Badgers at Gophers Post Game - What we learned

The dreary weather across the upper Midwest didn’t help things, but after the loss to Wisconsin on Saturday, things just seemed a little gloomier than they should have. The Axe will stay in Madison for at least another year, and that is depressing no matter what the weather.

Maybe it was the fact that we had a lead at the half, and later opportunities to take the game back. Either way, we didn’t capitalize when we needed to, and Wisconsin made some second half adjustments that killed us (namely continuously handing the ball to John Clay). The reality of it was, this game played out like so many other of our recent losses to Wisconsin. We play tough early, only to have it slip away. Disappointing to say the least, and it felt like the program took a step backwards.

Offensively we looked like Fisch had things figured out for a spell, exploiting Wisconsin’s weakness on defense (the middle), with some nice screens and inside runs. Decker was clearly the superior to anyone in that Wisconsin d-backfield, and was able to get open. I was a bit perturbed seeing Hayo Carpenter tracked down from behind by a d-lineman while out in space (#93 Louis Nzegwu?). The second half was a different story, as we really didn’t have the ball much, and Wisconsin established their classic ball control runing game that they are known for. And late in the game when Wisconsin amped up its pass rush, our O-line withered, giving Weber little to no time to set up in the pocket. I’m still unsure if part of the problem wasn’t also that there were no underneath pass routes for Weber to dump off to, or if he simply was so locked on to Decker that he missed these opportunities. A second watch of the game will clear this up for me (if I'm willing to put myself through that).

On defense things seemed to be holding together in the 1st half. Tolzien wasn’t picking apart our secondary as feared. However, by the second half, John Clay had gotten lathered up and we couldn’t slow him. Even when we got to him at the line of scrimmage, he seemed to fall forward for a 4-5 yard gains. The injury to Triplett late in the game didn’t help matters either, and although he came back into the game later, he seemed a step slow. Cosgrove got aggressive with the blitz packages in 3rd and long situations, but Wisconsin seemed to know these were coming and handled them well.

So what did we learn from this week? Aside from the fact that Wisconsin still sucks (and always will), we found out that we struggle with large, powerful halfbacks. We found out that our O-line seems to really struggle against all-out, ears-pinned back, pass rushing (particularly the right side – looking at you Jeff Wills). And we learned that things just continue to never go our way against Wisconsin (i.e. the partially blocked punt in 4th quarter that ended up pinning us inside the 5). Last we learned that the coaching staff clearly isn't ready to unleash Marqueis Gray, even though the rest of Gopher Nation is... I can only assume they have their reasons at this point.

Homecoming and Purdue this coming Saturday, so let’s hope we can bounce back from this loss, and get one back in the ‘W’ column, before heading to PSU and OSU.