Wisconsin Football v. Northwestern: 3 Big Takeaways

The Wisconsin Football team squeaked out a victory over Northwestern and here are the three big takeaways from what we saw during Saturday’s performance.

Well, we knew that not every game for the Wisconsin Football team was going to be a dominating win and that certainly wasn’t the case against Northwestern. With an experienced coach in Pat Fitzgerald, this Northwestern team always plays the Badgers tough and that is exactly what happened yesterday.

However, even amongst the offensive struggles and the special teams’ blunders, the Wisconsin defense was able to lead the way and the Badgers were able to move to 4-0 on the season.

As always there are plenty of takeaways from the Badgers’ performance on the field but these are the big three and should be monitored as Wisconsin moves forward with their season.

Paul Chryst’s conservative play-calling

Through the first three games of the season, the Wisconsin offense played fairly aggressively and that style of play was key to them taking an early lead over Michigan last week. And while it looked like they would stick with that aggressive mentality against Northwestern after going for it on fourth and three on the opening drive, the Badgers’ inability to move the ball resulted in Paul Chryst reverting back to his conservative ways.

For much of the game, the Wisconsin Football team controlled the field position battle and started a number of their drives around mid-field. Yet they struggled to move the ball and even with how well their defense was playing, they decided to punt on multiple fourth and short situations, including one time from the Northwestern 36-yard line.

While very few of their yards came easy, we saw a much different mentality from Chryst in this game. Of course, a coach should tailor his play-calling to that game but I felt that we saw the pendulum take a big swing towards the conservative direction rather than Wisconsin trying to assert themselves as the better team. This offense looked very similar to what we saw in 2018 and moving forward, I hope we see that more aggressive mentality.

The Badger defense is the best in the country

With the offensive side of the ball struggling, the Wisconsin defense had to take this game over and that is exactly what they did. The Badger defense would hold Northwestern to just 3.1 yards per play which resulted in only 255 total yards and the Wildcats were only 5-20 on third downs.

The Wisconsin defense would also outscore the offense by forcing three turnovers, two of which went for touchdowns. Defensive coordinator Jim Leonhard dialed up some beautiful blitzes, Matt Henningsen continues to make big plays, and the trio of linebackers – Zack Baun, Jack Sanborn, and Chris Orr – were all over the field.

Through four games the Badgers have the number one total defense in all of college football and to put it simply, they’ve been absolutely dominant.

Wake up call for the offense

This Wisconsin offense led by Jonathan Taylor and Jack Coan had been very good through the first three games of the season and had a Northwestern team coming to town that ranked 10th in the Big Ten in total defense prior to Saturday’s game. However, other than the opening drive, the offense was unable to get anything going.

As a team, they were just 4-16 on third downs and finished with only 243 total yards. Meanwhile, Jack Coan was 15/24 for only 113 yards and threw his first interception of the season. Even Jonathan Taylor struggled to get going although he would finish with 119 yards on the ground, which was the first time that he broke 100 rushing yards against Northwestern.

After cruising through the first three games of the season the offense hit a brick wall and as I mentioned above, they looked awfully similar to the Badger offense that we saw for most of 2018.