2019 Wisconsin Season Thread

[847badgerfan]

May as well get it started.

[847badgerfan]

Lots of Badger fans, including this one, were fooled by last year's Orange Bowl performance. That's not going to happen again. The coaching staff needs to fix the QB situation. 


There has been some speculation that Alex Hornibrook could be done playing football, but no official word on that at all. For his own sake, he should (and I'm sure he is) think about that one really hard. He's not an NFL QB and he's set to graduate this Spring, I believe. 

[847badgerfan]

Taking an early stab at the starting OL, assuming Badass leaves for the NFL too:


LT Cole Van Lanen
LG Jon Deitzen
C Kayden Lyles
RG Jason Erdmann
RT Logan Bruss


Van Lanen was the highest graded left tackle in the country by PFF. That position is solid. Deitzen shared the LT spot with Van Lanen but can now slide back to his LG position since Deiter is done. Lyles played defensive end in 2018, but took most of his bowl practice snaps at center. Erdmann has been very solid in backing up 3 positions for 2 seasons and should help immediately. Big shoes to fill (Benz) there. Bruss started the final 3 games at RT for the injured Edwards and honestly played better than him. 


This should be another solid OL in Madison. Lots of very good quality backups too, at every position, with 2 more maulers joining the program in June.

[SFBadger96]

Barring injury, it's been a long time since I was particularly concerned about depth on the OL. Quarterback, though, is always a worry. Agreed on Hornibrook--if he's not playing for a paycheck (and he's not), why risk it? And for all the fans of the backups, there's a reason Chryst went with Hornibrook: he gave them the best chance to win. So yeah, this is a big area of concern. Just a smidge of a game-managing quarterback could really help get us fans through Taylor's last season as a Badger...

[847badgerfan]

A big concern is at MLB, replacing Connolly and Edwards. Chris Orr's play against Miami was stellar, and it seems like he's a leader. So that helps things a lot. I'm predicting Jack Sanborn takes that other spot inside. Then there's the OLB's. Losing Van Ginkel is gonna sting and I'm not seeing anyone right now who can step in that role.

[SFBadger96]

Yeah, following on this season, the whole defense (other than Orr) looks like a question mark...not unlike QB. Hopefully the injury bug doesn't bit quite as hard next year.

A lot of guys returning in the secondary, but that wasn't the team's strength (and losing Dixon won't make them better).

A lot of competition for just about every position except NT and Orr's ILB spot.

[bayareabadger]

Lots of Badger fans, including this one, were fooled by last year's Orange Bowl performance. That's not going to happen again. The coaching staff needs to fix the QB situation.


There has been some speculation that Alex Hornibrook could be done playing football, but no official word on that at all. For his own sake, he should (and I'm sure he is) think about that one really hard. He's not an NFL QB and he's set to graduate this Spring, I believe.

The word fooled is an interesting one. 
We watched what was probably the second-best sophomore QB season in program history. The offense was efficient as hell. The second best player on offense was set to leave, but it seemed utterly reasonable to assume a QB PC liked, under his guidance, would at least be as good, if not better. Maybe we got fooled by basic logic, but that happens. 
And the weirdest part was it wasn’t the ceiling that suffered, but the consistency. He went on the road and murdered a top-20 defense AND had that Minnesota game. 
It reminds me of 2007 and 2008, when UW returned gobs of nominally good players and got worse and worse. Left Me playing wait and see all through the 2010 offseason I was scarred so. 
Anyway, I hope the best for Alex, but I grow uneasy with discussion of his concussions. I hope we’d all say the same if he had a 170 QB rating. Anyway, there’s no clean, safe answer, so I suppose we should put last season’s lessons to use. Anything can happen.
(Or if we’re talking about Danny Davis being good, yeah, that bowl did fool me)

[847badgerfan]

I actually feel good about the secondary right now. Lots of kids played this year and I'd think they would take that next step. I like their coach too.


I'm concerned about DL depth, again. Obviously they had to borrow Lyles this year from the OL to get by. It would not surprise me if a TE and another OL made a move there for this season. They have a lot of depth at both spots and the DL needs help.


Next we can make some guesses as to who will not be returning for a 5th year. Unfortunately some of the candidates are supposed to be players on the DL. They just don't play.

[847badgerfan]

The word fooled is an interesting one.
We watched what was probably the second-best sophomore QB season in program history. The offense was efficient as hell. The second best player on offense was set to leave, but it seemed utterly reasonable to assume a QB PC liked, under his guidance, would at least be as good, if not better. Maybe we got fooled by basic logic, but that happens.
And the weirdest part was it wasn’t the ceiling that suffered, but the consistency. He went on the road and murdered a top-20 defense AND had that Minnesota game.
It reminds me of 2007 and 2008, when UW returned gobs of nominally good players and got worse and worse. Left Me playing wait and see all through the 2010 offseason I was scarred so.
Anyway, I hope the best for Alex, but I grow uneasy with discussion of his concussions. I hope we’d all say the same if he had a 170 QB rating. Anyway, there’s no clean, safe answer, so I suppose we should put last season’s lessons to use. Anything can happen.
(Or if we’re talking about Danny Davis being good, yeah, that bowl did fool me)

Yep, I'd like to think I'd feel the same way if he were an awesome QB. And you know he still could be good. Just needs to clean things up. Better pass-pro would help too. Deitzen and Edwards got beat a lot out there. 
Health is most important. He's not an NFL player by any stretch, but he looked pretty OK before the concussions set in. He should not have played against Minnie though. Hindsight and all that.

[847badgerfan]

A very pleasant surprise here.

Guess who’s back, back again

Biadasz is back, tell a friend

Fired up that our guy “Badger” will be leading the way up front once again in 2019. #OnWisconsin




Tyler Biadasz

[Badger1969]

Just saw Wisconsin’s 2019 QB commit, Graham Mertz, throw three touchdown passes in the All-American Bowl game.  I think we finally got a QB to match a successful running game. Big 10 watch out here we come.

Correction now it’s five touch down passes. 

[Honestbuckeye]

Just saw Wisconsin’s 2019 QB commit, Graham Mertz, throw three touchdown passes in the All-American Bowl game.  I think we finally got a QB to match a successful running game. Big 10 watch out here we come.

Correction now it’s five touch down passes.  

Looks good!

[SFBadger96]

Please, please, please, please...

[847badgerfan]

Kinda quiet in Madison, other than OC Joe Rudolph putting his name in the hat for the Temple and NIU job openings. He's still in the mix for NIU, along with Matt Canada and Thomas Hammock. All of those are current/former UW assistants, which is interesting... anyway, in other news:



All four of UW's early entrants are on campus this week. They include QB Graham Mertz, WR Cam Phillips, LB Spencer Lytle and LB Leo Chenal. I expect all of them to see the field this season, with the possible exception of Phillips (depth at WR??).