| Wisconsin's defense may yet be every bit as elite as they have looked. At the same time, Wisconsin's first three opponents have offensive SP+ of #122 (South Florida), #120 (Central Michigan), and #72 (Michigan). So I'm not sure how much we can know yet. And we'll get to wait another week, because Northwestern (#126) is the worst offense they've faced to date. I think Pat Fitzgerald surprised some folks when Clemson quarterback Hunter Johnson wasn't named the starter Day 1, with a battle with the returning T.J. Green extending into the opener against Stanford. Green's season ending injury certainly cleared things up right? Nope. After a third straight lackluster performance, where he was 15-26 for 88 yards and a pick, Johnson was benched in favor of 3rd string quarterback Aidan Smith, who in his fourth year on campus had never seen the field. Smith was actually worse, going 4-11 for 38 yards and 2 picks. It's Hunter Johnson or bust, and while every year I say THIS is the year Northwestern doesn't rebound from a bad start, Johnson just looks horrible. Really, his receivers deserve better, bailing him out at least four times with amazing catches on bad throws. It's also looking more and more like Drake Anderson has to be the back, with Isaiah Bowser so far unable to recapture his 2018 mojo. Granted he was coming back from injury, facing arguably the top defense in the nation. But he had just 39 yards on 3.0 ypc, with over half of those yards coming on one run. The Northwestern defense is better than the final score would indicate, they simply got put in bad situation after bad situation. They better get a lot better against the run this week though. The numbers look great, holding MSU to 109 rushing yards, on just 2.7 ypc. But they allowed the Spartan's top two rushers to average 4.7 ypc on 20 carries. They made that up by holding MSU's quarterbacks, late game mop up duty RBs, and a failed trick play end around to 3 yards on 19 carries to buffer the overall numbers. If Elijah Collins and Connor Heyward could run on them, oh boy, it's Jonathan Taylor time. Taylor absolutely shredded Michigan's defense last week, and only played a portion of the game. It will be interesting to see how much he plays, or if there are lingering injury issues, because for the first time in forever, I'm not sold that Wisconsin has a stable back there. Bradrick Shaw and Garrett Groshek combined for 93 yards on 7 carries, but each had one long run, and the back who saw the most action behind Taylor, Nakia Watson, looked awful. Wisconsin can win this week without Taylor, and next week against Kent State, but I'd like to see them limit his workload a little bit before they have Michigan State, Ohio State and Iowa in a three game stretch, where a fresh and healthy Taylor is a necessity. |
