No one needs to debate or litigate that question. The iteration of Coan which has played these last two games, against Minnesota and then Ohio State, is easily good enough to beat Oregon. This statement might seem so self-evident to the point that it doesn’t need to be discussed, but it is worth amplifying — not from Wisconsin’s viewpoint, but from Oregon’s.

Our team at Badgers Wire is going to pick apart this game on many levels and from many angles over the coming weeks. I will spend a lot of time processing this matchup through my observations and understandings of Oregon, so that my colleagues can focus more on Wisconsin’s players and positions groups.

When I say that Jack Coan gives Wisconsin a good chance to beat the Ducks, I make that statement based on one core observation about Oregon: It hasn’t faced very many good quarterbacks this year — not against Auburn in the season opener, and not against Pac-12 competition.

I would note that the quarterback Oregon stymied in the Pac-12 Championship Game, Tyler Huntley of Utah, is a legitimately good quarterback. However, he had a terrible game against the Ducks and didn’t get good play calling from a man Wisconsin fans remember during the Gary Andersen years: Andy Ludwig.

The Ducks feasted on bad quarterback play in the Pac-12. Cal, Stanford, Colorado, and Arizona — teams Oregon played in 2019 — all had brutal QB situations this year, for one reason or another. The more talented quarterbacks Oregon faced this season came in games against Washington State, Washington, and Arizona State… and those were all games in which Oregon gave up more than 30 points.

It is true that Oregon defensive coordinator Andy Avalos has been an important presence for the Ducks this year under head coach Mario Cristobal. Oregon’s strength is that it has dominated weaker teams and been competent against good teams. The more mediocre teams in college football struggle against weaker teams and lose the plot against competent teams. Oregon has risen above that mediocrity to win the Pac-12 for the first time since 2014. However, as good as Oregon is, a quality quarterback can thrive against UO’s defense. Jack Coan is playing at a very high level right now. The defense he will face on New Year’s Day is vulnerable. Coan could pluck the Ducks if he retains the great form he showed in Minneapolis and Indianapolis the last two weeks.

Wisconsin 2019 and 2011 Rose Bowl teams had similar journeys

Wisconsin’s 2011 team played Oregon in the Rose Bowl. Wisconsin’s 2019 team will play Oregon in the Rose Bowl.

The 2011 Wisconsin Badgers weren’t the last Wisconsin football team to make the Rose Bowl, but the 2011 Badgers did meet the Oregon Ducks in that season’s Rose Bowl game, the January 2012 edition. As we continue a month filled with Rose Bowl stories — what a happy task for us at Badgers Wire! — one small part of a much larger Wisconsin Rose Bowl story is that the 2011 and 2019 Badgers both arrived in Pasadena against Oregon after making similar regular-season journeys.

You know the 2019 Badgers’ progression under Paul Chryst and quarterback Jack Coan. What about the 2011 team under Bret Bielema and Russell Wilson?

Wisconsin won its first six games of 2011 by large margins: 51-17, 35-0, 49-7, 59-10, 48-17, 59-7. Huh. Sounds familiar, does it not?

49-0. 61-0. 35-14. 24-15. 48-0. 38-0. Those were the first six scores of Wisconsin’s games in 2019.

Wisconsin’s combined point differential in its first six games of 2011: 223 points. Wisconsin’s combined point differential in its first six games of 2019: 226 points.

Huh.

The 2011 Wisconsin team suffered a two-game losing streak in the last two weekends of October. The 2019 Wisconsin team suffered a two-game losing streak in the last two weekends of October.

The 2011 Wisconsin team endured its two-game losing streak on the road. The 2019 Wisconsin team endured its two-game losing streak on the road.

The 2011 Wisconsin team lost the second of its two midseason games at Ohio State. The 2019 Wisconsin team lost the second of its two midseason games at Ohio State.

The 2011 Wisconsin team went 4-0 in November to rebound and make the Big Ten Championship Game. The 2019 Wisconsin team went 4-0 in November to rebound and make the Big Ten Championship Game.

The obvious difference between 2019 and 2011 is that Wisconsin won the Big Ten Championship Game in 2011, unlike 2019. Wisconsin scored 42 points in the 2011 Big Ten title game, only half (21) in 2019. Yet, when looking at the 12-game regular-season schedules which sent Wisconsin to Indianapolis and then to Pasadena against Oregon, these journeys contained a lot of common elements. It shows how consistent Wisconsin is, and has been — at the start and end of a very successful decade.

Wisconsin-Oregon in the Rose Bowl is the best NY6 game

Early reflections on Wisconsin versus Oregon in the Rose Bowl.

The Wisconsin Badgers will face the Oregon Ducks in the first Rose Bowl of the new decade. Wisconsin and Oregon play on the first day of 2020 in Pasadena, California, giving the Granddaddy a rematch of the 2012 game won by Chip Kelly and the Ducks over Russell Wilson and the Badgers in a fun shootout.

Will this 2020 UW-UO game be as fun as 2012? That’s a high bar to clear. Don’t expect as many points in this game. However, one can still make a very convincing case that this is the best New Year’s Six bowl game of them all.

First, let’s knock down the lesser members of the New Year’s Six. Florida versus four-loss Virginia in the Orange Bowl? Yawn. Memphis versus Penn State in the Cotton? I have seen better matchups than that, to say the least. Baylor versus Georgia in the Sugar? Those two offenses have looked bad for large portions of the 2019 college football season. Georgia didn’t care about playing Texas in last season’s Sugar Bowl, so why would the Dawgs care about this Sugar Bowl trip?

Let’s look at the College Football Playoff semifinals. They might be very exciting games. However, many people will pick LSU to beat Oklahoma by 25 or 30 points in the Peach Bowl. That game could easily become a dud. Then we arrive at the one game which, to be honest, could be seen as better than Wisconsin-Oregon. Ohio State-Clemson in the Fiesta Bowl does have the potential to be an absolute classic.

Yet, what do we know about Clemson and Ohio State? We know that Clemson shut out OSU in the previous Fiesta Bowl semifinal between the two teams. We know that Clemson, if not playing Alabama (in the 2017 season) in the semifinals, has dump-trucked its semifinal opponents.

Clemson beat Oklahoma in the 2015 semifinals by 20 points. Clemson destroyed Ohio State in 2016. Clemson annihilated Notre Dame in the 2018 semifinals. None of those three games were close. Maybe Ohio State brings its A-game and creates an epic semifinal. that could happen. If you were to say that OSU-Clemson is the best of the New Year’s Six, you will get no argument from me.

Yet: If you were to ask me a more specific question — namely, “Which NY6 game has the best chance of being a good game?” — I think Wisconsin-Oregon in the Rose is the best answer.

This game reminds me of the 2014 Rose Bowl between Michigan State and Stanford. Both of those teams were very physical and hard-hitting, as Oregon and Wisconsin are. Oregon is not what it was under Chip Kelly in the early part of this decade, when the Ducks previous met the Badgers in Pasadena. That was a team (and program) based a lot more on perimeter speed. This Oregon team, under Mario Cristobal, emphasizes offensive line play and the ability to knock teams off the ball. Chip Kelly was rooted a lot more in the need to get his skill players in space and use tempo as a weapon. This UO team doesn’t have that same identity.

If this game is similar to the 2014 Michigan State-Stanford Rose Bowl, viewers will get a quality game. If the Big Ten can win this Rose Bowl just as Michigan State won six years ago, Wisconsin fans will be very happy.

Ohio State-Clemson COULD be a much better game, sure. However, if you want a game which is the most likely to satisfy, Wisconsin versus Oregon is the New Year’s Six game to choose this bowl season.