Wisconsin Football 2022- The Jim Leonhard Show ends, the Luke Fickell era begins

[areacodes]

 

17 minutes ago, SomewhereInTime said:

The number just went up to 250.  I forgot to take into account receivers and backs at other schools who played QB in high school.

And Braelon Allen.  If they just direct snapped to him every play and let him throw maybe five times a game it'd probably improve the offense.

I was trying to have a serious conversation about this at one point in time but you’ve just made a mockery of this with your trolling. I’m out.

[UpandIn]

4 hours ago, SomewhereInTime said:

This is a bizzaro Badger discussion on this forum.  I mean it's a miserable awful football team with a bad QB, most people aren't very high on them right now, but the Brewers go one year with a winning record and no postseason and it's time to blow it up, fire stearns, etc according to many who post on this Brewer forum.

Dude...what the hell are you talking about?

List the people in this thread who've EVER even hinted at it being time to "fire sterarns?"
 

Eh...second thought, based on how you substantiate your opinion...don't bother. 

[MrTPlush]

On 10/20/2022 at 12:37 PM, LouisEly said:

Full games in-person, or just highlights on ESPN?  Everyone looks good in highlights, and ESPN/FOX/etc. financially benefit by pumping up the guys at the big programs to be better than they really are because they can charge more for advertising.

This board has operated for literally decades on showing stats to back up your opinions.  Show some stats.

Non-highlights, yes. I am not really a dedicated fan of any college football team so I usually watch whatever is on TV when I am bored on a Saturday...which is often times teams the Alabama/Oklahoma's of the world. Can't say I have watched a ton of Williams at USC. Those games are kind of lame. 

This board has operated for decades on baseball and showing baseball stats. That is a professional league that is pretty consistent across the board. There are 162 games for stats to correct themselves and there are not the absolutely insane talent gaps like in college football. More than ever those baseball teams are facing very similar schedules to take out even more inconsistencies. College football conferences are so different from one another. Big Ten has a lot of defense and the Big 12 likes to air it out. Many QBs are simply game managers and only asked to make the easy throw thus inflating their rating. Using stats as gospel in college football or any college sport is inaccurate. It doesn't take a huge knowledge of sports statistics and college football knowledge to understand that. 

To me Mertz is probably bordering an average Big Ten QB. Which isn't really saying much as the Big Ten isn't exactly much of a QB league. The only stats I feel are really relevant and comparable to this argument would be Hornibrook and Coan. The majority of fans hated both of them and thought both of them sucked. Hornibrook in his three years put up 125.8/148.6/132.5. Jack Coan only had the one full year and put up a 151.8 rating before the team and fanbase ran him out of town to let the Mertz dream start. The later I actually thought was a decent QB and honestly ran the offense perfectly with his abilities...but thus, clearly the team didn't think so.

I think Mertz is a lot better now that the team and him have kind of accepted he isn't going to be 'the guy' with the ball. However, his sub 60% completion rate when he is only averaging 7.0 yards a pass in conference play is pretty brutal. Graham Mertz is basically a lot like Alex Hornibrook. Not a train wreck, but also not good and quite a bit of poor decision-making baked in. As I said before it is still pretty early on, but if his performance in conference play continues, he is in fact, pretty darn bad. I think I would rather have Hornibrook over Mertz. 

[Jim French Stepstool]

3 hours ago, MrTPlush said:

 I think I would rather have Hornibrook over Mertz. 

Don't stop now. You only have 249 more to go.⏳

[MrTPlush]

6 minutes ago, Jim French Stepstool said:

Don't stop now. You only have 249 more to go.⏳

Looks like you stopped too soon trying to read this thread to find out I said nothing about how many QBs are better than Mertz.

Thankfully your post was short and I didn’t waste more than 5 seconds reading to find out you are talking to an imaginary wall though.

[UpandIn]

1 hour ago, MrTPlush said:

I think Mertz is a lot better now that the team and him have kind of accepted he isn't going to be 'the guy' with the ball. However, his sub 60% completion rate when he is only averaging 7.0 yards a pass in conference play is pretty brutal. Graham Mertz is basically a lot like Alex Hornibrook. Not a train wreck, but also not good and quite a bit of poor decision-making baked in. As I said before it is still pretty early on, but if his performance in conference play continues, he is in fact, pretty darn bad. I think I would rather have Hornibrook over Mertz. 

I agree with what you said about it being very difficult statistically to evaluate QB play in CFB given all the variables, and he's not in the same group as Young, Stroud, Hooker, Richardson, Williams. 

But give him Dieter, Dietzen, Edwards, Benzschwael, Biadasz...and then Taylor, Davis, Cephus, Ferguson, Pryor, just the talent Hornibrook had and I think there'd be a pretty significant difference in play. 

Rudolph as our OL Coach really set this program back. They'd better not let someone hire Bostad away in the near future. He should be a staple of this program...regardless of the HC(who I'm pretty certain will be Leonhard). 

 

27 minutes ago, Jim French Stepstool said:

Don't stop now. You only have 249 more to go.⏳

That was a whole different brand of...stu..differing opinions/trolling.

[CheeseheadInQC]

I can’t say how many quarterbacks are better than Mertz, but I will say none of them play for Iowa.

[Brewcrew82]

2 hours ago, CheeseheadInQC said:

I can’t say how many quarterbacks are better than Mertz, but I will say none of them play for Iowa.

I think we can say he's better than the D3 WIAC QBs, too, 

[SomewhereInTime]

14 minutes ago, Brewcrew82 said:

I think we can say he's better than the D3 WIAC QBs, too, 

After today I think Mertz is easily top half of the WIAC.  No way he cracks the two deep at Whitewater though.

[Brewcrew82]

2 hours ago, SomewhereInTime said:

After today I think Mertz is easily top half of the WIAC.  No way he cracks the two deep at Whitewater though.

Lol, whatever you say boss. 

[yourout]

It's not exactly news but there are at least four teams in the Big 10 East that would win the West while there are zero teams in the west that would win the east.

Unless he leaves for more money Bielema is probably going to be a big factor in the Big 10 West as long as he stays with the recruiting advantage he has in the Chicago area.

[LouisEly]

1 hour ago, yourout said:

It's not exactly news but there are at least four teams in the Big 10 East that would win the West while there are zero teams in the west that would win the east.

We'll find out next week when Maryland comes to Camp Randall and Penn State gets Ohio State at home.

Penn State only scored 17 against Northwestern at home.  I wouldn't place a large wager that they'd come out on top of the Big Ten West.

[Brewcrew82]

And yet, he's the worst Wisconsin QB in decades...

[Brewcrew82]

14 hours ago, LouisEly said:

We'll find out next week when Maryland comes to Camp Randall and Penn State gets Ohio State at home.

Penn State only scored 17 against Northwestern at home.  I wouldn't place a large wager that they'd come out on top of the Big Ten West.

UW is on a bye week next week, FWIW.

[Jim French Stepstool]

On 10/22/2022 at 12:30 PM, MrTPlush said:

Looks like you stopped too soon trying to read this thread to find out I said nothing about how many QBs are better than Mertz.

Thankfully your post was short and I didn’t waste more than 5 seconds reading to find out you are talking to an imaginary wall though.

 The comment had nothing to do with the quality of your post, which I thought contained some good stuff. That's why I only quoted the part I was referring to.

The reference, (I thought) was obvious & was meant to have fun with some of the absurdity that's been going on, which has been anything but imaginary.

 

[MrTPlush]

1 hour ago, Jim French Stepstool said:

 The comment had nothing to do with the quality of your post, which I thought contained some good stuff. That's why I only quoted the part I was referring to.

The reference, (I thought) was obvious & was meant to have fun with some of the absurdity that's been going on, which has been anything but imaginary.

 

Apologizes I didn’t catch on to the sarcasm.

[Jim French Stepstool]

10 minutes ago, MrTPlush said:

Apologizes I didn’t catch on to the sarcasm.

Me too. It's like people sitting around in a bar. Person #1 says something dumb. Person #2 makes a joking reference to it, to person #3. That doesn't always translate well on a message board. 

Sorry.

[Jim French Stepstool]

21 hours ago, yourout said:

It's not exactly news but there are at least four teams in the Big 10 East that would win the West while there are zero teams in the west that would win the east.

Unless he leaves for more money Bielema is probably going to be a big factor in the Big 10 West as long as he stays with the recruiting advantage he has in the Chicago area.

I give Bielema a lot of credit for what he's put together down there. But I don't know if he has all that much of an advantage in Chicago. I mean, EVERYBODY goes there to recruit; lots of coaches have connections there. And there's always been sort of a disconnect between the NE corner of that state with the rest of Illinois. 

It's a mammoth area though. I'm sure his current success will give him inroads to some extent.

[CheezWizHed]

I did finally get to watch the last 3 games (NW, MI-ST, and Purdue - the BIG10 <Game> in 60 is a nice way to review a game quickly).  Mertz does look much better than he did early in the season.  More confident in his passes, hitting open guys, less indecision.  Not sure if the coaching change helped or if he is just a slow starter(as I recall him making decent improvements last year too).  

[UpandIn]

On 10/15/2022 at 6:39 PM, SomewhereInTime said:

Not still taking bets are you?

Sure am. 

[Jim French Stepstool]

It's really unfortunate that bureaucracy gets in the way of Leonhard being named head coach immediately. His ability to get players to improve the focus & consistency while in a transitionary phase is top-shelf impressive.

I assume it was more Leonhard than Bobby April, but to find a way to get Wohler, Latu & Torchio on the field at the same time for as many snaps as he did was fantastic. And Alex Smith comes back, plays extremely well vs Purdue, and yesterday it seemed like Maryland didn't even want to challenge his side. A real tough day for any QB to look good, but still a very impressive day for the D.

[JosephC]

I sure am getting the vibe that the interim part of Leonhard's title is either removed in the next couple of days or he is not getting the job.  Not this past week, but during the preceding week there was an interview with Leonhard where he made it pretty obvious that he was growing impatient with the process.  They just lost one of their WR commits and other schools are really going to ramp up their poaching efforts the longer this goes on.  If McIntosh is going to do a complete break and go with someone totally different, then losing players is a part of the process.  But it is a bit foolish to drag this out if the thought is that Leonhard will probably be the best candidate after they take a look around.   

[Jim French Stepstool]

Here is what I see: Jim Leonhard is going to be the announced as the permanent head coach. The delay, while distasteful, has less (nothing) to do with uncertainty about his abilities to lead the program & everything about the archaic procedure they feel necessary to follow, maybe even mandated to follow. It has to do with state hiring practices, which shouldn't have anything to do with this situation but unfortunately do. For the record, I'm pretty sure Paul Chryst had a deal in place before all this nonsense was completed when he was named to the job. I can't say that's the case with JL but it wouldn't shock me.

As to the decommit (Trech Kekahuna), the coaching uncertainty certainly could be a factor. But when committing to UW his other offers were Boise St, Hawaii & Nevada. Since his commitment he's received offers from several PAC-12 schools including Utah & Oregon. Kids giving a school a "yes" then backing off after receiving what they consider better offers stinks, but it happens quite a bit. It might be due to Chryst leaving. It might not. But obviously everyone wants this to get wound up ASAP.

 

 

[UpandIn]

2 hours ago, JosephC said:

I sure am getting the vibe that the interim part of Leonhard's title is either removed in the next couple of days or he is not getting the job.  Not this past week, but during the preceding week there was an interview with Leonhard where he made it pretty obvious that he was growing impatient with the process.  They just lost one of their WR commits and other schools are really going to ramp up their poaching efforts the longer this goes on.  If McIntosh is going to do a complete break and go with someone totally different, then losing players is a part of the process.  But it is a bit foolish to drag this out if the thought is that Leonhard will probably be the best candidate after they take a look around.   

They're required to list the job. They can't just name him HC. They need to list it and take applicants for...I don't know, 14 days or something. 

Makes sense in most areas of the University. It's kinda silly with regard to sports. So I don't think he'll officially be named HC until The end of Feb? Maybe it's March. 

[Brewcrew82]

14 hours ago, UpandIn said:

They're required to list the job. They can't just name him HC. They need to list it and take applicants for...I don't know, 14 days or something. 

Makes sense in most areas of the University. It's kinda silly with regard to sports. So I don't think he'll officially be named HC until The end of Feb? Maybe it's March. 

They can't wait that long with the 2023 recruiting class still in need of finalizing. not to mention the post-season transfer window. Job will probably be posted sometime within the next few weeks, with Leonhard being named permanent HC thereafter. Definitely before a bowl game (which looks likely at this point).