JosephC

The Chiefs now have the same win-loss record as the Miami Dolphins. Would have never imagined that a month ago. Lots of crying about the Daniel Jones injury. I don't think I'd be too upset if I was a Colts fan. That team had already hit the predicted downhill slide, and I figure this injury likely just saved the team from a massive 4 year, 180 million dollar mistake.

Packers win, Bears lose. It has a nice ring to it.

I realize the Dolphins have been playing terrible teams lately. However, a month ago the Dolphins were in the running for worst team in the league honors and squarely looking at a top 4 pick. Now it looks like they are less than 1 hour away from being on a 4-0 run. Is this the first time in history a team has dramatically improved when keeping the coach and firing the GM instead? Probably a tactic more teams (in all sports) should consider, I still think the boob running the New York Giants should have been out the door long before Daboll.

Considering how little Stackhouse has shown, he should get thrown into the same mix as Riley and Bohanna and may the best man win. Considering the amount of bodies they already have at DE, without even counting Cox, I don't think they will stick with 6 DTs very long.

I'm not suggesting that Grimes and all the offensive assistants should be fired, but it would be surprising if every one of them kept their jobs. Coordinator, QB, RB, WR, TE, OL...name one group that performed at a satisfactory level in 2025.

We'll see what happens on Monday/Tuesday. I didn't figure the Badgers would make any coaching moves prior to the end of this early signing period, but it would be pretty surprising if nothing happened next week. They ran Longo out of town last year, hard for me to believe they would keep Grimes and all the offensive assistant coaches based on the performance. In 2024 they averaged 22.9 points per game against Big 10 opponents, this year that number was all the way down to 9.

Pitt bailed on the @ Wisconsin game this upcoming season. Both team's websites indicate this was a mutual agreement, but the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is reporting that it was Pitt that backed out. This series was going to be a home-and-home, but the Pitt home part of that got moved to Dublin...so I can only assume Pitt did not want to have to play road game and a neutral field game as this series. Pretty wimpy move to back out of this game considering the state of the Badger program. I would figure other teams would be lining up to try and get a win against a Big 10 team. The Badgers certainly won't be any type of powerhouse next year, and their schedule is light enough where the opponents should not be ending up with a 3-9 weak spot on their strength of schedule ranking at the end of the year. The Badgers will now play Eastern Michigan instead. They still have Notre Dame on their schedule, so the out of conference schedule isn't a complete cakewalk. Badgers now have home games against Western Illinois, Eastern Michigan, Michigan State and Rutgers...those 4 games alone should match their win total for this year. Road games at Maryland, Penn State and Purdue, this could be the easiest schedule in the Big 10 next year.

For some reason Iowa made an announcement that Ferentz will be back coaching next year. I realize the guy is old, but it didn't seem retirement was on his radar. Running point total of head-to-head matchups- Ferentz = 94, Fickell = 16

The Badgers picked up a safety this morning, Kah'ni Watts from Texas. He's way down the list of safeties (Rivals has him a #133 on the safeties list, #203 on the Texas Prospects list), but he helps an area that the staff had prioritized as a specific need. Rumors in Madison indicated they felt this was a real weak spot and had been pursing safeties very hard late in the process.

First transfer guy lasted all of 2 days before flipping to Kansas.

I'm going to assume they are done with the high schoolers. Time to take a brief look at the scholarship situation. QB - They only have 3 scholarship guys on the roster (usually like to have 5), and one of the three is Danny O'Neil who looks like a guaranteed transfer, and one will be an incoming true freshman. Needless to say, they will be looking at added at least 2 transfers and it's not crazy to think they will add 3 like they did last year. RB - They have 5, generally teams like to have 7-8. so there is definitely room for a couple more. I don't think this group was nearly good enough last year, so there is a good chance they will look for an impact player here. WR - They only have 8, which is a concerning number. Kekahuna briefly tried the portal last year, there has been some speculation that he might try it again. They will likely look to add at least 2 and, again, need to find a real playmaker. TE = They have 7, could look to add one more. Overall this looks like the best and most settled of the offensive skill position groups. OL - Generally 15 is the number, although Gary Anderson's number was 14, and they only have 13 now. So a good bet that they will be adding 2 via transfer. EDGE/DL - They have 15, but will probably be looking for an impact Edge player at Peterson and Reiger were both seniors. LB - They have 11, which is probably 1 more than they need. Should be good here. CB - They have 7. Could use one more. S - They have 6, rumor had it they really wanted to add one in this high school recruiting class but struck out. So the 85 scholarship limit is gone, but still a good benchmark. Badgers currently only at 77 which does not seem like a good number because guys will be leaving, and frankly last years group of transfers left a lot to be desired.

Looking at the national scene, of the Rivals Top 300, there are only a handful of guys that have not given a verbal, but there are 33 Top 300 players that did not sign a letter of intent today. So even though the Badgers haven't been linked to a single one of these guys (to my knowledge), maybe they is some hope that there is a surprise flip on Friday.

They aren't saving all their money for offensive linemen (although they for sure will pick up a couple transfers), I think they are going to throw all the money at a quarterback.

McIntosh should have kept his pie-hole shut about bigger investments "recruiting and retention." It's one thing to lose a top recruit to Oklahoma, but it's a entirely different story to make statements like that and then lose the best player remaining in the class to West Virginia. Badger football is doomed as long as this moron is running the athletic department.

Janda really improved as a defensive player this year, and it sounds like Wisconsin were open to having him play defense. He flipped because of "stability" and liked the developmental program that Iowa has in place. https://247sports.com/article/iowa-flips-wisconsin-dl-commit-jack-janda-264472541/ LB-Karsten Busch ended up going to Miami and CB-Azel Banag went to Oregon. There is nothing else on the radar in terms of high schoolers. Signing day today, and all of the Badgers high schoolers have signed with the exception of Amari Latimer.

Badger lose tight end commit Jack Janda. He flipped to Iowa where he will play the defensive line. Never a good thing to lose a committed recruit to Iowa.

Badgers get a pretty nice flip in Tennnessee WR-Keeyshawn Tabuteau who was a Vanderbilt commit. Smaller guy (5-11, 165) that doesn't carry the huge rating (#62 WR per 247), but looks like a speedy guy with playmaking ability. Exactly what this offense needs. A couple days ago Iowa Central CC LB-Taylor Schaefer also committed to Wisconsin. Previous staffs did not go after these players very often, but if my memory serves me correct, they did a great job selecting these guys because most of them ended up being solid players for the Badgers. Andrew Van Ginkel was one, and if you want to go back about 15 years, defensive tackle Dan Moore was another. No word on Kentucky LB-Karsten Busch, and I'm a bit surprised because I thought he would be an official commit either yesterday or today. Also no word on CB-Azel Banag.

If the run game would go back to using real fullbacks, putting the QB back under center, and then just go downhill and smash the opponent, I would go back to watching games. Zone-blocking, stretch plays, trap block, counter-trey, make offensive linemen fun to watch again! Running 30+ draw plays out of the shotgun sounds incredibly boring to me.

Badger website has Smith at 4 games played. I also checked the bio and it indicates his debut was against Washington, which was game #9 of the season.

Reports are that Michigan State is firing head coach Jonathan Smith. Smith finished with a 4-8 record this year (1-8 in Big 10). His buyout is 33 million.

Offensive points per game during the Don Morton era- 1987 = 0, 10, 14, 24, 14, 26, 19, 9 = 14.5 points per game 1988 = 14, 6, 6, 14, 6, 12, 14, 0 = 9 points per game 1989 = 0, 24, 35, 9, 22, 17, 22, 3 = 16.5 points per game So I do stand corrected, 1988 was equally as bad as 2025. 9 points per game. There are 134 Division 1 teams (stats include all games, not just conference games)- Scoring offense = 133. Wisconsin = 13.4 points per game (only UMass was worse, 11.1 points per game) Total offense (yards per game) = 133, Wisconsin = 251.7 (only UMass was worse, 247.5 yards per game) Team Passing Efficiency = 130. Wisconsin = 108.82 Rushing Offense (yards per game) = 113, Wisconsin = 119.5 "Down to fourth quarterback" stuff is getting old. The Badgers have gotten stuck with bad quarterbacking a lot in the past, and have still been able to have a functional offense by running the ball. Badgers leading rusher in 2025 = Darrion Dupree = 363 yards That's right, team's leading rusher had 363 yards. But guys were injured..... Add up Dupree, Jones and Ituka rushing yards and all three of them had a combined 918 yards. The teams leading receiver in terms of yardage was Lance Mason, 398 yards. Pitiful. Back to the "4th QB" stuff. Edwards had a grade 3 PCL strain and was KO'ed. When he committed to the Badgers, most of the football fans in Madison went running for the toilet. O'Neil got KO'ed in the Washington game, but had been relegated to a very limited role in the previous four games due to a coaches decision and had become a non-factor. Hunter Simmons simply is not Big 10 material, not even backup Big 10 material. The fact that they sat Smith for the first 8 games to preserve the redshirt, and then pull him in a meaningless last game of the season where he could get more game experience to go back to Hunter Simmons is just mind-boggling. But that is Luke Fickell. After a terrible year last year, a year that I posted was likely the program's worst year in the last 35 years (and got no arguments), Fickell's big off-season fix was to fire the offensive coordinator and the result was an even worse offense, and offense so bad that we have to, once again, go back over 30 years to try to find a comparable. It will be interesting to see what assistants get fired next week, but at this point, who has any confidence that Fickell can hire the right guys to fix this program?

How did Illinois allow 27 points when playing the Badgers? And people want to know why I just wanted to rip on Illinois and not give Bucky any credit last weekend. Badger point totals against Big 10 competition- Maryland = 10 Michigan = 10 Iowa = 0 Ohio State = 0 Oregon = 7 Washington = 13 Indiana = 7 Illinois = 27 Minnesota = 7 They averaged 9 points per game against Big 10 competition this year. In Alvarez's first season, they scored 3. 10. 34 (Northwestern), 3, 3, 7, 10, 9 = 79 points / 8 games = 9.875 points per game. I was flipping through pages pretty fast, so there is a good chance I missed a bad season somewhere. But from what I saw, it looks like the last time Wisconsin scored less than 9 points per game in Big 10 play was 1968. Historically bad offensive team. Historically bad.

With 13 minutes left in the second quarter, Michigan leads Ohio State 6-3. I bet at least 20% of Ohio is crying for Ryan Day to be fired.

TE snaps on offense in the Lions game- Musgrave = 37 Whyle = 32 FitzPatrick = 15 Musgrave out of the dog house.

WR-Jayden Petit just decommitted. He was considered the top player in the Badgers class.