Yes, the Wisconsin Badgers played below-average defense against the Nebraska Cornhuskers on Saturday. Yes, the Badgers’ defense is thin at safety, due to multiple injuries. Yes, backups are being thrown into the mix and can’t be expected to perform at the same standard established earlier in the season. Yes, other Big Ten teams seem to be improving while Wisconsin is treading water — surviving, but not really getting better.
Wisconsin’s best and most locked-in performances of 2019 came in the first half of the season. The second half — which included a week off, a time to hopefully sharpen some instincts and polish some imperfect habits — has not created a meaner defensive unit. Jack Coan is not making steady progress. He is also playing at the same B-minus/C-plus level he displayed against Illinois a few weeks ago. This team isn’t deteriorating, but neither is it peaking at the right time.
That last point is what I wish to explore: No, Wisconsin isn’t peaking… and that is part of why fans shouldn’t be too worried about what’s happening at the moment, two weeks before the huge Minnesota game which is likely to decide the Big Ten West. I will frame my argument around a larger reality which pervades the national scene in major college football.
Look at Georgia’s mid-October siesta, when the Bulldogs played two bad games in a row against South Carolina and Kentucky. Look at Ohio State basically taking the last three quarters off against Rutgers on Saturday. (Rutgers nearly played OSU even on the scoreboard for a few quarters, following OSU’s onslaught in the first 11 minutes.) Look at LSU giving up a ton of points to Ole Miss and a boatload of yards. Look at Clemson playing like a bored team in the first half of the year, especially versus North Carolina.
So many very good teams have played games or sequences of games (or both) in which they weren’t dialed in. Focus was lacking. Energy was inconsistent. This happens. This is NORMAL, not aberrational. Kids aren’t going to have the same razor-sharp focus every week.
Nick Saban and Dabo Swinney are better than most at getting relatively consistent performances from their teams each week, but they aren’t airtight gods. They still get at least one if not two games a year in which their players drift through a Saturday.
This, I submit, is what Wisconsin is going through now. Wisconsin was shaken by the Illinois loss and then kicked to the curb by Ohio State. This created an emotional tidal wave the Badgers are still absorbing. This team played with such confidence and decisiveness in the first half of the season that a two-game losing streak was a thunderclap of disruption. Wisconsin is still trying to find its bearings, and not being able to control its fate in the Big Ten West race might have played a small but real part in keeping this team depressed — maybe not to a huge extent, but small margins can matter when explaining why one-on-one tackles in open space are being missed instead of made.
Now that Wisconsin controls its fate in the Big Ten West once again, you might see this team perk up. You might see the vibrant, optimistic, relentless identity seen in September. It’s not a guarantee, but I think some Badgers are ready to come out of hibernation. Let’s see if this thesis is proven to be correct. If it IS correct, some Gophers are about to be pushed into a deep, dark hole on Nov. 30 in Minneapolis.