Wisconsin Football: Stock Up/Down after Week 3 loss to BYU
The Wisconsin football team hit a bump in their path to the College Football Playoff a bit sooner than anyone had expected upon their lost Saturday afternoon to BYU 24-21.
Stock Up
Jake Ferguson
Ferguson was one of the few players on the Wisconsin football team that had a decent game. He did a good job finding the open seams in the water tight BYU defense, connecting with Alex Hornibrook three times for 61 yards, including the Badgers longest passing play for 27 yards. Ferguson should continue to grow as a tight end as the year moves along, and should become one of the safety blankets Hornibrook can rely on in the check down area.
In the run game, he was underwhelming holding his blocks on the edge when Jonathan Taylor was attempting to find room to create big plays.
Ryan Connelly
Connelly continues to be the bell cow for the Badgers defense by filling gaps and flying around the field to chase down the ball-carrier. He finished with eight tackles including one for loss against BYU. He did a nice job maintaining the jet-sweep package that BYU ran heavily Saturday afternoon, which seemingly gave some problems to the defensive line up-front.
Stock Down
Offensive Line
The best offensive line in college football, was not the best offensive line in college football this week. They struggled to shed the initial threat from the defensive line and move onto the linebackers in the running game, which allowed BYU to limit Jonathan Taylor to only 4.5 yards per carry. That is really where the game was lost for Wisconsin, because they lack a passing attack that causes a defense to game-plan around it.
When the Badgers attempted to run the ball on the inside they got stuffed, and when they attempted to move outside BYU set the edge and often stringed the play until it moved the ball-carrier out of bounds or forced an attempt to cut up field. There is a lot that Joe Rudolph, the offensive line coach as well as the offensive coordinator, needs to address with this talented but underperforming team.
Alex Hornibrook
The Badgers need Alex Hornibrook to be better, plain and simple. There was too many mistakes that can’t happen if you are attempting to make a run at the College Football Playoff. There was a a handful of under thrown balls, including one that lead to a BYU interception. Poor decisions such as when he attempted to throw the ball upon getting taken down in the backfield, which should have been intercepted, but eventually got flagged for intentional grounding.
Although he completed 18/28 passes a large portion of those were on check down throws. The Badgers need to be more creative in getting balls to their playmakers along the outside. For example, AJ Taylor who has been the Badgers leading receiver so far this season had only two catches for 31 yards. There needs to be more of an effort to switch things up and not become predictable.
Paul Chryst
Although the Badgers got an opportunity to tie the game after an 11 play, 68 yard drive, much of the play calling through the game was conservative. The problem could be a trust factor between Chryst and Hornibrook, but if that’s the case Chryst needs to create schemes that gets wide-outs open quicker until the protection gets better.
It could be that the Badgers were looking ahead to Iowa, but that yet again falls on the leadership of the team. Chryst and the Badgers need to have a bounce back week and it won’t be easy as they travel to Iowa for a primetime game against the Hawkeyes.