Wisconsin Football 2023

[yourout]

Probably the most satisfying win of the year.

[CheezWizHed]

2 hours ago, homer said:

Minny wants to take all their timeouts to the locker room I guess 

Their QB got whacked on their last offensive play... I wonder if he wasn't going to be able to come back out...

 

Well we hit our minimum expectation milestones - Beat Bielama and Fleck, Make a bowl.  Seems like they started turning things around at the end of the season.  Interesting to see what they will be able to accomplish next year with a year of experience. 

[nate82]

4 minutes ago, CheezWizHed said:

Seems like they started turning things around at the end of the season.  Interesting to see what they will be able to accomplish next year with a year of experience.

It will be without Allen so hopefully they can get some WR’s who can catch otherwise next year is going to be tough.

[CheezWizHed]

7 minutes ago, nate82 said:

It will be without Allen so hopefully they can get some WR’s who can catch otherwise next year is going to be tough.

Mordecai is also gone.  Though Locke looked at least as good. 

I'm guessing they will hit the transfer portal again.  Should be pretty prime spot for any RB they want.  Mellusi might return though he can't seem to stay healthy.  Pauli was pretty good at WR this year.  Green wasn't bad.  Not sure who else they got coming up either.  

TE is thin, LB was sort of weak, CB also.  DL was up and down. 

But this year started rebuilding the talent gap we had the last couple years. More experience in the offensive and defensive systems will help too. 

[nate82]

I think Mellusi would need to be eligible as a 6th year senior in order to return.  I thought this was his 5th year?

[Jim French Stepstool]

The perfect microcosm for people who criticize this offense--and I've been one of them--came in (I think) the second possession. You have a 3rd & one:

You decide to throw for it (ugh).

You complete the pass (Good. Yay Air Raid!!)

Even though you complete the pass, it still doesn't pick up the 1st down. That's kinda hard to do.

All that aside, Mordecai was a nice dual threat today. And I venture to guess Allen getting heated up in the run game opened up some longer pass patterns. And for all their mistakes this season, It's time to credit the offensive line for developing some consistency & playing much cleaner (I don't think I heard Jack Nelsons' name called once today regarding something negative). And they've done it with virtually no help from the 2nd team.

Curt Neal, Vinny Anthony, Quincy Burroughs, Christian Alliegro starting to step up. Hopefully more young'uns do so w/the extra bowl practices. 

Hayden Rucci w/a huge, clutch grab. Happy for a SR doing that in the Axe Game.

Today the defense only looked lost at the beginning of the game for one possession. Progress😎.

[Jim French Stepstool]

6 minutes ago, nate82 said:

I think Mellusi would need to be eligible as a 6th year senior in order to return.  I thought this was his 5th year?

2024 would be year six. I thought I heard that he could at least apply for a waiver. Tough call to guess what the kid's thinking.

[CheezWizHed]

1 minute ago, Jim French Stepstool said:

2024 would be year six. I thought I heard that he could at least apply for a waiver. Tough call to guess what the kid's thinking.

Yes, that was also what I heard.  Thus why I said "might" return.

[Jim French Stepstool]

19 minutes ago, CheezWizHed said:

Mordecai is also gone.  Though Locke looked at least as good. 

I'm guessing they will hit the transfer portal again.  Should be pretty prime spot for any RB they want.  Mellusi might return though he can't seem to stay healthy.  Pauli was pretty good at WR this year.  Green wasn't bad.  Not sure who else they got coming up either.  

TE is thin, LB was sort of weak, CB also.  DL was up and down. 

But this year started rebuilding the talent gap we had the last couple years. More experience in the offensive and defensive systems will help too. 

Agree re TE. Improvement needed at LB but there are some folks there who I think haven't reached a ceiling yet. If they aren't improved in the secondary it'll be a big disappointment because they recruited heavily there & seemed to get who they wanted.

DL Gio Paez, Rodas Johnson & Isaiah Mullins (injured all season) should all be able to return next season if they choose to. If they do that unit will be improved. Of course those are 3 big "ifs".

[Jim French Stepstool]

5 hours ago, yourout said:

That third down run is a perfect example of why the spread is a terrible fit for Allen.

You're constantly inviting guys to crash down from the edge to get into his legs.

Yep. And no lead blocker to deter that.

[nate82]

12 minutes ago, Jim French Stepstool said:

2024 would be year six. I thought I heard that he could at least apply for a waiver. Tough call to guess what the kid's thinking.

It would be smart for him to come back.  He probably goes undrafted this year.  But if he comes back and is healthy all year that should put him in the 4-6 round range.

[Jim French Stepstool]

3 hours ago, HarryDoyle said:

I don't care what happened before or what happens next. As long as Wisconsin defeats Fleck and the Gophers tonight, I'll be happy with the season.

Minnesota had an injured player early in the game. Peej ran out to check on him, then went back to the sidelines while he was still being attended to. I was shocked. I mean, didn't he know the TV cameras would still be on the injured player?

[Jim French Stepstool]

6 minutes ago, nate82 said:

It would be smart for him to come back.  He probably goes undrafted this year.  But if he comes back and is healthy all year that should put him in the 4-6 round range.

Don't follow the NFL so I'll take your word for it on a projected round. For sure, unless he wants to be a REEEEEAAL longshot coming back would make sense for him.

[RedStickBrew]

1 hour ago, nate82 said:

It will be without Allen so hopefully they can get some WR’s who can catch otherwise next year is going to be tough.

They have 3 RBs committed in this incoming class. All three are good enough to play early. At least one is going to enroll in January. I think they will be young but fine next year

[HarryDoyle]

13 hours ago, HarryDoyle said:

Hey Fleck..........NO BOWL FOR YOU!!!

Welp.

 

[DuWayne Steurer]

Going to a bowl game with a 5-7 record is just wrong. 

I always felt 6-6 was just laughable, because it allowed a team to lose the bowl game and end the season with a losing record. Now they're taking teams with 5-7 records to fill out the slate of bowl games. EL-OH-EL. 

[HarryDoyle]

Yeah, it pretty much shows you the sad state of college football when you don't have enough teams with winning records to fill out a bowl schedule, which also could've been avoided by not adding 7000 more bowl games to begin with. Welcome to the participation trophy age.

[igor67]

That is pretty ick. On other vents while I enjoyed a bunch of Rivalry week games I did hear at least 1 bone headed announcer confidently state that we wouldn't have to have this 'debate' about who makes it into the playoff once they expanded next year. But of course we will because a part of his job depends on filling sports talk time with these 'debates' never mind that as usual the number of relevant undefeated teams fits into the existing model.

[HarryDoyle]

21 minutes ago, igor67 said:

That is pretty ick. On other vents while I enjoyed a bunch of Rivalry week games I did hear at least 1 bone headed announcer confidently state that we wouldn't have to have this 'debate' about who makes it into the playoff once they expanded next year. But of course we will because a part of his job depends on filling sports talk time with these 'debates' never mind that as usual the number of relevant undefeated teams fits into the existing model.

Which is completely ludicrous anyway because no matter how many teams you put in the playoff, the first one or two teams out (or is it last?) will always complain they should've made it and the NCAA will keep on expanding. I think most people know how I feel about expanding playoffs in any sport. It rewards mediocrity and waters down the whole thing.

[DuWayne Steurer]

1 hour ago, HarryDoyle said:

Which is completely ludicrous anyway because no matter how many teams you put in the playoff, the first one or two teams out (or is it last?) will always complain they should've made it and the NCAA will keep on expanding. I think most people know how I feel about expanding playoffs in any sport. It rewards mediocrity and waters down the whole thing.

Exactly. No matter how many teams there are in the playoffs, there's a "debate" when they are chosen subjectively. Conference champs is easy. Any other teams after that is open to debate, and the last 2-3 in vs the last 2-3 out will *always* be open to debate. Every single year. 

[igor67]

Even conference champs will produce debate to fill the need for air space, since someone will want to claim either different strengths for different conferences or point to a conference champ that has a worse record then a second place team. Even if you went a full 365 day schedule to accommodate a full Round-Robin, that's just an invitation to say that a team finished stronger and really should have been. So just pick with something reasonable and accept that is the game we are all playing.

[LouisEly]

19 hours ago, Jim French Stepstool said:

2024 would be year six. I thought I heard that he could at least apply for a waiver. Tough call to guess what the kid's thinking.

He is eligible for a medical redshirt because he only played in four games this year.  Four years plus the 2020 COVID year plus a medical redshirt.

[LouisEly]

7 hours ago, DuWayne Steurer said:

Going to a bowl game with a 5-7 record is just wrong. 

Send them to that half-assed outdoor bowl game in New York.  Go freeze your chestnuts off, Peej.

[Jim French Stepstool]

2 hours ago, LouisEly said:

Send them to that half-assed outdoor bowl game in New York.  Go freeze your chestnuts off, Peej.

Let's look on the bright side. If they go to a bowl & lose, I'm guessing they would be the only B10 team in history to get a bowl invite & finish a season with eight losses.

Sounds pretty elite to me.😜

[Jim French Stepstool]

9 hours ago, HarryDoyle said:

which also could've been avoided by not adding 7000 more bowl games to begin with. Welcome to the participation trophy age.

That's the straw that stirs the drink. It's become less about being an end-of-season reward & more about creating another 3-hour window for selling ad space, and maybe getting enough handfuls of fans on site to get the local hotels, restaurants & golf courses some extra holiday coin.

Throw in the guys who decide to bail on their teams (I understand why it's done & it's hard to argue against it, but I'll never respect it), and it makes bowl season much harder to get excited about.